Your daily routine to maintain joint strength and mobility to keep your body moving well. CARs stands for Controlled Articular Rotations. When doing this routine, you want to be pain-free – especially no pinching on the closed-angle side fo the rotation (short side). To get the most out of your CARs, make any part of your body that is not doing the motion rigid and stiff.
At-Home Workouts
Feet and Ankles
Feet, our connection to the world around us. These 29 muscles, 33 joints, and 26 bones propel us through our lives. How they work and connect affects how everything up the chain works, from our ankles and hips, to our low backs and shoulders. Over the next few weeks, I am going to focus on our feet and how to keep them happy. Check back each week for new videos.
The best place to start, is to see if you have control of your feet. Try this video below. If you can’t get it at first, keep trying. It will come quicker than you think.
Now that we can move our toes, let’s try to gain some more range of motion. Try this big toe extension stretch with both a straight and bent knee. Hang out in both positions, but spend a little more time in the one that feels the most useful.
Moving up to the ankles with this next video. Limited range in our ankles usually means we have limited “rock”. Meaning our heel has a hard time rocking side-to-side. Try this next exercise to check on this side-to-side movement while also working on gaining more control of the movement.
Now that we have some side-to-side movement, we can work on increasing the range of our dorsiflexion (shin bone towards the top of the foot). This PAILs/RAILs exercise allows us to gain more range of motion while actively engaging that new range. This means, we are strengthening while we are gaining more flexibility.
To round out all our work, we will finish with ankle CARs. This helps upload all our new range and maintain it beyond our session.
Floor Series
Everyone should be able to get up and down from the floor. Here are 5 options to do this common task with grace and ease. Want to learn more? Book a session with me at Koa Fit to get started.
Option #1
Option #2
Option #3
Option #4
Option #5
Exercises for Better Balance
How’s your balance? When it comes to our balance, we need to use it or lose it. Sometimes, it slips away without us even noticing. Keep your balance in check with the videos below.
Elbows Can Be a Pain
Who has a tweaky elbow? One of those twinges or aches that seem to almost go away, and then with one wrong pick-up or swing, the pain is back. For a lot of people, the position of their shoulders is the root cause of their elbow discomfort. Below is a set of 5 exercises, to be done in order and together, to help relieve minor aches or tweaks in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists. Done daily, noticeable changes will happen within 1-2 weeks. Try these out and share with your friends!
Also, check out my Online Platform for the Shoulder Strength Series that can help you incrementally build stronger shoulders fo injury mitigation.
Hip Mobility Exercises – Week 1
This week we are working on our hip abduction. Hip abduction is when one leg moves towards the side, or away from the center line. The most obvious and common ways we use this movement in our daily lives is when getting in and out of bed, in and out of the car, or side-stepping out of the way.
Weakness in this area can cause the hip to “cave” to the outside which causes the knee to dip inward when walking or going up steps. These 2 motions can lead to hip and knee pain.
Foot and Ankle Month – Week Two
We are bringing things back to center this week. A lot of us have a tendency to roll towards our pinky toes as we walk or push off the ball of the foot. The first video shows you how to release the outside (lateral side) of the hip and shin that can get tight from the foot rolling out and the second video uses a ball to help track the foot back into a more neutral position during push off.
Foot and Ankle Month – Week One
For the month of March we are working on our feet and ankles. Making sure we have the mobility and strength to keep our joints from toe to head working well.
Balance Month – Week Four
This is our last week of balance challenges. We are opening up the hips this week with our standing figure 4 stretch and by progressing our single leg balance to challenge all the motions of the hip.
Balance Month – Week Three
This week we are adding all the rotation, in the upper and lower body. If standing on one leg is hard for you, go back to week one and work on your single-leg balance first.
Brenna Backe 