I trust you are recovering nicely from the Thanksgiving meal. I can remember when my family would all get together at my parent’s house in Whitehall, NY. There are six brothers and sisters in my family, plus many have their own kids so it was a house full. I can always remember after we had our big meal, within an hour or two there was a slow migration toward the big couch in the living room and the couch in our play room. Who ever got to the couches first usually took a nice long nap. It was the tryptophan kicking in. Ah….such found memories.

Yesterday I completed a new video that will be released very soon. It’s about a topic that doesn’t receive enough attention with the main stream training population. It is about mobility. When most of us talk about mobility we are referring to simply moving one joint. This certainly is mobility but is it the best kind. We also discuss performing mobility in non-supportive methods, such as on a table. I really don’t think there is a wrong method. There are simply better methods for certain situations.

As you know, the main population of clients I work with is youth. My goal is to teach them to be as mobile as possible within the constraints of their development. Kids are constantly changing and going through growth periods. This causes variations in their mobility from month to month, so it seems. Although I use many kinds of stretching (dynamic flexibility, and mobility exercises), I truly believe kids need to have very integrated and functional (I use functional to mean using the body as a whole unit) mobility. I want it ground based as much as possible when we mobilize the lower body. I want gravity pushing them down into the ground. I want them using body awareness and balance to mobilize their joints. I also want success, therefore I use progressions.

In my new video I demonstrate the exact drills I use when performing mobility on low boxes. There are many other mobility drills I use for certain situations, but I have found these drills to be outstanding for preparing the athletes for a training session.

The most important thing we have to understand when working with kids is they don’t really care why you are having them do a particular exercise. They usually just do an exercise because you tell them to. The problem with this is when they don’t understand why and the exercises are boring, then they don’t put much effort into them. To solve this, I developed exercises youngsters are challenged by yet they have fun trying to master them. You see, the trick to working with young kids is to challenge them with small competitions so they can try to accomplish a goal. They may not understand how the exercise is benefiting them, but they will understand having success and all kids want to be successful. I created Low Box Mobility exercises around that premise. They get what they want and I achieve what I want.

Be on the look out for more about this video…You’ll love it!