Your New Prime by Craig Cooper

Author:Craig Cooper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2015-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

THE MOBILITY PROGRAM

The first thing you’ll do in Your New Prime workouts—regardless of whether you’re a beginner, an exerciser, or an athlete—is something that hurts so good.

If you’ve never gotten friendly with a foam roller—a piece of industrial Styrofoam six inches in diameter and three feet in length—prepare for a few good winces: when you use the roller, your entire body weight will press down on tender, tight spots in your muscles and connective tissue—the same areas that make you whimper when your massage therapist (or well-meaning life partner) digs into them.

But the worse foam rolling hurts, the more you probably need it.

There are conflicting opinions about how and why foam rolling works. Some trainers believe it affects tissue quality by breaking up knots and scarring in your tendons and muscles; others believe it works largely through forcibly relaxing the muscles via the nervous system. My view is that it doesn’t matter. Foam rolling works. Five or ten minutes of rolling out your major muscle groups will fundamentally affect the way you move and feel—especially if you’ve never done it before.

I recommend you roll out all your major muscle groups before doing anything else in every workout. A good rule of thumb is that you should do one full five-to-ten-minute foam-rolling routine a week for every decade you’ve been alive. You’ll unkink the muscles while turning inward and focusing on breath and sensation as you move.

A high-quality, dense foam roller (the gray or black kind—not the white kind!) costs less than forty bucks, so I highly recommend picking one up, keeping it at home, and rolling out whenever the mood strikes (maybe instead of collapsing on the couch while watching TV). If you’ve reached forty years old, regardless of whether you’ve spent more of those years on a bike or on the couch, it’s safe to say that your tissue quality is in need of some pretty serious help.

It’s almost something you can’t do too often. I’ve indicated time suggestions for each area below for guidance, but if you need more time in any particular area (and you’ll know it if you do!), feel free to take it.

Better Movement in Eight Minutes: Foam Rolling

YOUR NEW PRIME FOAM ROLLING PROGRAM AT A GLANCE

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