Taking Care of Yourself

I have been training people for years now and the focus has always been to build a workout according to their weaker links and to help them improve their quality of movement patterns and to stay away from injury. I have been part of their team for their sporting endeavours or simply, to have a better quality of life.

The question is what about me? Why not take the time to do the “Y-Balance Test” officially and make those numbers meaningful? Yes, I had a rough idea of how far I would be reaching within those tests but I had never done a full test with my limbs getting measured. The truth is, I had not been screened in a long time. Three years to be exact. I also took that opportunity to take another set of eyes and teach them what to look for when doing the Functional Movement Screen. I even got them to measure the distance between my fists when I do the shoulder flexibility test to allow me to evaluate my own mobility.

The turning results were pretty interesting. Nothing about the functional movement screen surprised me. I knew where my weak links were and I got to pinpoint on what needed to be worked on. For the “Y-Balance Test”, that is another story of itself. I have been practising what we call the pistol squat so that was a lot of help for the testing. My reaches were pretty good overall except for one: the anterior reach from the lower quarter. There was a difference of 8.5cm between each side. I could not believe it but that made sense. The other thing that also surprised me was how short my limbs were, 87 cm and 83 cm. Just a reminder of how short I am…ah well…

Coming back to the interpretation of the results, 8.5 cm is a lot when you consider 4 cm to be asymmetrical. This is a starting line and has motivated me to stretch on a regular basis, focus on those weaker links, and also, strengthen my body and work on my pistol squat. It is off-season so it is the time to address those issues in order to help prevent injuries for the one to come. The goal will be for the left side of my body to reach closer to the same anterior reach on the right side of my body.

In conclusion, my question for you is when was the last time that you were screened? I know sometimes you just want to do what you want to do for your training but your body changes over time and evolves in a good way or a bad way depending on what you are doing in your training or if you are actually training.  Take the time to get screened and who knows, you may be ready for more or maybe will need to take a step back in your training. The only way to find out is to do it. I sure got my wake up call but the question for you is, did you get yours?