Listen to your body.Hello,
At the moment, the only time I will be able to train is early in the morning before work.
Are there any important things to keep in mind for training S&S first thing after you wake up?
Listen to your body.
Typically I train around 0330. I pre-warm up with some Qigong and Tai-Chi. I follow that with the S&S warm-up. Then it's straight into S&S.
Hello,
At the moment, the only time I will be able to train is early in the morning before work.
Are there any important things to keep in mind for training S&S first thing after you wake up?
Is that in the context of heavy barbell work only - like deadlift and back squat - such that relatively lighter KB work would have less risk?I think Stu McGill said that some people need a couple of hours after waking up before their back can handle load safely. So be sure to be extra careful the first few times - you might be one of them.
Is that in the context of heavy barbell work only - like deadlift and back squat - such that relatively lighter KB work would have less risk?
Dr. Stuart McGill has made some fantastic observations on spine stiffness first thing in the morning. In a nutshell, when we lay down to sleep at night, our spine is decompressed, so the intervertebral discs actually collect water. This increased hydration status builds annular tension within the discs, and makes the spine stiffer overall. This isn't a good kind of stiffness, though; more stress is placed on the ligaments and discs than the soft tissue structures that typically protect them.
Simply standing upright and moving around decreases the hydration status of the discs - and, in the process, actually makes us shorter as the day goes on! While I don't know of many people that want to get shorter, the good news is that this height reduction reduces the spine stiffness and allows us to move the spine more safely and effectively. While disc hydration diminishes over the course of the entire day, the majority of it occurs in the first hour that we're awake.
Typically I train around 0330.