NoBULL BLOG feature: Training for longevity

How athletes can stay strong, mobile. and injury free as they age

This write up was originally posted on NOBULL's blog, "Unscripted" and can be viewed here

Courtesy of NOBULL

Written by Shamsul Emrich

My eyes crack open. It's 4:30 AM. Ugh, here we go again.

Alright legs, swing over, touch the floor, and let's get moving. Head, get off the pillow. Wait, neck doesn't seem to be working. Body moves vertically. Head stays put. Shooting pain runs down the side of my neck, into my rotator cuff. Great, a head rotator pulling on brachial plexus again. That's 47, and 24 years in the Strongman game catching up with me.

Sound familiar? Maybe not the irritations, but you've felt it. Grumpy limbs. Stiff joints. Aches that hit out of nowhere. That comes with age. 25, 35, 45, 55—eventually, it catches all of us.

We went to bed fine. Now we can't hold our head up, stand up straight, or walk to the bathroom without some part of us being angry. Probably should throw in the towel after 20 years, right?

I throw the BS flag on that. No one should go quietly into the night.

In truth, we earned it. You are a concert of 650 muscles, over 200 bones, and hundreds of joints, all trying to move together. Left side. Right side. All controlled by one brain, which is actually two brains stuck in one uneasy partnership.

This singular lump of jelly manages signals to and from millions of nerve fibers, broken into cranial and spinal nerves. Everything we do has a training effect. Use good technique, do just enough, and gain strength. Use bad technique, overdo it, or ignore limits, and learn weaknesses—or worse, injury.

Every action has a consequence. Hit your index finger with a hammer, then try a pull-up. If you can't, it's the interference of pain on action.

Courtesy of NOBULL

Chuck Knoblauch joined the New York Yankees with the highest fielding percentage of any second baseman with 1,000 games under his belt, and then the yips hit. In his first season with the Yankees, he couldn't throw from second base to first. Three errant throws in one game, and just like that, a flawless defender was benched.

The Mayo Clinic defines the yips as a "focal muscle dystonia of the hand or wrist," often showing up in golfers with years of experience. The takeaway? You can get so good at something that you suddenly can't do it anymore.

Same story in the weight room. I've seen people who deadlift 500 to 700 pounds—masters of bracing and firing up spinal erectors—throw out their backs putting on shoes or picking up a 15-pound dumbbell. Why? They trained for one perfect movement but neglected all the tiny muscles that hold vertebrae to vertebrae.

This is the yips in action. You're not fully in control of your own body. You execute one task brilliantly, but anything outside that perfect groove risks injury. Snatch after snatch, flawless. But one small deviation and the brittle body snaps.

Brittle. That's the enemy.

To debrittle yourself, you need to expand your movement library. The advice? Do things differently. If you're a lefty, try righty. But if you're a lifter or a runner, you can't just swap hands. What you can do is move your hundreds of joints, muscles, and bones in new ways because your current grooves are insufficient. (We'll leave the grey matter and the nerves for another discussion.)

I won't break down every joint or muscle. But after 25 years of new client intakes, two gremlins show up again and again: terrible hips and rigid thoracic spines. You're either too tight or too loose. Excessive rigidity or hypermobility.

Forget the posture cliches. I don't care if you look perfect standing still, if you can't move when it counts. Posture isn't about looking good. It's about being mobile enough to have the correct posture for the context. Can you be ready for what's needed?

Hips, step one. Do you have control of internal and external rotation? Can you actually rotate your femurs in your hip sockets?

Courtesy of NOBULL

Try this: perform three bodyweight squats. Now, stand on a platform on your left leg, right leg hanging alongside. Keep both knees locked and rotate your right thigh in and out.

What moves? Does your pelvis tuck? Do one or both knees bend? Does your lumbar spine arch? Are you turning your foot instead of your thigh? Is your left glute working or is your lower back doing all the work? If you can't answer these questions, your hip control isn't sufficient.

Do five slow reps on this leg using a metronome set to 60 bpm. Make each rotation three seconds out, three seconds in. Then switch sides.

Now squat. Better? Cool. Same? Congratulations, you're special, and I'm jealous.

Step two: Hit the deck in a 90/90 squat position, pulling your calves in so they touch your hamstrings. This is your Z-squat.

Without lifting your feet off the floor, imagine your shins are windshield wipers and rotate your legs to the other side (about 90 degrees).

Ask yourself: did you just throw your body or did the rotation come from your hip sockets? You're looking for the same feeling as the previous drill. The femur rotating smoothly in the hip socket.

On to the thoracic spine. There are tons of great drills: cat/cow, T-spine windmills, bench stretch, thoracic opener on a roller. When you do them, can you actually feel the thoracic extensors working? They should feel like your lumbar muscles do when you arch your lower back. But many confuse them with the muscles that pull the shoulder blades together. You want vertical-axis contractions. Not horizontal.

Start with a Superman extension but keep your feet on the floor. Feel it? If it doesn't have the same quality as a hard lumbar arch, scratch your back and find the ridges of muscle shaped like the lumbar extensors. Any kitchen utensil works. (I'm a fan of the spaghetti ladle.) Then try the arch again, slow and intentional. Imagine the base of your neck as point A and the midpoint of your shoulder blades as point B. Pretend a single muscle connects them, and contract it to arch your thoracic spine.

Once you feel it, integrate the sensation into any thoracic mobility drill you like. When joint mobilization becomes active and intentional, you can use it anywhere. Most importantly, the gym.

In short, use it or lose it. The end of your career comes when you can no longer move in a different way to handle whatever just got tired. Ignoring the full range of your body's movement opens the door to injury—or the yips.

Learn all the movement patterns. That injury? It didn't just happen. The system you've been using to do X probably never worked that well, and now you've found out. Your shoulder has 28 muscles and bones affecting its function. Is it a bad shoulder, or is the rotator cuff just exhausted from doing all the work for the past 10 years?

650 muscles. Over 200 bones. Hundreds of joints working together. Get to work.

Author Bio

Shamsul Emrich received his BA from Boston University in International Relations with a minor in Economics and is ZHealth Master Practitioner. Shamsul started working as a Personal Trainer in 2000, and has been fortunate to work with a wide variety of clients, from weekend warriors, to professional athletes. He is driven by the idea that everyone is an athlete, regardless of sport participation, and should be one for life.

As Head Coach, Shamsul relishes the opportunity that ICW affords him to share his knowledge and experiences towards creating positive social change.