FAQ: “Should I get in better shape first?”
Q: “I’m not in great shape. Should I get in better shape before joining Jogo?”
A: This is probably the question we get asked most often. And the answer is NO.
A lot of people see what our members can do now or how they look now and think we’re a place for people who are “already fit.” But the good majority of our member’s will tell you that the way they look & feel and the things they can do now, were not part of their story when they first joined us.
People come to us with varying levels of fitness, from “I haven’t picked up anything but my remote in several years,” to “I’m a competitive marathoner & mountain biker,” and we’re excited about the opportunity to work with people on both ends and throughout that fitness spectrum.
Scalability.
All of the workouts we do are scalable to whatever level you come in at. Within a group session we might have four or five different variations of the same workout going on at the same time, with everyone working as hard as THEY can work. That’s the important thing to know, that the intensity is entirely relative to your fitness level and your needs.
Our goal is not to push you beyond what you’re capable of. Our goal is for you to come a bit further every time you step in the gym. Our goal is for you to have a different story to tell about how you look & feel and the things you can do, then you did before you joined us.
Alli is a perfect example of our workout scalability. She’s been a member for nearly two-years and is currently using scaled exercises to continue working out throughout her pregnancy.
Photo Credit: Betsy Watters
Movement that Matters
What is a movement screen and why do we use it?
The Functional Movement Screen is a tool created by physical therapist Gray Cook to assesses functional and dysfunctional movement patterns.
Functional movement is healthy movement. When someone is able to move in a healthy/functional way, they greatly reduce their risk of injury while increasing their efficiency of movement. [efficiency: maximum productivity with minimum wasted energy] When someone is unable to move in a functional way, they increase their risk of injury and decrease their movement efficiency. The greater the dysfunction, the greater the risk.
The body desires efficiency and balance in all things internal and external. If an imbalance is present the body will react in an attempt to restore balance. IE: if we get too cold, we shiver in an attempt to raise our body temperature. If we get too hot, we sweat to cool ourselves down.
The same is true at the muscular level. If we spend most of our day sitting, our body will adapt accordingly. If you’re sitting now, take a minute to observe your posture starting at the ankles and working your way up. If you’re a habitual abuser of the sit, this is the position your body is most adapted to and where it will try to remain regardless of whether you’re sitting or standing, walking, or running.
The worst thing that can happen at this point, is to accept this as a normal fact of life. There are too many people that give up on the activities they love because their bodies no longer like to move. The only place they feel good is in a chair or on the couch. Yikes! A large majority of the dysfunction we see in a movement screen comes from the fact that we, as a society, have an abusive relationship with the sit.
The movement screen allows us to be proactive with injury prevention.
Our goal is not to diagnose injuries, but rather to assess good or faulty movement patterns and then, based on the results, introduce exercises that help restore healthy movement.
What we’re looking for is symmetry or balance in the body in regard to strength, mobility and stability as well as overall movement that meets the given standards for the screen.
Take the deep squat for example, starting from the top and working our way down. Functional amounts of strength, mobility and stability throughout the body means that upon squatting a person will be able to maintain extended arms over their head, they will be able to send their butt back and down into a below parallel squat while maintaining an upright torso, their knees will track over their toes, and their feet will remain planted firmly on the floor. Any deviation from this shows some degree of dysfunction in the body.
Based on a person’s results they would then be given a score from 0 to 3, with 0 given when a movement causes pain and 3 given when the movement is solid from top to bottom. If they score a 1, they’ll be given corrective exercises to restore function. A 2 is a passing score, though corrective exercises are still recommended to continue to improve their movement. Within this scoring system, special attention is given to asymmetries, as Cook believes that asymmetries have the most direct link to injuries.
Next week, we’ll be looking at some corrective exercises for those of you that scored 1’s on any of your movements today. And then we will be serving up 3-5 minutes of the corrective exercises during your daily warm-up and/or second-helpings. So get stoked about that bit of goodness because, I’m going to go ahead and say it since we’re all thinking it, corrective movements are badass.
[photo by: betsy watters]
New Beginnings
[photo by: Stefinately]
“Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait. The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don’t count.” – Dr. Anthony Robbins
I’m so thankful that the transitioning of one year into the next provides us the encouragement we sometimes need to begin anew. There is something immensely powerful about a new beginning. It gives us the opportunity to drop the weight of whatever we’ve been carrying and see the world with new eyes… hope filled eyes. We hope for better… we hope for more. But hope alone is a held breath.
So here’s to NOT holding your breath in 2010. Here’s to going after MORE and BETTER with reckless abandon. Here’s to not leaving another year behind with a list of could have’s & should have’s. Here’s to getting the results you want instead of making up reasons for why you didn’t. Here’s to waking up to a life you’re excited about living.
CHEERS!
Jogo Turns Two
Thanks everyone for the two-year birthday love. It’s been QUITE the ride!!!
I’m really thankful to get to be on this adventure with all of you. You have added exceedingly and abundantly to my life. Thanks for believing in and being a part of the little gym. Thanks for making it a place where I and all of the coaches LOVE showing up to “work” every day. Thanks for being one another’s biggest cheerleaders. Thanks for supporting the businesses of those in the Jogo family. Thanks for helping to grow this place and community into what it’s become. Thanks for showing up every day and inspiring and challenging one another… for inspiring and challenging me. Thanks to the coaches for being such good men and friends… you guys are a treasure to me.
I hold my post workout shake up to you all and say CHEERS… let’s keep raising the bar.
Extremely Aggressive (yet tender) High-Fives & an equally aggressive amount of love,
Em & Jogo
Put Down the Ibuprofen and Step Away
(photo: Selva)
Phys Ed: Does Ibuprofen Help or Hurt During Exercise?
By Gretchen Reynolds
Several years ago, David Nieman set out to study racers at the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile test of human stamina held annually in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. The race directors had asked Nieman, a well-regarded physiologist and director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the North Carolina Research Campus, to look at the stresses that the race places on the bodies of participants. Nieman and the race authorities had anticipated that the rigorous distance and altitude would affect runners’ immune systems and muscles, and they did. But one of Nieman’s other findings surprised everyone.
After looking at racers’ blood work, he determined that some of the ultramarathoners were supplying their own physiological stress, in tablet form. Those runners who’d popped over-the-counter ibuprofen pills before and during the race displayed significantly more inflammation and other markers of high immune system response afterward than the runners who hadn’t taken anti-inflammatories. The ibuprofen users also showed signs of mild kidney impairment and, both before and after the race, of low-level endotoxemia, a condition in which bacteria leak from the colon into the bloodstream.