Upgrade Your Body 1% ... Every Dang Day (9min read)

What if I could give you one simple twenty-minute task to do every day that would upgrade and improve your joint health guaranteed?

Would you do it?

You are, after all what you do consistently.

If you think negative thoughts consistently, you’ll likely be a very negative person.

If you work hard consistently, you’ll reap the rewards of that hard work.

If you don’t take care of your body and move well consistently, then it’s expected that you will be unhealthy, and not move well.

If you don’t make time for health, then you will have to make time for disease.

I want to share with you a daily discipline that will absolutely upgrade the health of your joints and make you feel fantastic.

The best part, its simple, requires absolutely no equipment, and has fundamentally changed my life and the lives of all my students.

CARs aka Controlled Articular Rotations are a daily joint movement tool designed to systematically move each and every joint in your body through the greatest amount of intentional range of motion each joint is designed to express.

Simply put CARs are brushing your teeth for your joints.

And for the same reason. So, they don’t rot.

It’s no secret that arthritis plagues hundreds of millions, if not billions of people world-wide. What we attribute to “old age” is simply a progressive loss of joint function and mobility. While the reasons for the losses are many, the most common is simply neglect. And not the intentional kind filled with vitriol, just the kind of neglect that keeps you from doing a variety of things like clean the garage, organize old photos, or purge the attic of useless items. In most cases its sort of an out of sight out of mind. After all, everyone’s’ body feels fine until it doesn’t.

Because everything happens gradually, then suddenly. We don’t realize we have a problem with a joint until suddenly we have a problem with a joint. And by this stage the use, abuse, and neglect have accumulated, and the result is injury, pain, limitation, or an increasing amount of “I just can’t do that anymore” amongst a growing list of things “I used to could”.

This sudden impairment sends us running for the orthopedist, the chiropractor, the acupuncturist, and the massage therapist. Some end up in physical therapy, while others get pretty grave news from the radiologist that send us shopping for a new joint.

Most people are just in a bit of discomfort, and simply want the pain to go away so they can go back to business as usual. The only problem with “business as usual” is that’s exactly what got them into this mess in the first place. And these moments are golden opportunities to realize that we need to start taking responsibility for our health, and these little bumps in the road are gentle reminders to eat better, sit less, walk more, and start strategically caring for the pieces of equipment which allow us to enjoy life.

These pieces of equipment are our joints. And our joints are subject to the same physical laws that govern the universe. The law of entropy thrusts everything in life to war in an attempt to maintain order. Without intentionally, and intelligently, keeping order everything falls apart, becomes disorganized like a perpetual junk drawer, and many times stops working. This is especially problematic when a joint suddenly stops doing whatever it is was doing for years without an issue. For those of you who have had their back “freeze” up and keep you from breathing or putting on your shoes then you know exactly what I am talking about. Most joint problems are like a slow decline of a once organized junk drawer that suddenly ends up in disarray months later, others are like a full-blown train wreck.

Both of these problems are the result of joints that have lost their function to move as designed.

Controlled Articular Rotations are the only system on the planet designed to help keep your joints organized, functioning, and well maintained. Because your body is designed to accomplish a near infinite amount of movement, each joint must contribute their individual total of range of motion to all of the movements, big and small.

However, when one joint stops operating normally you do notice, and boy does it make an impact. Simple movements like getting down to the floor, helping a neighbor move, playing with your kids, or doing something you love gradually gets more difficult until suddenly you can’t.

If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Just like the piano lessons you took for three months when you were eight, your joints rot and disintegrate without consistent intentional movement. And without practice you gradually lose the ability to move your joints at all. In the same manner you have lost the ability to play happy birthday on the piano.

You simply forget how. This is called neurological pruning, and begins when we stop doing something consistently. Unfortunately, when you stop moving a joint through its full range of motion you forget how, and once you forget how, the tissues in your body are unable to stay healthy with the motion required to thrive.

