I saw a great graphic this morning, posted on instagram by the awesome dancer/coach/thinker @yuenjon
Coach Will here. I love this image because it gets right to the heart of the big question … What should I do for fitness?
And I love the accompanying post because Jon's implied answer is so expansive (and correct IMO): …do whatever you want, first and foremost.
Movement is integral to humans because it literally is the embodiment of our ability to live, to go after the things we want and to be able to avoid the things that might do us harm.
So when Jon (or i) say that the fact that you DO move your body is much, much more important than HOW you move your body we are basing that on the aspects of each of us humans that are the same, the parts of our experience that overlap across every person (tho of course, not every part of every person...)
That is, we base it on our essential humanity.
And this means that the particular way that the innate drive to MOVE shows up in each of our individual modern lives—a time when survival is no longer linked to the movement of our body—is as varied and amazing as our socks, or our cooking, or our dreams.
So then why do I spend most of my time evangelizing for the practice of 'Mobility' training—which comes with the clear intention of altering HOW you move? (And why oh why does it need such a NON-sexy name?! sigh…)
The reason lies in this fact … all too often, movement doesn't show up in someone's life at all. And when it goes missing, all of the systems in our body that require mechanical—movement—inputs for function (which is… ALL of them) begin to degrade and break-down.
As the parts of the system run down, movement stops feeling quite as good. Maybe eventually it actually feels bad (like when we get injured).
At the heart of WHY movement stops feeling good is because one of the most crucial body components that degrades is our ability to feel ourselves.
...aka, the literal ability to notice sensation.
When you can't feel yourself clearly, on a sensation level, your brain is blind to all the possible ways you might find to move.
And with that blindness, the idea of movement gets less and less bright, exciting, pleasurable, motivating; in contrast, when the brain can "see" all the sensations of your body, it can find the most effective, most fun, "best" way to move YOUR body.
So what's the antidote? How do we reverse this negative sensation doom spiral....? We give the body more information, especially at it's edges. Which means, we give the body more experience (moving/working/training) at end range.
By introducing the body to it's 'boundaries' (the full range of motion of all of your joints), your brain now has a ton of useful, actionable information about what's possible to do in the world around it (aka around YOU).
Over time, and given enough information, your brain will absolutely figure out your particular movement need, your WHAT; my job is to help your brain get the information it needs to do this magic.
If moving and changing your body in this way sounds exciting or interesting I'd love to set up a call with you. (Book one by clicking HERE) …. I could seriously think and talk about this stuff all day...
In your corner, Will