Iron and Latex

In the past few months I've been introduced to more ways to torture my sinews than before. As I've mentioned before I'm a fan of maximally efficient gains, in other words what gets me the most with a minimum of hassle and time consumption. There are numerous previous entries on high-intensity training and Tabata protocols. Following my surgery and rehabilitation I've met not only the iron I've also been playing with rubber (kinky I know). This is almost a modern parable of hard and soft styles, the yin and yang of conditioning. Its a little tough being a big bad fighter guy who gets a little shiver of fear when he sees a big rubber ball or resistance bands.
I consider myself a strong person, I can still lift and move weights that others find daunting, but this strength is deceptive. Why? If I was this physical uberman I wouldn't be writing about rehabilitating two knee surgeries as well as other injuries. Stabilizers and core are essential for strength, without them your body is exposed to forces that the primary muscle groups can handle but all the weaker links in the chain, specifically tendons and ligaments have to take up inordinate loads, they become the weakest link in the chain and the hardest injury to rehabilitate.
Primary, among my awakening are those damned stabilizers. Try standing on one foot, if you are wobbling it shows that various stabilizer muscles are firing, presumably too much to correct the deficits of other weaker stabilizers. The burning sensation is ischemia, literally those muscles are using oxygen more rapidly than your blood, lungs, and heart can deliver it to those muscles. Once you've mastered 30 secs, a minute, or two minutes whatever, try shifting your center of mass by bending your knee or reaching for the mat. Get a stabilizer pillow, the jelly donut version of a hemorrhoid pillow and stand on that, it works against your body's equilibrium establishing mechanisms, every correction making you feel like you wobble more. If those are working well try doing one-armed push-up hold or T-position. Once you've got the static part down you can start moving to dynamic movements like farmer's walk (walking lunge to lunge) or sideways lunge.
My new favorite toy are resistance bands. Typically in workouts the resistance is uniform, that is when one benches the weight really doesn't change. Resistance bands (and weight chains for that matter) increase resistance during the exercise, resistance bands are governed by F = -kx, the force is proportional to the distance moved. The further the conditioning band stretches the harder it is, usually at the limit of your bodies reach the weakest part of the motion. Aha! We are going to make you work hardest where you are weakest. I've tried shadowboxing in them, which turns 3 minutes of shadow boxing into a muscle burning good time (although I recommend doing both leads for symmetry).

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