By performing CARs on a daily basis many important things start happening for your joint health, and your life. Here are 8 powerful things guaranteed to happen when you do CARs every dang day.

1. You use it or you lose it - CARs help you keep the ranges of motion that your body, and YOU, need. By performing CARs every day, you give yourself the opportunity to maintain your joint health in the same way you keep your teeth healthy by brushing them consistently.

2. Nutrition - CARs provide critical nutrition, detoxification, and circulation of fluids. Performing CARs ensure the movement of fluids only circulated through motion. Fluids such as lymph, synovial fluid, cerebrospinal fluid only provide nutrition and lubrication to the areas where you move, and none to where you don’t. CARS also increase blood flow to the tendons, ligaments, and muscles by improving the development and maintenance of vascular networks around the joint structures.

3. Self-Assessment - CARs are an excellent self-assessment tool and inform you about the functioning state of your body by revealing areas of motion that are painful, stuck, or simply stiff. We have all had the “crink” in the neck, and CARs will not only help you boil down exactly where the crink is, but CARs will ensure you maintain the 99% of movement that is crink-less, so you don’t walk around stiff necked all day.

4. Rehabilitative Control - CARS empower you to take control of your body by keeping your joints moving well when they aren’t feeling awesome. When you get a booboo the most important thing to do is keep moving the stuff that doesn’t hurt. No matter how small the range of motion has to be CARs give you confidence and power to safely move things as you heal, so you heal faster.

5. Body Control - If the whole is simply the sum of the parts, then it's critical that you can skillfully move each part. Learning to create small and big movements with each joint will vastly improve your overall body control as you learn to move each joint independently. If you don’t move your hip very well, or have any awareness about how to move your hip, it will be impossible for you to move your hip when you need to move your hip.

6. Injury Prevention - CARS are an amazing injury prevention tool. The fact is you need to move where you need to move, and be able to move there. If you can’t move there, or haven’t practiced moving there your risk for injury to that joint of set of joints is high. If you haven’t practiced looking up at your neck in a long time, and only look down at a computer screen or phone, you might be in trouble if you suddenly look up to “look out!”

7. Neurological Regulation - CARs reduce excess stress by reducing neurological tension brought on by poor movement, stiffness, and times of inactivity. Our bodies are designed to move, and our nervous system needs feedback, when we don’t move from sitting too much our nervous system creates tension and neurological tightness. This tightness then makes us uncomfortable and increases stress resulting in more tension and tightness ad nauseam. CARs break the neurological barrier by providing feedback (afference) to the central nervous system by moving our joints. This excessive tension and tightness are a result of poor movement feedback, and as an adaptive response to the positions we are using, and not using.

8. Connection – CARs improve your connection with you. By bringing you into the present state of your physical environment into which you are knitted. By improving your “presence”, and your joint health, you will improve your ability to connect with those you love. You will enjoy increased connection with the things you love to do. And you will reduce the discomfort from the movements and tasks you don’t love by literally making them less of a pain in the… everywhere. 

Let’s put it like this, is there any one joint you wouldn’t want? Like if you could lose the use of just one joint right now which one would it be?

Got one?

Well, if you’re like me, you want ALL of your joints. That’s why you perform CARs every dang day consistently. Some sessions are longer. Some are shorter. Some are intense. Some not so. But the goal is to keep progressing the usability of a joint 1% every single day.

Because if you don’t use it, you lose it, and the losing is happening right now, slowly, progressively, and gradually. So, take action, fight back and keep the blessing and miracle of movement in your life, body, and joints by committing to your daily CARs each and every dang day!

If you aren't committed to your daily CARs routine, I pray you re-commit your efforts every day without fail. 

If you don't know what the daily CARs routine is it would be best to take the 21 day challenge. A step-by-step course that teaches you how to perform Controlled Articular Rotations skillfully. 

Get your CARs routine here --->  https://www.movementgym.com/21-day-cars-challenge