Embrace Strength
A podcast hosted by Ashley Beatty, an experienced coach of 12 years. I work with active people who are dealing with nagging pain & get them out of pain FOR GOOD with a movement based approach. I also teach coaches how to do the same for their clients 👊🏼
Follow me on IG @coachashley127
Embrace Strength
Episode #132 3 most underrated movements for long term joint health
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Pod. I'm excited about today's episode. I got myself a nice little flavored drink next to me, and it's the afternoon. This is the fourth podcast I've recorded today, and it's Friday when I'm recording this. So all of that to say. I'm looking forward to chatting about this topic today, and I'm gonna be talking about the three most underrated strength movements for long-term joint health. And these movements I'm going to share with you are so simple, but you would be surprised how many people are not doing movements like this and I did not do let's see. I didn't do most of these movements until I got injured, and then I was like, wow, I would've been a lot better CrossFitter if I would have been doing movements like this prior to my injury. But, you know, hindsight's 2020 and that's why I'm here to share these movements with you guys. My body would've felt so much better with all the training that I was doing at that time of my life if I would've been doing movements like this. So we are just gonna get right into it. Movement number one, it's going to be split squats. Okay? And split squats are one of those things that you can just dress up or dress down. However, however you like, you can make them. Super simple and easy. You can make them super difficult and horrible. So it just kind of depends on what level your fitness is at and like pick your poison type of thing. But the reason why these are so powerful is it builds single leg strength. Obviously it helps with hip stability. You have to control yourself a lot more. Rather than just a regular two-legged squat it's way harder to quote unquote cheat than a bilateral squat. Even just like an air squat, right? Like if you have any sort of compensation happening, you're going to notice it in a split squat. And yeah, this is easily scalable, up or down, depending on. Multitude of different factors, but if you've never done it before, just do a good old fashioned I regular split squat control on the way down. And if you're somebody who like has knee issues and you can't get a lot of bend in your knee, even just going to half range of motion is a great place to start. But they're seriously the goat and you can make them very hard like a rear foot elevated Bulgarian split squat. You can do a split squat, rock back, and so you can just, yeah, lots of variety here. But that is movement number one. Movement number two is gonna be carries all types of carries. We're talking like farmers carry with, you know, a weight in each chance. Single arm carry, overhead carry, mixed rack carry. Double arm, single arm, many different variations, again with the caries here. But the reason why they're so great is they work on grip strength. Grip strength can be one of the number one predictors of longevity. I bet you didn't know that, but it is true. So grip strength is super important. It also works core strengths.'cause when you're doing something like a care, you can't really treat your core, right? You have to stand up tall, keep your core engaged. It's great for working on core strength. It's also really great for shoulder health. And again, it's great for identifying imbalances side to side. And so Carries are awesome and you should be doing them. And movement number three is gonna be just adding tempo to your movements. One of the most common cues I'm giving new clients is slow down in your movements. Slow the hell down. And you would be surprised how different it can change a movement. It can completely change a movement. And I think that, there was this time in the fitness world, maybe it's still happening. I'm not really sure because of this fitness bubble I'm in, but like, we're going faster was better. The faster you could go, the better the more, you know, athletic you are and whatever, like into an extent, right? If we're talking about like pure athleticism, there's a time to move fast and, like work on speed. But if you're just like a general population person, you are like doing your squats, doing your presses, you should not be like doing them as fast as possible. You're gonna get way more out of the movement if you do a faster up, slower down tempo. Or a two second up, two second down. Tempo. Three second, up three, second down. Tempo. You have four seconds. You know, you're getting the idea here. But what that does is it gets you more time under tension. And what that means is like your muscles are going to be loaded for longer, therefore more gains. Right? And it is also really great for, so. Because you have more time and your tension, it's great for building muscle and great for stability. It builds control in movements. And so just a hundred percent you should be having some sort of tempo in your lifts. I don't care who you are, right? And I, I should have been doing tempo a lot sooner in my fitness journey. And. Literally, that's one of the most common corrections I'd give clients. Slow down. And yeah, one more thing on tempo is that if you're somebody that's dealing with like knee pain, simply adding tempo to it, simply adding tempo and swapping to unilateral movements could potentially change your life, right? So anyways. That is all for this episode. I hope that you had some solid takeaways from today. If you don't have these movements in your training, add them in, see how it makes a difference and how you feel. If you are somebody who wants some specific advice on your own training, your nagging injury or pain. I offer free injury audits, which is exactly what it sounds like. You're gonna fill out a short questionnaire and I will review it. I'll make a Google document and a review video giving you my thoughts on what you're dealing with, what it could potentially be, and one to two action steps that you should do in order to make progress in the right direction. So for somebody that's been. Kind of poking around my world, but you're not ready for an assessment. Free injury audits where it's at, I don't bite, so I will put a link for that in the show notes if you're interested. Otherwise, would love to connect with you on IG and I will see you in the next steps of.