One of the weirdest memories of my athletic career was my grandfather telling me I looked “all stoved up” after a soccer game in front of all my friends. The man had no filter and because I wasn’t familiar with his 1920’s terminology, he clarified the point by telling me (and them) that it looked as if my body had been dipped in molasses during the game.
At the time, I was doing a lot of heavy benching pressing, arm curls and sitting for hours in school and he was right that my body was stoved up, tight and not moving very well.
This is often the situation with clients I initially work with who sit and stand a lot in one place. Their bodies are literally compressed by gravity and reduced in their ability to move in any particular way.
When it comes to walking and standing, this type of compression shifts weight forward in to our toes.
This forward weight shift causes us to literally fall forward as we walk versus controlling our center of gravity in the middle of our foot.
This falling effect leads us to land each step farther in front of our center of mass and requires more work from our muscles to pull the leg back under the body.
Thus, our goal with this first warm up is to decompress and shift our center of mass back to improve the way we land or stand on the ground.