Wholistic Fitness

as he’s done from the Beginning,  Coach takes aim at the conventional fitness world’s latest notions of Warm Up and provides his Tribe with the cOMmon sense of wholeness.   Here is Part One of his Wholistic Fitness™ Warm Up Protocol for endurance athletes.  photo of coach in northern Arizona by Ananda.

Introduction

Things are so cyclic…i recall as a kid my ski and running coaches to instruct us to “go stretch for 10 minutes,” after killing us after some horrendous Threshold or Long Distance workout without water.  Of course, no one knew how to stretch, including our coaches, and this was decades before Yoga would ever even enter the minds of American athletes.  There is currently a big poo-pooing of  ‘static stretching’ before endurance training or racing replaced by the predictable “WOD” type of mentality which now reaches for yet another branch from their Monkey Minds toward “Dynamic Warm Ups.”  The goal of both warm ups – static and dynamic –  is to reduce the high incidence of recurrence musculotendinous injuries incurred by athletes.   Additionally, a warm up is considered to be important in preventing muscle injuries by increasing the elasticity of muscles and smoothing muscle contraction.  Sadly…Stunningly Sadly…No one accept your ol’ Coach seems to have capitalized on the far more important aspect of increasing the chi or pranic constitution of an athlete before an endurance workout or race.    My Wholistic Warm Up Protocol (WWUP)  addresses the physical, mental, and spiritual spheres and thus provides at least twice as much effectiveness for you then merely mechanically doing a ‘Dynamic Warm Up’ routine.  My WWUP is strikingly time-saving and versatile and will not only get your blood and prana/chi force circulating, it will rev up your functional fitness eagerness while relieving pre-race/workout anxiety and/or muscle tension.  It will also create a more optimal environment for power production via neuromuscular function and decrease the rate of lactate concentration while increasing the rate of lactate removal.  C’mon…let’s learn how to Wholistically Warm Up!

First,  the only reason why static stretching is being axed is because in the studies i have read,  they don’t test yogis.  They are testing tight-hipped athletes who probably never stretch, hate to stretch and so, when the scientists herd them all in like for their studies and make these conventionally trained endurance athletes perform prolonged static stretching, doh…OF COURSE doing so on such a un-whole athlete is likely to reduce decrease force and power due to alien neural fatigue which of course is going to negatively affect  anaerobic performance in stiff, endurance  athletes! Trust me,  if i did their little static stretching routine,  i’d be fine for a workout or race.  i know this because i’ve done so for decades and my race resume proves it along with the thousands of you that cherish my Medium Form Flexibility Routine as an ideal pre and or post endurance workout ritual.  The sweetest thing about Medium Form (using Ujjayi Pranayam)  as part of a Warm Up is that you are instructed to just flow through it quickly before a workout.  This insures that you will not fatigue neural junctions or compromise anaerobic power; you will enhance it.  After your race or workout, then, sure, go more slowly through Medium Form (using Ujjayi Pranayam) to help accelerate the rate of lactate removal.  The diffusion of lactate is observed 3-10 minutes after the cessation of exercise, so it is important to crank off a slow, Ujjayi-soaked Medium Form within 10 minutes of your workout or race.

Having thus positioned Medium Form as a first phase WWUP, it is also equally effective in my experience to go through a few rounds of choice of my HP Yoga™ Sun Salutations as outlined in TBT.

Note;  for WWUP to be effective,  you must live at least a minimal level of WF lifestyle which includes consistent yoga and/or practice of Medium Form Flexibility…you must also have a handle on how to effectively apply Ujjayi Pranayam (and preferably Mula Bandha as well).

First Phase WWUP (quick flow through Medium Form or the HP Yoga™ Sun Salutations with Ujjayi Breathing) can even be increased in effectiveness by doing it immediately following my EMR teaching and before your light race or pre-training meal.  So,  performing First Phase WWUP should be done the early morning of a race or workout or it can be done right up to the beginning of the Second Phase of WWUP,  which is what i teach next.