Injuries happen.

Pushing your body to its limits whilst training and exercising takes its toll. 

These pain points can accumulate. And your training life will start to move at a snail’s pace when you're nursing pulls, aches and pains - or worse still, a muscle tear. Workouts become more difficult. Even navigating throughout your day can become tricky.

The Kenzai community is comprised of healthy, fit, and active people the world over. We want to be out and about playing and exploring. Following a setback, we want to jump right back in to what we were doing pre-injury.

That sudden ramp back up can be quite detrimental.

Here is the trick to preventing and quickly recovering from an injury. Invest in what feels like basic, simple movements.

Take the classic bridge for example.

You’re laying on your back, knees bent, and arms by your side. You slowly engage your core, glutes, and hamstrings to lift your hips upward. At the top you'll hold for a beat and then slowly lower back down.



This movement isn't sexy. It sure as heck isn't a kung-fu sit up, one legged burpee, pistol squat, or pull-up. 

But if you’re experiencing lower back pain this is just the type of exercise you need to be doing to address muscle imbalances and improper pelvic alignment. The National Academy of Sports Medicine (and the world of exercise science in general) refers to movements like this as corrective exercise. Put simple, the use of an exercise to address some type of anatomical defect or deformity. 

Corrective exercises can then be broken down into four types or phases: Inhibition, Lengthen, Activation and Integration.

• Inhibition is to decrease tension in areas that are overactive or shortened muscles.
• Lengthen involves stretching muscles to improve range of motion and posture.
• Activation will target those muscles which have been under utilized and are weaker.
• Finally, the integration stage applies dynamic techniques and progressive total body movements to anchor the changes in muscle tissue to prevent injury in the future. 

So if you feel a twinge of pain, or have something that’s been bothering you for a while, hit up your trainer, doctor, or physical therapist to get some corrective exercises. 

Bringing it back to basics will keep you training safely for the long-haul!

Kim Benson // Kenzai Trainer
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