When I first started as a trainer, I was most interested in getting big and strong myself, so that's what I trained people to do:  squat, bench, deadlift, chin.  I did that pretty well and felt pretty good about myself--until I noticed that, after a while, almost all my clients' backs hurt, their necks were tight, their knees were in pain.  They also looked a little like the Tin Man when they moved.  But hey, they were more muscular! They looked better (sort of)!  And suck it up, my back hurts too, you crybaby!  Take some Advil and get under that bar.

So, once I had the walking wounded for my client pool, I had to learn and customize strategies to help peoples' injuries heal:  make their backs and shoulders better, help them get looser--so we could go back to pounding weight and getting them all the more muscular.  It was certainly nothing special--some relaxation drills, some dynamic stretching, some static stretching, some muscle activation work, but it worked pretty well. 

Thus began a cycle:  pound their bodies into submission for eight weeks until they started complaining of pain and injury or started barfing at the gym regularly, then go easy for a couple of weeks until they said something like "My back feels better...I guess, sort of."  Then throw them back into the fray. 

Inexplicably, I managed to hold onto most of my clients through this period.  I don't know what they were thinking.  Gluttons for punishment, I suppose.

Now, after many lessons in How Not To Do It, what's most fascinating to me about training is pushing the edge while trying not to go over it.  Making sure that the movement patterns are solid so that when we train, we're reinforcing something healthy and useful.  Trying to make sure that on most days (unless I'm grinding away at them for a specific reason), clients leave the gym moving and feeling better than when they came in.  Taking pain--even slight pain--seriously, so that it never escalates.  And all the while, incrementally making them stronger, leaner, more flexible, more functional.  In the immortal words of Lee Haney (I'm tipping my bodybuilding-roots hand again):

Train to stimulate, not to annihilate.

The line between stimulation and annihilation is actually a pretty thin:  it can be hard to figure out how much someone can take on a given day, because it will vary based on stress, sleep, diet, and accumulated fatigue from previous workouts.  But that's the challenge:  train your clients just as hard as they need to make them better, and no harder.  That's kind of what makes it fun and keeps my interest.

I'm interested in complete fitness.  Not only "Am I helping this person look better?" but "Am I helping make this person's body a more pleasant place to live?"  Hokey, sure, but much more sustainable as a year in, year out goal than "How deep are the cuts in my thighs?" 

I'm joining the effort to create a nation of what Eric Cressey calls 'workout snobs,' folks who understand the importance of all aspects of fitness and have a big enough arsenal of tools that they have some idea how to fix just about any problem that arises. 

To that end:  just briefly, I want to call your attention to two very un-sexy joints:  the wrists and ankles (I suppose their sexiness depends on whose wrists and whose ankles).  If you're dynamic stretching (and please tell me at this point that you are), you're probably spending most of your time on the shoulders and hips.  That's good, because they're complex joints and they take a lot of punishment in the average workout. 

But you're probably neglecting the smaller, less mobile joints that are actually on the front lines of any workout:  the ankles are closest to the floor (your training surface) and the wrists are (typically) closest to whatever load you're carrying--so those joints have got to be working right, because they're the ones who have to tell your brain where the floor is and where the weight is, important information when you're, say, deadlifting.

Given that, it makes sense that these distal (check the cool medical nomenclature!) joints are highly attuned to whatever's going on around them:  that the ankle is 'smart' and can 'talk' to the floor with fluency, and that the wrists can do the same for whatever's in your hands. 

How do you accomplish this?  It's not terribly hard:  just don't neglect your ankle-and-wrist mobility exercises.  Simple circles, in both directions, at these joints are a good, simple place to start, but here's the rub:  you've got to be present in these movements.  Meaning, if you're doing an ankle circle, that's all you're doing.  You're not talking to your workout partner,  You're not on your cell phone.  You're standing there, circling the ankle, staying aligned, relaxed and breathing.

You know how, when you're about to attempt a heavy deadlift, say, you get quiet, you slow down, you set up, you get yourself organized, you get your head right, you breathe forcefully, and then you make the pull?  You might not need that degree of focus when you do a wrist or ankle circle, but you still need to be in the movement.  You need to own it.  Only then will it have its desired effect. 

Eric Cobb has shown that you don't need high reps of a movement like an ankle circle if your reps are perfect and if you're focused.

It might not feel as fun or feel as effective as the big-effort lift, but it might prove to be one element of your fitness that your ignoring.  And it only takes 30 seconds.