Lifestyle Optimization

Set a Solid Foundation

Your body adapts to whatever positions and movements you put it in throughout the day - whether your’re driving or doing burpees. If you move with good form and allow your joints and tissues to assume stable positions, you will ingrain functional motor patterns and have fewer tissue and joint restrictions. However, if you slouch or overextend while doing whatever needs doing in your life, your body will adapt to those poor positions, causing your tissues to become adaptively and functionally short, resulting in biomechanical compromise. By “adaptively and functionally short,” I mean that when a joint is in a bad position the surrounding musculature will adapt to that working position. For example, if you sit in a chair every day, your hip flexors will become adaptively short and stiff over time. With that understanding, you can devise an antidote; Implement mobilization techniques that target the fronts of your hips to undo the destruction nature of sitting and convert to a standing workstation. Standing in a good position rather than sitting eliminates the need to mobilize the same stiff tissues over and over again. Instead, you can spend your time fixing other positions and addressing other issues. This is an excellent example of why it is imperative to establish conscious awareness around the positions you create throughout the day. Our goal is to teach, practice, challenge & sustain movement based skills from the gym to everyday life.

In addition, you cannot make basic lifestyle errors and expect your body to be able to absorb the consequences when you are working in a performance-biased paradigm. For example, it is possible to make fundamental errors in hydration, nutrition, sleep and stress and not suffer any direct impact on your elliptical biceps training. However, every athlete at the top of his or her game can make direct correlations between these errors and the potential for creating significant decreases in performance outputs. Being dehydrated by even 2 percent can cause a 5 to 10 percent decrease in aerobic capacity. Less than six hours of sleep? Say hello to elevated blood glucose levels increasing your risk of developing diabetes. Stressed out? Forget about getting a healthy adaptation response to that crushingly difficult workout - you will simply get crushed.

The less obvious implication of lifestyle maladaptation is on tissues. Connective tissue, menisci, spinal discs, fascia, articular cartilages, tendons and ligaments all suffer from the immediate and downstream effects of unhealthy lifestyle choices. Managing and optimizing the lifestyle aspects significantly changes an individuals ability to maintain optimal function.

Lifestyle Optimization Aspects

• Sleep

• Hydration

• Nutrition

• Stress Management

• Movement Quality