Slow is the New Fast

Hello Thorny Roses, and welcome

Today I’m going to talk about *how* we do the exercises.

Generally, exercise is best done slowly.

At least in terms of the exercises we are starting with.

This has several advantages:

You can focus on form, both because you have more time to think and because you can process the feedback

You can be more aware of the recruitment patterns your muscles are using, and give them more time to switch on.

Because you can’t use momentum to lift a heavier weight or power into a lower squat, if you move slowly, you get a better idea of where your strength and mobility are at.

For the reasons listed above, you are far less likely to injure yourself

Eccentric exercise -which is where you extend muscle under load - is, surprisingly, much more effective than straight concentric exercise - the more usual kind of contracting muscle groups relatively quickly. This means you get a lot more effective strength training than you otherwise would - see the link for Michael Mosely’s podcast on this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0016xq7?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

It gives you time to synchronise the breathing and bring good body awareness in, and in this way exercise can become more meditative and mindful. Good breath work can have significant benefit for your cardio-vascular health. I’ll explain the way we incorporate breathing below.

There is less need to warm up. You can start the exercise slowly with a smaller range of motion and warm your muscles up as you go through the repetitions, moving more fully into the exercise as feel more able to. This makes it more accessible for those without much time.

There is a place for more explosive exercise. Plyometrics (basically jumping) is important for bone density, and we need the impact to go into the bone at different angles (so running is good but not enough, we need sideways jumping ideally), but starting slowly with a squat, for instance, can lead nicely into squat jumps. Or curtesy lunges can become skater lunges with a little jump in the middle.

This will all make sense as we go on through. But for now, take it slowly and understand that slower is actually better - and after you’ve done a few of the exercises slowly - you’ll get a good idea of what I mean!

We will also try to consciously engage the core as we do the exercises, or as much of it as we can. Remember that the core is essentially the muscles around your trunk, not just your abs, so it involves the back, the pelvis, the hips, and even the muscles that stabilise the shoulders. For some exercises - such as balancing on a wobble board - the core will automatically be engaged to execute the exercise, but for others - such as, say, bicep curls, we could do them with very minimal core engagement. We will get more out of the exercises if we consciously try to engage more of the core muscles and also incorporate the breathing. Don’t worry if voluntarily engaging your core muscles -especially those of the back - is as inaccessible as wiggling your ears. Just informing your brain that it’s something you would like to be able to do is the first step to being able to do so! And we will do plenty of exercises that automatically engage all the right muscles.

So here’s an example of how we might do the breathing.

Exhaling engages the core muscles, so generally it’s best to exhale on the most effort. So for example, you might inhale as you lower down into the squat, and then exhale as you rise back up, especially if this is done fairly vigorously which it traditionally is.

But if you are moving really slowly, you might find it’s as much effort lowering down as it is powering up. In which case you could “double breath”. That is: inhale, then exhale as you lower slowly down. Inhale, then exhale as you power slowly up. This double breath can be incorporated into just about any exercise. This might be one of those “try it and see what you prefer”. The very most important thing is that you *do* breathe. Holding the breath is a very human thing to do when we are concentrating or exerting ourselves, but it’s not particularly helpful!