APH-2025-090

Overview:

• Quarterly Goal: Emphasize better rather than more or harder.
• Monthly Focus: Bad Position / Addressing Deficits
• Weekly Objective: Upper Body Attacks

Intention:

Today’s goal was to maintain a “playful” attitude and explore movement combinations.

Warm Up:

3 Rounds of:

• Wim Hof Breathing x 1 Round
• Jump Rope x 100 singles
• Deep Squat x 1 min
• Lunge + Kick + Straight DL, 25m
• Lunge + Cossack Squat, 25m

Work:

CARs x 5 each:

• Shoulder
• Hip

PAIL/RAIL:

• Standing Spine Twist (band)
• Shoulder External + Hip External
• Shoulder Internal + Hip External

Reflection:

What worked well:

• I took some inspiration from the IG video below and braced my elbow inside my knee, then allowed a band pull my hand either over the knee (external) or under it (internal); in both cases it added a stretch to the external hip rotation.
• I also had to press pretty hard with the support hand to keep my spine straight and chest square to keep from overcompensating, so this was pretty high bang-for-your-buck.

What didn’t:

• Because of my anatomy / proportions, the alignment didn’t quite work the same for intenral hip + internal shoulder rotation.
• I was also curious about the possibilty of more sets of CARs, but fewer reps in order to ensure the quality of each rep. Usually, in a set of 5 even, the quality of the last rep isn’t nearly as good as the first if you’re really pushing it.

Plan for next time:

• Joel Jamieson talks about varying recovery methods, so I think adding some PAIL/RAILs or EQIs is a good idea. The monostructural Zone 2 isn’t a waste of time, but usually my HR averages out to the lower end of Zone 2 in these rebound sessions anyway.
• The monostrucutral Zone 2 also eats up a huge chunk of time while only really contributing to the cardiorespiratory element – no strength or mobility benefit. By contrast, some dynamic movments check all of those boxes.

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