Milo Bryant it’s a performance coach as well as an experienced journalist. He is also 50 years old, and his book Unstoppable after 40 gives you the roadmap to do more than just stay active as you “mature.” Milo trains hard and recovers even better so he can do what he wants, when he wants. Get ready to use his methods to become unstoppable. This is not your father’s middle age.
The high knee exercise is the most misunderstood and mistaught warm-up exercise in the history of warm-up exercises. Everybody seems to do it. But 99.99 percent of people do it wrong.
There! I said!
The use of this exercise is administered in a careless manner at best and detrimental at worst, whether programmed by soccer and football coaches or personal trainers and strength coaches throughout the world. Performed correctly, the high knees exercise uses the calves, glutes, hamstrings, quads, and hip flexors as primary muscle groups. Your core should keep your torso tall and rigid. For the non-elite sprinter, the shoulders play an important role in swinging the arms. It is no exaggeration to say that high knees are a total body exercise.
High knees is an exercise that prepares the body to run more effectively. After all, the exercise is a sprint with an incredibly shortened stride length. Problems arise when the exercise is done halfway. The body should vigorously reach the “figure four” position: femur equal to or more parallel to the ground, reverse shin angle, toes pointing up, torso upright, and hands on the cheeks and waist, with each stride.
Coaches and trainers talk about knee raises ad nauseam. Better knee lift often equates to greater stride length. If you cover more ground with each stride Y point A and point B are fixed positions, you move faster between the points.
Unstoppable Men’s Health After 40
Raising the knee requires an inefficient thought process. Use your calves to allow the ball of your foot to push into the ground with each stride. That momentum takes advantage of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The opposite of down and diagonally behind pushes it up and forward.
Get more push off the ground for a better knee lift and better warm-up exercise.
How to do high knees
● Run forward 20 steps, lifting your knees so your thighs are at least parallel to the ground with each step.
Best Coach Signs for High Knees
●Stay on the balls of your feet.
●Hit the ground.
● Vigorous arm swing.
Helpful tip to improve high knees
● Running uphill. NFL legend Walter Payton, my favorite player, used to run levees during his offseasons. I started running hills thanks to him. It wasn’t until years later that I understood the benefits. Everything I have said can be done by running uphill.
Milo Bryant, CSCS, is a California-based coach who helped write the book Gray Cook Movement: Functional Movement Systems.
This content is imported from OpenWeb. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may find more information on their website.
