Bookend Your Routine

Proper Prep and Recovery are more important than your actual game

Whatever your sport, don’t forget the key supportive role that bookends play

Adapt or Sit Out

Continuing to play your favorite sport into mid-life takes a lot of accommodation, most of it involving ego and pride. You have to adapt: don’t expect to play like you’re 25, take better care of your body, train smarter, and don’t let the small stuff frustrate you. Here’s one of my particular frustrations, and I’m working on shrugging it off:

I’m warming up on the basketball court 5 minutes before our pickup game starts. My 25 year-old buddy springs out of his car, runs to the court in flip flops, changes shoes, and declares he’s ready to play: no warmup shots, no stretching, no electrolyte drops. I’m sure he hit his vape pen pretty hard in the car, but that’s the extent of his “tissue activation”. Comparatively, I’m only at the court after spending 45 minutes in the gym preparing my body for this game. I’ve done 15 minutes on the Total Gym just like Chuck, spent 15 minutes activating my glutes and core, and finished with some ankle-specific neuro-stability work (there’s no such word as neuro-stability btw…it’s proprietary:-)

Whether my GenZ buddy wipes the court with me or not really isn’t important anymore, because I’m just thrilled to be out there. Yeah, it takes me almost as long to prep as it does to play, but that’s what allows me to stay injury free and competitive at 47.

Prep Your Age

Regardless of your sport or activity, your “Bookends” (how you prep and cool down) are more important than your actual sport. If you keep hopping out of the car and straight into your activity, you are headed for a world of hurt, and age just makes injury more likely. No, none of us warmed up properly when we were 25, but just because we got away with it doesn’t mean it was smart. Eventually, in my 30’s, I realized that I didn’t have a choice. Here’s how to do it right:

Activation/Tissue Prep

This is your “warmup”, and you use it to accomplish several things:

1. Hydrate your joints and prepare them for impact

2. Raise the temperature of your tissue and increase blood flow

3. Wake up your neurological system so that you react faster to stimulus (ie: falling)

4. Increase muscle tone to stabilize the skeletal system, especially the spine

5. This is your chance to make an assessment of any nagging injury and address it

My rule is that you warmup for as many minutes as your age. I’m 47, hence it takes forever to get my body ready. But I get it: you can’t spend all morning preparing your body, so once my clients hit 50 I let them cap out at 45-50 minutes of tissue activation.

So what’s a good warmup? There are a ton of variations depending on your sport, age, and injury history, but let’s take warming up the spine as an example. Stabilizing your spine is a good idea before any activity, and fortunately for us Dr. Stuart McGill has already done all the research on what works best. These are my favorite 2 movements from his “Big 3” spine routine:

1. Bird Dog

2. Side Plank

No matter what I’m warming someone up for (be it a competitive sport or just a standard strength workout), I include some variation of these two movements. I can get more sport-specific for an individual client, but at least I’ve got their spine stabilized and the majority of their tissue heated up in just 2 moves. Personally, I’m dealing with chronic ankle instability and pain, so after warming up my spine I’ll move on to some ankle-specific work:

Toe Band Side-Step

Bosu Foot Tap

This warmup strategy takes a long runway, and it’s certainly an investment of my time, but proper tissue activation isn’t just about preventing injury. Having my tissue active and toned significantly increases my exercise performance, and that’s very important it to me. If you don’t have an injury, investing the time to warmup properly may not seem worth it, but what if it also allows you to play harder and have more fun?

No Hard Stops

Your other “bookend” after exercise is to run a proper cool down routine. This process is much faster, and even 10-15 minutes will do. This is the point where you apply static stretching, rolling/fascial work, and pliability. Whatever you do, just don’t walk off the court and start drinking. Spend as little time in the seated position as possible, maybe just enough to drive to a spot where you can run through your routine. Your tissue will still stiffen up in the hours post-exercise, but not nearly to the same degree if you perform a proper cooldown. Here’s what mine looks like:

Mobility -

Cat-Cow, Downward Dog, Child’s Pose, Thoracic Rotation, Hip Flow

Rolling -

Hips, Thighs, Calves

Static Stretching -

Hamstring, 4 Point Hip, Calf, Spinal Rotation, Hip Flexor, Thoracic Extension

Staying competitive over the age of 40 is all about playing the long game. I know that I have to invest more time and effort into therapy and recovery for my body rather than always trying to increase athletic performance. I’ve realized over the years, though, that therapy and performance are not mutually exclusive. Proper bookends to my routine work synergistically to prevent injury and improve my level of play. I wish my 25 year-old friend appreciated the amount of time it takes for me to be on the same court with him, but I understand. He’ll be my age some day, and I hope for his sake that he’s still able to play.

Sam