Quaranturnt Day 48 - Yo-Play Yoga

Hi Quaranturnt Crew,

Thanks for letting me spread love for my sister her yesterday. Today, I’m back to my rambles. 

Here is one of my favorite quotes in history:​

Strength is never a weakness ~ Bill Starr

This quote ends up applying in so many ways. I’ll skip over the wider applications related to mental fortitude and general preparedness. I’ll keep it purely athletic today. But still there are so many amazing ways this plays out. 

I have four athletic applications of this quote I’ll give you. First, the obvious application in straight lifting, duh. In order to squat more, it would be helpful to have stronger legs, a stronger core, stronger back muscles, etc. But that’s not very interesting. 

But what about injuries? Does strength help with injuries? The resounding answer is YES. The #1 thing you can do to prevent injury is get stronger. If you have the strength to control your body in the unstable/chaotic/badly positioned scenario that leads to the injury, then you likely won’t get injured as much. Also, if you’ve ever been to PT, they basically just give you well thought out strengthening exercises 90% of the time. So that should tell you how important strength is for recovery as well. One of you responded to my bone stress injury post the other day saying you had to quit running due to a hip fracture that miiiight have been prevented by having more strength in the structure. Would strength definitely have prevented it? No, but it certainly wouldn’t have caused it. It wouldn’t have been a weakness in that situation.

The next situation I’ll apply this quote to is explosive movement. Think jumping high or pitching a fastball. Does strength mean explosive power? NO. I’ll avoid that topic for now, but someone who trains to lift heavy weight slowly will adapt specifically to that imposed demand such that they can lift heavy weight slowly. So explosive power doesn’t come from that directly. That said, if you are stronger, it is easier to repurpose that strength into explosive power. 700lb squat strength won’t get you all the wayto the hoop, but again it would not be a weakness for someone trying to dunk.

Now ok, you can hear my earlier examples, but no way is strength important for more cardio intensive work like doing a bunch of burpees, killing yourself with thrusters, or running stairs right? Wrong again my friend. Strength continues to play a valuable role. The short of it is that any exertion that requires you to push closer to your max effort limits may end up restricting blood flow, so if taking a big jump is really hard for you to do once, it’s going to be harder to do repeatedly as you run low on blood flow! Read more on this amazing instagram post by Evan Peikon (looove how this dude thinks and teaches). 

Ok, 480 words. I’ll leave it there. Strength is never a weakness. I love you. Goodbye.

Here's the yoga flow referenced below.