The postman came knocking today with some new books.
Free+Style by Carl Paoli & Anthony Sherbondy & The Roll Model by Jim Millar.
Why two books on health & fitness? In Januray of 2015 I was at home one day & received a newsletter from the folks at creativelive an it had some rar rar about New Years resolutions, etc. one of the courses interested me, Kelly Starretts, maintain your body. It stuck out among all of the small c creative courses. I watched the free sample intro video and was hooked with what Kelly had to say. This completely changed the course of year for 2015 into a new discovery of health, but not getting strong for the sake of getting strong, getting healthy, making better desisions day to day now, so that the odds of having a functional body for the rest of my life increased. If a knee joint is design to last a century & my sister had to have surgery at age 15, then something weird is going on. Did she just have bad knees, or bad mechanics around how she used her knee & therefore it wore out prematurely?
Fast forward to 2016, my goal is to be able to touch my toes with my hands (with straight arms & legs). I don’t have a single memory of being able to do it. I do however remember at age 10 having a break dance instructor say that some people just have short arms, long legs wen I wasn’t able to complete the feat, it was also a regular test in high school.
Surely I should be able to do such a basic thing. So that was my challenge for the start of the year. One evening I spent over an hour doing a Pilates routine, combined with some extra mobility exercises from mobilitywod & for the first time ever I was able to reach out with one arm & just barely touch my toes on my leg on the same side. A couple of weeks latter I joined the stretching class my girl friend attends.
8 weeks later, on one of the first wet days of the year I slipped outside & fractured my scapula into a million peices. Not fun. But even worse, all of my work, basically gone.
Mobility has taken on a new meaning now. I have been spending weekly sessions with a Physio trying to get my shoulder functioning how a shoulder is meant to function. Hopefully the blessing in disguise here is that my shoulders function better than they use too.
My challenge after touching my toes, a hand stand.