How to Move Better

Monday we do chest, Tuesday we train back, Wednesday its shoulders…

If you have built a solid base after years of training and your primary focus is looking good naked, this can be a reasonable lifting split. But what about everybody else? Could there be a more effective way to reach most fitness goals?

The lifting split above focuses on muscles. Many on this will train the upper body 3-4 times in a week, while only training the lower body 1-2 times each week. The greater amount of upper body training could make one the stereotype big guy with chicken legs. This split also doesn’t burn as much energy as total body training does.

For someone new to fitness it lacks something else that is important. It doesn’t do much to help you move better. Sure there are probably some good exercises in that plan, but what if we focused on moving better?

A movement pattern is a skill. It starts in the brain, and requires all the associated joints and muscles to do specific actions in proper order. Starting from this we can define a few general patterns that cover the majority of human movement:

·         Squat

·         Bend at the Waist

·         Push with the Arms

·         Pull with the Arms

·         Walking/Running

Children have these hard wired, and through play they get better at moving. Unfortunately, most of us stop playing and sit. Inactivity destroys these skills. Movement becomes harder. This negative cycle keeps us sitting.

Injuries or asking the body to do something that it is not capable of doing alters or destroys the correct patterns which are replaced with a dysfunctional pattern. In the short term this is great. If we break a leg normal walking isn’t going to happen. With enough motivation (perhaps a hungry bear chasing us) we can still find a way to move. This is called a compensation pattern. In the long term compensation patterns do harm.

The human body is meant to move in specific ways. When it doesn’t, pain and unnecessary wear and tear can happen. People that have had back problems understand this well, bending at the waist now hurts and can re-aggravate the injury.

When someone new comes into Cascade Peak Performance, we use the Functional Movement Screen to assess how they move. Any faulty movement patterns we find can now be addressed in that person’s program.

For example, a faulty squat pattern there is likely to be a combination of tightness and weakness issues. Improving the active range of motion of the hips and ankles will help. Limitations in both joints can have a large effect on squatting. Next we practice the movement or simpler versions of the movement. Using a supported or partial range of motion can make it easy enough for any trainee to preform correctly.

As the corrected movement pattern improves intensity can be increased. Bending at the waist highlights this. If in the gym we only used bodyweight exercises to retrain that movement, what would happen when picking up a box off the ground? Load has now been applied to bending at the waist, but the new correct pattern will fail because it has not been prepared for that intensity. Without being trained to handle any loading, the faulty pattern takes over and the problems that it caused return.

Ignoring the importance of movement patterns makes getting in shape much harder than it needs to be. Poor movement causes unnecessary strain, pain and fatigue. Exercise becomes a bad experience opposed to the uplifting and energizing activity that it should be. Avoid this by identifying problems at the start of a fitness program. Rebuild and retrain healthy movement. Then get as strong as possible.