#mobility

Three Tips for Successful Team Building         What value does increased productivity, camaraderie and staff retention have in your business? According to a Harvard Business Review, high-performing teams engage in team building activities on a consistent basis – meaning more than once a year. Patterns of communication in a team are paramount to the business culture. Here are three tips to consider for your next team building activity. Tip #1: Plan with Intention                 What is the purpose of the activity? Are you trying to get your team to socialize and know each other better? To experience something unique together so they have stories at the office? To work on critical thinking and communication? Your purpose will help dictate what activity you want to plan for them.         If a company comes to us wanting to socialize, we plan activities that focus on easy movement and mobility, so the team is getting exercise and moving their bodies (another crucial need these days), but can socialize during and after. If we’re planning something unique, we plan a military operation that functions much like an escape room with fitness elements (scaled for the participants). If we’re planning a team building session for sports teams or high performance athletes, we mix fitness strategies with team development strategies in a mix of fun and challenging activities. Tip #2: Create a Safe Space                 The activity should be a place people feel safe to contribute, without the hierarchy of the company being an issue. A manager should not be in charge of delegation because they’re a manager. Let your staff discover who they are as the activity goes on. You might find some hidden gems.         The first thing we tell people at our corporate events is that we don’t know any of them, we don’t know who is in charge or who holds what title. To us, everyone is equal and now is the opportunity for them to be who they want to be. They can be the best team member in the group, regardless of their reputation in the office. We’ve seen dramatic shifts in team culture because of our approach. In some cases we assign leadership to activities to give everyone a chance to think and feel valued in the group. Leadership isn’t for everyone regularly, but everyone can experience it. Tip #3: Debrief and Reflect         Every member of the team should feel free to share their feedback and insights regarding the activity. Much like after action reviews (AAR’s) in the military, every member has a different point of view based on where they were in the mission. The key to this being successful is having a team that feels the space is safe to speak in. Not all activities require long debriefs, but all activities can have small ones. Depending on the size of the events, we often debrief in smaller groups to promote a larger conversation later. Our team also provides a debrief of the event to participants on what lessons we hoped were passed on, and we provide feedback to management on team performance. We use this information for future sessions or for the management team to consider moving forward.

Shoulder Mobility – A Few Favourites Do you know what happens when you sit at a desk for too long, shoulders rolled forward, spine rounded? Over time, your body adapts to muscles being shortened (pecs, front delts, hip flexors) and your back muscles being lengthened (scapula, rotators, spine etc.). The result when you start exercising can be disastrous. Enough years pass and even if you don’t exercise regularly, it catches up to you in the form of back pain, shoulder aches, etc. You don’t have to put in long workouts to get your body moving well. I recommend 30 – 60 minutes of daily exercise so you maintain muscle mass as you age, however, just ten minutes a day of joint mobility and movement can have a big impact and help reduce pain. In this video, I take you through five of my favourite shoulder drills to get your shoulders moving better. I’ll release a spine video soon, so stay tuned. You can try some of these movements to see how they feel for you. If you’re in a lot of pain, be sure to consult with a physiotherapist before trying them. I used a band and a 2.5 plate in the video but they can be substituted with bungee cord and a can of food. Exercise 1: Shoulder Circles Exercise 2: Shoulder Clocks (4 parts) Exercise 3: Weighted Lying Shoulder Circles Exercise 4: Banded Distractions Exercise 5: Wall Angels Have tight hips? Watch my 10 minute hip video here. https://youtu.be/xhSIo2ylhA4

Strength training workouts are awesome. We get stronger, put on muscle and feel great. But what happens when all that strength isn’t able to move well? As we age, if we don’t use our joints in all ranges of motion, we lose that range of motion. Now strength training has a higher risk of injury and we have to be very careful with how we move our bodies. A lot of people hide poor mobility by choosing exercises that are in one plane of movement and don’t replicate real life (where things actually go wrong). We all need daily mobility in our joints and I’m dedicated to getting that message out to anyone that wants to move well as they age and not feel restricted to specific activities or exercises. Check out the video below, where I take you through six movements that target the hip and thoracic spine. In this video I go through: Lunge with overhead reach Cossack squats Leopard crawl T-Spine opener Pigeon to downward dog Frog