At one point "road work" was what boxers did to increase their conditioning while training for a prize fight. Until some hippie came along and revolutionized fitness by calling "jogging". Calisthenics were what soldiers did in basic training to prepare them for war. Then some guy started calling it Crossfit, charged everyone a fee to say the word Crossfit and the next thing we all knew everyone started unexplainably wearing knee high socks. Back in the 70's the weightlifting world was ruled by huge Russian men of girth with very tiny singlets and everything was right with the world. Now housewives are doing it and calling it "Oly".
In the days before physical therapists roamed all over the internet selling the idea that they are now something called "mobility experts" pro strongmen like myself and Jesse Marunde used to discuss the various ways we used to stay loose, athletic and injury free. Many of you youngins and newbies don't realize this but the word "moblity" derived from the Latin phrase "Yo hold on, I'm warming up". Yes it's true, we used to call it warming up and from what I have seen it does in fact make you more mobile. Only problem is after you're done training you kind of get tight again after a few hours. That's why you warm up again before your next training session. Yes I have seen the YouTube videos of the mobility guru take a guys arm and shoulder, tests it, and it seemed kind of tight and then have the guy stretch it a little and a miraculous transformation occurs where he now has a bit more range of motion. Well fuckin' duhhh! I wouldn't call that mobility, he fucking warmed up, stretched it a little and got a little more ROM. Guess what? The next time he goes to train it'll be just as tight again . . . unless he warms up again. And that's why you see people warm up before they train. How and when did this all become so scientific? Everyone out there is assuming because it's now called mobility it's like having a vacectomy, you only have to do it once and you can fuck all you want
One of the things Jesse and I both used to do is what we called "set up workouts". These workouts were done the morning before a heavier workout was going to take place. They were usually a light, quick, olympic lift based, full body, fifteen minute session. These sessions would usually set us up for a bigger and heavier workouts later on that day. A dormant body is a tight body so I tried to do something in the gym every day. Even today, it's Sunday and my body is a bit beat up from training all this week and as much as I really want to sit on my ass I'm going to instead do a quick power snatch, front squat and press workout. Again very light, low volume but enough to build up a sweat.
LIVE, LEARN and PASS ON.
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