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Today’s mobility work is to open up the tissues on your lateral shoulder!

The deltiod has three distinct muscle groups within it, and while overhead pressing tends to focus on the anterior group, the lateral deltoid is incredibly important for raising your arm overhead when it’s out wide.

This is a movement we don’t really do very often in our day-to-day lives, and as a result the connective tissue around this muscle group tends to get pretty gnarly.

Grab a lax ball, lean up against a wall and move that arm around!

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Today’s mindfulness work is to consider the difference between a panda and a lion.

Of course, major differences aside, a panda eats and consumes food in a way distinct from a lion.

A panda must eat everyday, must spend most of the day looking for more bamboo if not already eating. The panda can’t take a day off– it will starve, otherwise.

A lion gorges and starves. It goes on a hunt when brutally hungry, when its senses are heightened and more attuned to the smells and surroundings. When it eats, it binges and fills itself up so much it can only lay in the sun and slowly digest its meal– no one will mess with a lion.

In the context of these two animals on a spectrum, we can consider ourselves and our habits.

What habits or actions are ones in which you can gorge yourself and be satisfied for a period of time, like a lion?

What rituals do you need to repeat day in and day out or else things will fall apart, like a panda?

Personally, I can go out and party like a lion. Get really weird, but then it’s out of my system for a few weeks. I meditate like a panda, because if I go a few days without some quiet reflection and mindfulness, I quickly turn into a crazy person.

Consider these two different animals and classify some of your habits– are there some things you do like a panda but you should probably partake like a lion?