BRUSH YOUR TEETH WITH YOUR LEFT HAND

Bit of a different blog today but let me teach you something out of the ordinary today...

Brush your teeth with your left hand is a movement I want to start which may sound odd but let me show you what I mean!

As we age, through injuries or even completing daily tasks we are always going to favour our dominant side. We would use our right hand to hold all the groceries, use our right leg to step up onto higher surfaces and usually what happens is through this we create an imbalance. This can be your left side if you are left handed/left footed etc.

This is usually fine until it isn't...

Be more conscious

What I mean by this is start noticing your patterns, habits and behaviours more. You will see that you will always favour your dominant side for most things in your day to day life. Try switching it up, giving your non-dominant side a chance to catch up.

The next time you are carrying your groceries in try switching hands and carrying it in with your non-dominant side. Next time you go to kick a ball or reach for something under your coach with your foot use your non-dominant foot. When climbing stairs use your non-dominant

leg as the leader rather than the one that catches up all the time.

What will happen is you will become more balanced, create more stability within your body and be less susceptible to injury.

One of the biggest reasons people get injured is due to a muscular or joint imbalance between both sides. Having one side weaker than the other means when you do big movements, heavy tasks your dominant side will do most of the work. What will happen is if your non-dominant side is unable to do the work it will give way and result in possible injury...

We do not want that, so creating a balance will decrease the risk of this ever occurring.

Train single handed

I want you doing something with your training now.

When you begin a strength training journey do not begin with double joint movements. I want you to train single joint movements moving forward. What I mean by this is instead of doing a weighted squat maybe start with lunges. You might notice that one of your legs is stronger than the other. Use this as a guide now.

Your goal is to make sure each side of your body is at a similar level. I stress the word SIMILAR because you may never be able to get them to the exact same strength level but you can try get close. The closer you are the stronger and less risk you have when it comes to injury occurrence.

Closing Thoughts

So what I want you do do now is start waking up in the morning and brushing your teeth with your left hand. Start assessing your daily movement patterns and look out for signs of imbalance and weakness. You can adjust the way you do things pretty easy.

If you need help with this that is what we are here for so feel free to email us at [email protected] for any advice relating to anything I say in the blogs.