MOBILITY – hand lax ball smash!
MINDFULNESS – consider antifragility and the spectrum of resilience
Today’s mobility work is a technique that targets the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of the hand– the extensors, flexors, and thenars.
This is effective prior to any movement that loads the upper limb with tension that must be transmitted through the hand– hanging bar work (pull-ups, toe-to-bar), deadlifts, cleans, rows, and other countless variations.
Brief mobilization prior to heavy movement (to reclaim lost range of motion due to lifestyle) and extended mobilization afterwards (to encourage lymphatic circulation and massage worked tissues) is recommended.
Today’s mindfulness work is to consider the idea of antifragility in the context of resilience!
We tend to think of fragility as the opposite of resiliency– fragile things break when stressed, and resilient things stay strong when stressed.
Antifragility was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and this describes a system or thing that gains strength when stressed.
This may seem counterintuitive at first– what gets stronger when chaos is thrown at it? But of course, it is only antifragile up until a certain point.
A certain amount of stress makes a bone strong– that is why astronauts come back from space with a loss of bone density and overall muscular strength. A certain amount of tumbling and rough play teaches a child how to fall and not get hurt.
We all start out as relatively antifragile and throughout our lives we accept a creeping sense of fragility as natural and inevitable.
This is not necessarily true, and the true danger of fragility is thinking you are fragile and prone to breaking under pressure when you are still resilient, or even antifragile.
Eugene H Kim 