Decelerate Before you Accelerate

Go Slow to Go fast

What if

I told you that you could jump 5 feet high in the air, but you’d hurt yourself landing. Would you do it?

Probably not, unless you’d also jump off a cliff if so and so asked you to.

It’s a much better idea to teach yourself how to land from 5 feet in the air. Less injuries, more progress.

Plus, It just makes you stronger and strength is never a weakness.

What this looks like

The simplest and most effective exercise for this is called a “Depth Drop”. Literally just stepping off a box and landing. You can start small, and progress to higher boxes over time.

You can do this with a lunge. Step out and try and almost fall into a lunge waiting as long as possible for your front foot to touch the ground, and then try and stop your body from moving any more as fast as possible, even if it’s a small lunge.

You can even do this with a partner and a medicine ball for your upper body.

You can get creative and apply this concept in a myriad of ways for nearly any muscle group.

Why It matters

These types of exercises are lengthening your muscles under a lot of tension. This is called an “eccentric” and is foundation to strengthening your soft tissue (tendons and ligaments). When we tear something it’s most likely going to be some kind of ligament.

Strong tissue builds the foundation for strong muscles. Not only will you stave off injury, you’ll also stay out of pain avoiding tendonitis and tendinopathy. They literally have the word tendon in them and that’s what makes it hurt to move so let’s avoid that.