I have since learned to take a proactive approach to avoid letting chronic pain cast a dark shadow on my vacations. In fact, traveling and visiting different parts of the world is now something I look forward to, and do as often as possible – sans the pain.

In this article I will share two exercise routines that you can do in an airport or a hotel room to keep your body balanced and aligned while you travel. These routines are specifically designed for travel because they require little to no equipment, can be done with limited space, and will only take you 10 minutes. If you don’t have 10 minutes, do what you have time for. One minute of functional movement is better than none!

Click Here for a Downloadable PDF of These Exercises

Airport Exercises

When it comes to staying pain free when flying, the following are the biggest factors to contend with: 

• Muscle tightness from being cramped in a plane for hours on end.
• Poor circulation from not moving during a flight.
• Reduced oxygen delivery to the body from not breathing properly when hunched over in an airplane.

One way to reduce the impact of these unavoidable and unwelcome side effects of flying is to take a proactive approach. Exercises that promote mobility, circulation, and breathing can be done during your layover or while waiting for your luggage. The following series of exercises is designed to do just that. If possible, remove your shoes to help with blood flow and circulation to your feet, and be sure to stay hydrated.

Sitting Scapular Retractions

Reps: 30 reps

Purpose: Combat slouching by activating and strengthening shoulder and upper back muscles.

Instructions:

1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
2. Roll your hips forward to place an arch in your low back and hold throughout the exercise.
3. Squeeze and release your shoulder blades together. Squeeze back and down, NOT up and down.

Sitting Elbow Curls

Reps: 25 reps

Purpose: Improve shoulder mobility by moving your shoulder blades through a full range of motion.

Instructions:

1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
2. Roll your hips forward to place an arch in your low back.
3. Place your fingertips into the pad of each hand and point your thumbs straight out. Place your big knuckles on your temples.
4. Hold this starting position; then pull your elbows away from each other to force your upper back muscles to create the work. Do not lose your hip position; keep them rolled forward and maintain the arch in your low back.
5. Pull your elbows back and then close them together in front of your face. Keep your elbows up at shoulder level; do not let them drop down.

Breathing With Hands Behind Head

Reps: Hold for 10 breaths

Purpose: Opens up the thoracic spine (upper back) and delivers oxygen to the body.

Instructions:

1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
2. Roll your hips forward to place an arch in your low back.
3. Interlace your fingers behind your head, pull your elbows back and pull your shoulder blades together.
4. Keep your chin up and relax your belly. Maintain this position for the duration of the exercise.
5. Breathe intentionally into your ribs so that your ribs expand outward with each inhalation.

Sitting Leg Crossover Stretch

Reps: Hold for 1 minute on each leg

Purpose: Stretch and activate the hips.

Instructions:

1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
2. Roll your hips forward to place an arch in your low back.
3. Cross your right leg over your left so that your anklebone is just above your knee.
4. Using the strength of your hip (not your hands) press the knee of the crossed leg downward towards the floor.
5. Breathe and hold for 1 minute, then switch sides and repeat. Maintain an arch in your low back for the duration of the exercise.

Sitting Foot Circles and Point Flexes

Reps: Circle 10 times on each foot going in the following three directions: clockwise, counter clockwise, and point and flex. Switch sides and repeat.

Purpose: Mobilize the feet and lower legs, and promote circulation.

Instructions:

1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
2. Roll your hips forward to place an arch in your low back.
3. Cross your right leg over your left so that your anklebone is just above your knee.
4. Circle the foot of your crossed leg clockwise 10 times, counter clockwise 10 times, and point/flex 10 times.
5. Switch sides and repeat. Make your foot circles as big and full as possible. Pretend you are scraping out the inside of an ice cream bowl. The slower and more deliberate the better.

Click Here for Hotel Exercises on Page 2

Hotel Room Exercises

Whether you’re traveling for fun or business, you may not have the time or the resources to maintain your full health and fitness regimen. Regardless of your constraints, you can still make time for this quick full body routine. The best time of day to do these exercises is first thing in the morning so that you can go about your day with better alignment and feel energized for your day.

Standing Arm Circles

Reps: 40 forward, 40 backward

Purpose: Straighten out the upper back by moving the shoulders through internal and external rotation.

Instructions:

1. Stand with your feet pointed straight and hip-width apart.
2. Place your fingertips into the pad of each hand and point your thumbs straight out.
3. Pull your shoulders back by squeezing your shoulder blades together and down, then bring your arms out straight from your sides up to shoulder level.
4. With palms facing down and thumbs pointing straight forward rotate your hands up and forward in approximate 6-inch circles 40 times.
5. Then reverse direction: palms should now face up, with thumbs pointed straight backward. Rotate your hands up and backward 40 times.

Standing Elbow Curls

Reps: 30

Purpose: Improve shoulder mobility by moving your shoulder blades through a full range of motion.

