Be Shiva

I had the lucky opportunity to meet with Kelly Starret of CrossFit San Francisco and the writer of The Mobility Wod. I've had shoulder issues plague me during my two years as a lifter. Unfortunately, my last coach was of the mentality "take more ibuprofen", "tape it up tighter", and other such "suck it up" mantras rather than making me figure out what's going on.

I'm a skeptical person. It took a NASM PT to force me to start using a foam roller (oh, it actually works). Unfortunately, he failed to recognize that my knee pain resulted form HUGE quads and a near total absence of hamstrings... (he cited uneven hips and spine curvature, which does run in my family. I'll be back to that.)

Luckily, my coach is also extremely skeptical about new fangled things. He was finally convinced by my training partner to visit Kelly for his hip issues. When we saw him next, Coach was like "You are ALL going to visit Kelly for ANYTHING you have wrong." Well, okay.

Be Shiva

I after nationals, I had an appointment to see Kelly about my shoulder. Shoulder was priority #1,2, and 3. Then I wanted my hip looked at. Most of the hour was spent putting my shoulder through some serious discomfort and pain. He stretch my shoulder against planes that it hasn't moved through in a long time. He dug into muscles I didn't even know I had. He pushed the humerous back into the shoulder socket then dug into the surrounding tissues some more.

At one point I had to even ask to take a break from the digging. Kelly had found a knot of muscle under my scapula that wasn't even allowing it to sit flat where it was supposed to. However, when all was said and done, I could actually pull my shoulder blades back and down with little to no effort. When I raised my arms overhead, my right arm was significantly further back than my left arm, which I could still see in my peripheral vision.

I was instructed to always carry myself with my shoulders back and down, not squeezed, but engaged. So now my motto is "Be Shiva", as in the above picture of the Hindu god. Notice how his shoulders are down and back, not hunched forward like "lunk head"? That's where both athletes and goddesses should carry themselves.

So to everyone out there:

1) Eat Right
2) Sleep Right
3) Do SOMETHING
4) Be Shiva

And if something is off, go see Kelly.