HNL Movement

‼️Recover better with proper hydration and salt intake! 💪💧 Did you know that sodium plays a crucial role in regulating fluid balance and optimizing performance? 🌊 Discover the importance of salt-water balance and how it affects your athletic journey. Swipe through for some practical tips on salt intake and hydration for athletes. Stay hydrated, stay strong! 💦

Effective performance training shouldn't create injuries, they should increase your capacity and reduce injury risk. By focusing on details to improve form and train smart, you can reduce your injury risk and elevate your performance. Remember that training should prepare you to better handle the demands of your sports and activities. Share your experience with gym injuries in the poll on my story and check out my latest tweet for more insights.

Training is about the process of growing, learning, and improving. There are so many details that you can improve every single time you workout or go to a practice. Don’t get this twisted, this is not to encourage you to overthink or go into paralysis analysis, but to emphasize that you need to pay attention to 1 or 2 focus points that can be improved when you train. There is no point in time that you will run out of things that can be improved in the grand scheme of performance. The more experienced you get, the more focused you get with these areas you can improve. If you ever are just going through the motions and think you “got everything down,” it’s definitely time to learn about what/how you can continue to improve. If you can’t figure it out yourself, find others that have the expertise/insights to help you level up (i.e. coaches, professionals, etc.). We all can continue to get better if we have the tools, knowledge, and resources to point us in the right direction. 💯

Happy New Year! Don’t get caught up with crazy short-term training/nutrition routines just because it’s the New Year. The process remains the same: do what appropriately challenges your current fitness level, progress appropriately, and most importantly create sustainable habits. Health and performance isn’t about falling off a routine a couple weeks after the new year…it’s about embracing the routine that will support you long-term. 💯

What you consume on a regular basis is extremely important to support your health and lifestyle. It is extremely important to create a healthy foundation of nutrition habits to be proactive about your health. Focus on eating nutrient dense whole foods, eat the rainbow (of colorful veggies/fruits - not skittles), and most importantly be consistent with nutrition habits that are sustainable. Medication, supplements, etc. have its place and can help us through certain circumstances. However, don’t rely on them and think that they will fix your health without working to improve your nutrition habits. 💯

Long-term positive adaptations typically don’t happen by accident, it’s a culmination of experiences and stimuli that have a positive effect on our brains and in turn our performance. Often short-term quick fixes, short cuts, fads and gimmicks may yield quick results, but may have detrimental lasting effects on neuroplasticity and long-term progress. Take home message is that our brain (and body) will adapt to everything that we are experiencing. It’s up to us to make sure that we continue to adapt in a positive way. I.e. lifting with proper technique, conditioning in optimal zones for progressive gains, practicing nutrition habits that support your lifestyle, taking care of your mental/emotional health to complement your physical health, and so on. Think about how is your brain adapting with all of your training. 💯

Focusing on what muscles are working, what you are feeling, and how you are controlling movement are crucial to improve neuromuscular control. I have seen and worked with many people that are not feeling the right muscles when training. Essentially, they need help to activate certain muscles and turn them back on. There are many strategies to reestablish neuromuscular control and build that foundation again. I typically never approach this issue by loading them more when they lack fundamental activation. When you do address the underlying issue(s) and get people to feel how to use that muscle, progress will start to increase exponentially. Sometimes you need to go back to basics in order to do things that are advanced. 💯

We all have movement dysfunctions that we can work on with training. Movement dysfunction can include anything from restrictions, muscle imbalances, weaknesses, poor coordination, lack of stability and motor control, etc. The goal is not to “fix” all dysfunctional movement and move absolutely perfectly because that is not realistic. However, you want to continue to work on your movement quality to improve and help you to reduce injury risk and perform better in the activities that you do. Being aware of how you move is crucial to continue to work on improving your movement quality, technique, and performance.

Of course training is important, but in reality that’s only a fraction of your week. What you do outside of your training sessions can affect your performance. Focus creating habits to support the lifestyle that elevates your performance. Recovery, sleep, stress management, nutrition, mental/emotional health, etc. are all important to adapt in positive ways from training. Sometimes what we are doing outside of training may be a road block that limits our progress.