5 minute flow
Mobility. Its amazing. We feel great after we do it. We perform better after we do it. We recover faster after we do it. But we never do it, not outside regular class times at least. Mobility is one thing has so many benefits and there are so many ways to reap these benefits, yet most of us do not ever do it nearly enough. I have been in the same boat on and off most of my life. There are times I get very serious about doing mobility, and theres times where I could not care less about it. I think we can all agree though, after doing some extra mobility before or after a workout we generally feel better!
After getting tendonitis in both my elbows, it finally made me realize that I am not indestructible (shocking I know), and that I needed to take mobility more serious. But even with this new motivation, I still found myself running into the same problem consistently: I never set aside a regular time that I would dedicate to doing mobility work. Sometimes I would do it for multiple days in a row, then I would stop, then pick it back up, then stop. Safe to say I was inconsistent at best. Then one day I was listening to the Barbell Shrugged podcast when they had a guest on named Max Shank. I listened to the podcast and amongst many things they talked about, one thing that Max kept coming back to was he had come up with a way for people to get five minutes of mobility work in every single day. He called it the five minute flow. The concept was very simple: get people to move for just five minutes a day, and it will drastically improve their lives.
Now when he talks about movement, it goes beyond just doing some squats, lunges, and a couple of toe touches, he is talking about moving the body through a variety of planes and positions. The idea behind the five minute flow is that you just move and keep moving for five minutes. It doesn’t matter where, and it doesn’t matter how, just keep moving your joints in different directions and into different positions. The more you move the better! In all honesty people just need to move more because we as a society do not move enough. In all honesty it is no ones fault we are set up to be sitting a lot and to avoid movement as much as possible, but I am confident we can all find five minutes a day to move a bit more!
When I first started out the easiest way for me to do it was to go down from head to toe and move everything. I would start with mobilizing the neck, then the shoulders, shoulder blades, thoracic spine, elbows, wrists, lumbar spine, hips, knees, and then ankles. By the time I got through moving all of those, my five minutes was up! And I can safely say that every time after I am done I feel better. Check out this video on a bit of an explanation on what the five minute flow is and how you could get started doing it!
Human beings are meant to move, and we should take advantage of that! Many of you do take advantage of that by doing CrossFit, which exposes you to a wide variety of movements. But as much as we want to think we are getting the necessary amounts of mobility, most of us just aren’t. So we really need to take it upon ourselves to invest more time in our mobility. The five minute flow is a fantastic opportunity to do so. I have been doing it for a while now on a regular basis and I notice I do not need to spend tons of time trying to mobilize everything before class, I recover faster, and I am less sore on a day to day basis. I highly encourage you all to try to do this for just one week, five minutes a day and see how you feel after it. Please feel free to ask me about The Five Minute Flow, I will be happy to answer any questions you have!
Great article DJ! I am constantly amazed at my three year old granddaughter’s flexibility and depth when doing overhead squats (with her mini broom) with her grandma! But when I look closer at her everyday ritual movement it is in ALL directions as a part of her daily play. We could all learn something important just by watching our little folks in action!