Instructions:

1. Stand with your feet pointed straight and hip-width apart.
2. Place your fingertips into the pad of each hand and point your thumbs straight out.
3. Place your big knuckles on your temples.
4. Hold this starting position; then pull your elbows away from each other to force your upper back muscles to create tension.
5. Pull your elbows back and then close them together in front of your face. Keep your elbows up at shoulder level, do not let them drop down. Do not let your head move forward and back like you are bobbing for apples. If you have a hard time keeping your head still, do this exercise standing up against a wall.

Down Dog with Chair

Reps: Hold for 1 minute

Purpose: Improve mobility through the thoracic spine and activate the muscles of the hips and legs.

Instructions:

1. Stand facing the back of a chair.
2. Keep your feet pointed straight and place your hands on the back of the chair.
3. Walk your feet back so that your feet are under your hips. Keep the hips, knees, and feet in alignment.
4. Kick your buttocks/hips back to place an arch in your lower back.
5. Keep your elbows locked out and tighten your quads. Keep your feet straight for the duration of the exercise.

Assisted Runners Stretch

Reps: Hold for 1 minute on each leg

Purpose: Stretch the hamstrings and stabilize the hips.

Instructions:

1. Kneel down in front of a chair.
2. Place the back of your left heel to the front of the right knee. Be sure that you are up on the toes of your right foot, with the bottom of the foot pointing behind you. Keep the left foot, right knee, and right foot in line with each other.
3. Keeping your hands on the chair stand up and begin bending over while rolling your hips back to place an arch into your lower back. The heel of your right foot should now be on the ground and the feet should remain straight.
4. Tighten your thighs (quads) while relaxing your upper body. Keep your weight on the inside of each foot and keep your lower back arched. Hold for one minute on each side.

Sitting Knee Pillow Squeezes

Reps: 60

Purpose: Mobilize and stabilize the pelvis and low back.

Instructions:

1. Sit in the middle of a chair with your feet pointed straight ahead, 4-6 inches apart.
2. Place a pillow between your knees.
3. Roll your hips forward to place an arch in your low back and hold this position throughout the exercise.
4. Squeeze and release the pillow with your knees. Keep your stomach relaxed for the duration of this exercise.

Cats and Dogs

Reps: 10, counting 1 Cat and 1 Dog as 1 total rep

Purpose: Mobilize the hips, spine, and shoulders.

Instructions:

1. Start on your hands and knees. Be sure that your hips are directly above your knees and that your shoulders are directly above your wrist. Fingers should be pointed forward.
2. For the Cat position: Pull your hips under, pull your head under, and push your upper back to the ceiling to round your back up high.
3. For the Dog position: Roll your hips forward to put an arch in your back, collapse your shoulder blades together, and look up.
4. Slowly move back and forth between the Cat and Dog positions and breathe normally.

Airbench

Reps: Hold for 2 minutes

Purpose: Stabilizes the hips and low back.

Instructions:

1. Safety comes first and traction on your feet is a priority here. Only do this if you can wear non-slip shoes to or if you can stand on a non-slip surface.
2. Stand with your back against a wall with your feet and knees hip-width apart and feet pointed straight.
3. Walk your feet away from the wall while sliding your body down at the same time. You will be “seated” in an invisible chair, with your knees bent to 105 degrees (just above 90 degrees). Your hips are just slightly higher than your knees; your ankles are slightly ahead of your knees. Your lower back should be completely flat against the wall. Your arms can hang down to your sides, or rest your hands gently on your lap. Keep the weight in your heels, do not press forward on your toes.

Simple Fixes to Make Your Vacation More Enjoyable

I hope you are able to implement and enjoy these exercise routines on your next vacation. Remember, chronic pain doesn’t have to zap the fun and enjoyment from your next vacation. Making exercise and movement a priority during travel can be inconvenient, and may take some extra time and planning. However, in the end it is worthwhile when you are able to enjoy your trip to its fullest, free of pain and restriction.

Got all that? Now here’s how to not come back from vacation 20 pounds heavier:

How to Stick to Your Nutrition Goals While Traveling

The post Don’t Let Chronic Pain Ruin Your Vacation appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

All of us want our training to be high quality. If you have followed Kelly Starrett’s work, he uses the term structure all the time. Every squat, deadlift, Olympic pull, kettlebell swing and plyometric are dependent on our structure. Starrett’s philosophy revolves around the idea that power and speed are a product of sound structure, and he’s not wrong. He’s referring to not only organizing the muscles, joints, and bones to create stability, but without directly saying it, he’s talking about an athlete’s rootedness.

The Cal Poly Armor program came out of necessity. I was out with my football team teaching change of direction work and noticed a disconnect with their footing and turns. I spent weeks coaching specific things, saying the same cues a hundred different ways and couldn’t get them to display what I was asking. And then it dawned on me: we didn’t have a solid root. We had to go back to the most fundamental basics so all of the fancy stuff could flourish.

Before I go any further, I must give credit where credit is due. This article and my subsequent testing of these ideas are a product of time I spent with Dan John. If you have ever been around Dan, you know that he is a coach like no one else. His delivery, line of thinking, and teaching style are exclusively his. There’s only one Dan John, and I want to recognize his contributions to my line of thought.

