You need a compression session
What an amazing machine that body of yours is.
I am constantly in awe at the elegance and economy of our design. Don't love your body? Time to get over it. You are a work of art; beautifully made.
Need an example? Did you know the body's major lymph glands are located near the most active joints; moving these joints effectively turns them into lymphatic pumps. How's that for sophisticated design? Motion is the lotion, movement is in fact medicine and whoever coined those phrases was more right than they understood.
It's hard to improve on perfection but I'll give it a try. Your body's circulatory system, for all it's efficiency and grace, benefits from a little jumpstart, a little help, from time to time. Enter compression.
What's compression? Imagine your circulatory system is a tube of toothpaste. Compression acts like your hand squeezing the tube and pushing the paste out. It improves circulation (beyond what your joints and heart do), waste elimination and helps push good stuff (like O2) into your cells.
Oh- I forgot to mention that using compression is practically effortless.
Benefits of compression:
reduce pain
quicken recovery
reduce swelling
increase recovery
stimulate blood flow
reduce swelling
eliminate jet lag (rumored)
solve world peace
Sound good? Here are four ways you can harness compression's benefits.
Compression wear: You've seen runners wearing those knee high socks post (some even wear them during) race/run. The reason runners wear them is primarily so you'll ask them 'Hey, Did you run a race or something?' and then they can tell you all about how hard the last mile of the BAA 10k was. The second reason is they've just smashed their feet up for up to 26 miles. Feet swell. Personally my feet have swelled over a shoe size post race; I would wake up the next morning and walk like an old man around my house for a few hours before regaining my natural youthful vigor.
Wearing compression socks to bed hastens recovery. No more doing the old man shuffle around the house post long run. You don't have to be a runner to enjoy the benefits though. If you are on your feet a lot, working out, or suffer from high blood pressure and dizziness compression socks are helpful.
And compression wear doesn't stop at socks. There are shirts, sleeves, full body suits (which are rumored to help mightily with jet lag).
Normatec boots: I'd been eyeing normatec boots for the gym for awhile, but they're expensive. My wife is 8 months pregnant. Her feet and legs sometimes swell. Seeing/hearing her struggle made me take another look at the boots. They were on sale (but still expensive). I'll take that as a sign. I bought them.
For her.
This is how they work: You stick your legs into loose fitting baggy pants, a motor pumps air into different sections of the pants, systematically squeezing your legs and flushing blood/lymph/fluid through your circulatory system. They are intelligent compression socks. Hospitals use a version of them on nearly all post surgical patients.
The big question: Was the wife impressed? Well, she threw them on, hit power, and they whirred away for about 5 minutes at which point she asked me how much I paid for them.
'They were on sale,' I said. Then I told her.
'Worth every penny,' she said.
It's now a nightly ritual.
These boots will make their way to Train once the baby arrives.
Voodoo Floss: Sometimes muscle, skin and fascia get matted and stuck underneath the skin. Voodoo floss is a wrap that compresses these adhesions into a sort of tourniquet. Once you're wrapped up move the muscle in question. The stuck skin/fascia/muscle/soft tissue move through the tourniquet you've created; the adhesions and scar tissue are shredded. There is a restriction of blood flow (while flossing) followed by a sudden blood rush upon removal that often creates a euphoric, tingling/sparkling sensation. This is usually accompanied by an amazing increase in range of motion and a decrease in pain/stiffness in the muscle/joint.
Lymphatic drainage: Your cells are a relay station. Nutrition/oxygen come in, are metabolized, and then waste is shipped out. The waste travels along your lymphatic system. If the lymphatic system isn't clear and viscous the whole system is backed up. Waste can't get out and nutrition can't enter. Your cells become sluggish. Some light brushing and tapping (explained HERE) along with any of the compression outlined above will ensure the lymphatic system is operating optimally, shipping waste out, allowing nutrition in. Follow the video linked above or, even better, book a lymphatic massage to clean out the pipes and optimize your lymphatic flow.
Your body is amazing, remember, and the best thing about this amazing body it is that it improves with intelligent use. Life is a contact sport. You're gonna accumulate a few cuts, scars, scrapes and swells along the way. Compression is a tool that helps keep your body moving.
The wear and tear will still slow you down, but it doesn't have to stop you.
