MOBILITY – 20 wall-guided overhead extensions!
MINDFULNESS – consider failure like a scientist!
Today’s mobility work is a proprioceptive drill for your overhead position.
Athletes often do not realize they are moving incorrectly until cued by a coach or watch themselves on video– this drill gives you the tools to coach yourself!
By lining up against a wall with several contact points, you have a simple and immediate feedback loop as you move your arms overhead.
While moving through space with just a PVC pipe or barbell, you might not be aware of active compensations or loss of a neutral spine. With this drill, you’ll notice very quickly!
If you can’t reach your knuckles overhead to the wall, work on good positioning for the first ten reps, just getting used to the feedback and working through the range of motion. Then, once you are a little warmer, try to reach those knuckles up to the sky and back without losing that neutral spine!
Today’s mindfulness work is to consider the scientist’s approach to failure.
Each action or experiment is a data point. Each point is useful– failures tell you what does not work, successes tell you where to keep going. You need both.
Utilizing a failure as a data point means that a failure is not a waste of time.
A missed lift is only a true failure when we learn nothing from it. A missed opportunity is only truly missed when we don’t understand the flaws in our reasoning after the fact.
Use failure, but don’t allow yourself to be defined by a single failure.
In much the same way– just because you succeed once does not make you a success. It is a process that is built over time and earned with sweat. There’s a saying that you work ten years to become an overnight success.
Use all of your experiences to grow, and you’ll be on the path to success. Disconnect your worth from the outcomes, learn to love the grind and the process.
Eugene H Kim 