Health and well-being: the importance of joint mobility

This article is written by Professor Diana Tomasi, Professor of Sport Sciences, for over 30 years, at the G. B. Quadri di Vicenza High School and Head of the middle distance sports disciplines of Atletica Vicentina.

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Since ancient times, man has asked himself what is the difference between body and mind, as well as what are the correlations between these alleged different entities.

The old Latin saying mens sana in corpore sana expressed the presence of a mind and body that mutually supported each other to maintain well-being. Then, apart from the parenthesis linked to Cartesian dualism, we went back to a holistic conception of man, and psychosomatic studies have shown that some disorders of our “soma” can be caused by unresolved situations of prolonged psychological distress.

The reverse situation is also true, in which a non-optimal state of form (for example, a situation of obesity or overweight) can also result in a psychological discomfort as a reaction.

After all, we are a single living entity that reacts in a global way to the stimuli that daily life offers us. The holistic message is simple: to achieve psychophysical well-being you need a balance and personal well-being lies in balance. And balance can be restored by introducing healthy habits into our lifestyle and nutrition.

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On the other hand, lifestyle is about acquiring daily motor habits that help us live better, that is, in an optimal psychophysical state.

If we are dissatisfied with something there are two ways: we accept to live with such dissatisfaction or we change some of our habits. It would be foolish to think that by continuing to do exactly the things we used to do the result can change.

To change you don’t need to start in fourth with an ambitious training program that in the short term is almost always unsustainable. It is much more effective to start slowly, with small changes to our normal modus vivendi, which however help us in the things in which we want to improve.

The aspects on which we may want to act to improve the quality of life are manifold: we may want to strengthen our cardio-circulatory system, or improve our strength or even improve our appearance, perhaps losing a few extra pounds that has accumulated over the years.

We will see in the next posts what to do in these situations.

Today, in particular, we talk about how to improve joint mobility, the absence or limitation of which can lead to deleterious secondary effects to the extent that the stiffness of our joints leads us to perform recursive movements in a non-ergonomic way.

So let’s assume that our joints are a bit “rusty”: maybe we haven’t been exercising for years and the movements that we once carried out easily have gradually become difficult.

To overcome this type of situation, you need to enter the order of ideas that we need to devote time to ourselves. Since our health is the most important thing we have the suggestion is to carve out a first short window for ourselves (it takes 10/15 minutes) to be placed as soon as we wake up, thus leaving the rest of the day for the rest of the day.

In this case the activity that we could include in our day is a short sequence of exercises to be carried out preferably in the morning as soon as you wake up. We borrow it from the world of Yoga, session: “the greeting to the sun”.

It is advisable to have a mat and comfortable clothing. It is a matter of assuming a series of positions, which we change as the exercise unfolds, taking care to make slow movements, while also taking care of breathing (alternation between inhalation and exhalation consistent with the movements to be performed). The goal is to remove joint blocks and improve our posture.

Perhaps the best thing is to take inspiration from a video, done in our opinion very well and in which the teacher explains and demonstrates the exercise slowly, with simple and clear words. We therefore invite you to take a look at the attached video and to try to execute the sequence of positions in compliance with the indications of the demonstrator.

We will certainly not be as agile and mobile as the instructor, but constancy is the key. Without ever forcing, but doing the exercise every day, we will be amazed at how the situation can change in just one month.

In the next post we will talk to you about how to improve our cardio-circulatory system.

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Source: original link to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8T__8b0N-I