Thanks to conversations with Dan and listening to him instruct, I went back to my kung fu days. I trained baguazhang and taiji for years and we spent many of those years working root. Root is where we find our stability, our structure, our power. All of our strikes, throws, and defenses are going to be established by how solid our root is. Whenever I indulge in a pay per view, my eyes are almost always drawn to the fighter’s feet. Their feet will tell you the story of what they are going to present to their opponent. Watch José Aldo’s leg kicks or old videos of Tyson’s punches. What you will see are two iconic strikers whose attacks come from the ground up, established solely by their relationship with the root they possess. Likewise, fighters who are not known for vicious strikes are likely lacking root to a certain extent.

To address this missing quality in my athletes, I looked for the most structure-developing exercises I could find. Then I put them together in a way where the athletes were getting force-fed opportunities to become intimately connected to the ground. These are the four main exercises.

Sumo Deadlift

I don’t claim to be a powerlifter or know the first thing about coaching a high-level powerlifter. What I do know is that most of the strongest men and women in the world come from this discipline, and most of them perform their deads from a sumo stance. After meeting Dan Green (likely the coolest dude in the game) a few years ago, and then reading Andy Bolton’s articles about his approach on getting injured lifters back on the bar, the sumo deadlift became a focal piece.

There are some inherent fundamentals when pulling with this style. First, since the stance is so wide, you tend to have a genuine sense of groundedness. Hiking your hips up and then pulling your ass down with your hamstrings helps to establish a wedge before you pull that will reinforce your connection to the ground and the bar. Last, drive your feet down rather than pull the bar up. It’s a subtle cue that can help cultivate a sense of feeling rooted into the platform. Remember, you and the floor are partners in every lift.

Heavy Double Kettlebell Cleans

If you have the opportunity to train with heavy bells, do it. Get an RKC to teach you how to do it right and then get to work. Kettlebells cleans take serious work to get the smooth, sexy groove you want to have, but when it happens, look out.

Heavy double cleans force you to do two distinct things. First, you have to be able to brace yourself to accept the load into your structure. The RKC style limits the “crash” of the bell, but in this case, I am looking for a degree of crash. You need to feel the impact of the bells as it’s your job to carry enough tension to not have the crap knocked out of you. Second, you need to be able to redirect that energy into the ground. Becoming comfortable and familiar with impacts helps your joints, fuels your nervous system, and increases your muscular tolerance. 

Barbell or Wheel Rollouts

Dan John would tell you to pick loaded carries next. Things like waiter walks, farmers walks and what we call Jesus Walks (racked double kettlebells carried for distance – the name comes from the impulse to drop the bells from exhaustion and say, “Jeeeeeeesus”). Due to our limited space, we do rollouts instead.

If you want to build true abdominal armor, rollouts are the way to go. We teach a hardstyle plank variation where the lifter holds a hollowed out low back posture for the duration of the rep. Keep your lats fired like crazy, contract your abdominal wall as hard as possible, and drive your low back out so there is zero sag at any point in the rep. Try to keep a statue-like posture from the rollout to the roll back. Pull with both your lats and your knees when you come back. You will smoke your lower abdomen if you over-emphasize pulling with your knees as if you were trying to bring your knees to your chest.

Inverted Ankle Walks

I would venture to guess that your ankles suck. If you just said to yourself, “My ankles don’t suck!” then you are exactly who I am talking to. Nearly every one of us has hip or glute issues that need addressing and because of that, our ankles, feet, and toes have become pathologically weak and tight. Time to wake your ankles up.

This drill was introduced to me by my assistant Chris White. The idea is to walk and intentionally roll your ankles to the outside. It’s awkward and a little uncomfortable in the beginning, but it’s mobilizing and strengthening your ankles in one tidy, slightly creepy motion. We have the kids at Cal Poly walk laps around the room. Be sure to wear shoes, as the sole of the shoe helps in rolling the ankle completely over.

Programming

We are in the final four weeks of a ten-week program. Programming is very basic:

Sumo Deadlift

• Weeks 1-4: 3 sets of 10
• Weeks 5-7: 3 sets of 5
• Week 10: Sets of 3, 2, 1

Double Kettlebell Cleans

• 5 sets of 10 for the entire ten weeks
• Try to increase load each week, as able

Ab Rollouts

• Start with three sets of five
• Add reps as the weeks go on. We will be doing three sets of 10 or more by the end of the cycle.

Ankle Walks

• 3 laps around the room for the entire ten weeks

We aren’t done with this program and I’m already over the moon with what we are seeing. We are a historically undersized football team. We win with speed. After this program, my guys will be able to outrun their opponents and take whatever is dished out. If you want to develop a deeper root, and become more impact-proof, this is a great way to do it.

While you’re at it, why not make your back more resistant to injury?

Build a Resilient Spine: Start Here

The post The Cal Poly Armor Building Program appeared first on Breaking Muscle.