How to keep doing what you love, or the 5 essentials of a long athletic career

Somewhere between age twenty and age forty, most active folks realize the activities they love are harder than they used to be.  It may be more difficult to sustain the same level of effort, take longer to recover, or one may simply not be as strong or limber as one once was (say that three times fast).  At that point, they have to make a choice: either, they work harder to do what they used to; or, they give up.  Fortunately, that second choice isn't permanent.  Later, we'll return to the effects of inactivity and how to undo them.  For the moment, however, I'd like to discuss five of the best ways to keep doing what you love despite the passage of time.  They are the dynamic warm-up, 10 minutes of hot yoga (daily), the foam roller, kettlebells, and proper recovery.  In the future, I'll dedicate an entry (or series of entries) dealing with each of these.  But for the moment, let's just sketch them out a bit.

The dynamic warm-up and 10 minutes of hot yoga have to do with the two major aspects of flexibility, how long your body thinks your muscles are, and how long they actually are.  The dynamic warm-up re-sets how long your body thinks the muscles are to their actual length.  10 minutes of hot yoga done regularly will increase that actual length safely and gradually.  The foam roller is the cheap and easy solution to the tight, stiff, sore, or achy muscles that come from regular activity that don't need the attention of a health professional.  Kettlebells are a form of strength training from Russia that allow one to undo muscular imbalances and increase stability.  Weight training was supposed to increase strength, endurance, and speed, but never actually quite produced those results; kettlebells do.  Proper recovery is composed of a number of things, but chief among them are enough sleep and the right nutrition at the right time.

That's a brief outline of the 5 essentials.  Future posts will deal with each in considerably more detail.  The foam roller, in particular, will involve a whole series of posts on how to use it for each major body part.  As they say, stay tuned...