Mastering Movement: How to Build a Strong, Supple, and Useful Body
Exercise needs to be reframed as movement.
Which movements build a strong, supple, and useful body?
Which movements are essential for a long and healthy life?
It is time to ditch the fancy contraptions and joint crushing weights. Embrace natural body motions that support strong bones and muscles, preserve joints and tendons, and progress through a natural range of movement.
Healthy movements improve mobility, build muscular strength, and increase cardiovascular endurance. They also need to be enjoyable. Not all movements will be anxiously anticipated prior to a movement session, but all movements should serve the end goal of an increased healthspan - the part of life when someone is generally in good health. Ditch the exercise mindset and reframe movement into a physical expression of human movement that will improve quality of life for decades to come.
A healthy body is mobile, agile, balanced, coordinated, strong, and lean. It can pass through a full range of motion at the joints, move effortless on land and in water, maintain balance on a variety of surfaces, move heavy objects safely and effectively, play sports and participate in games, defend itself in a challenging situation, and perform the basic human movements required for activities in everyday life - squat down, push up, pull up, lift an object off the ground, and carry an object for distance.
Strength training is generally associated with lifting weights. This is a very narrow view of building strength, and leaves little latitude in designing a well-rounded strength training program as part of a healthy movement program.
Another challenge is that strength training is linked to how much weight a person can move. Increasing measurable strength does not necessarily correlate to improved movement or physical health.
It is useful to reframe strength training as training for functional strength - strength that can be applied to daily performance. As an example, using the leg extension machine in a gym will build muscular strength and size in the leg. It will not, however, do much to improve functional strength in the legs.
Functional strength requires a symphony of balance, coordination, and reciprocal muscles working in concert to move the body in an efficient and effective manner. Humans do not jump by simply flexing the knee; they use the hip, knee, and ankle joints to load the legs and spring upward.
Train movements, not muscles.
Training muscles in isolation - working from a single joint (e.g. biceps curl) - creates incorrect motor programming and causes confusion for the muscles and the brain. This is because the muscles are asked to do one motion in training, then another motion in life. Muscles work together as part of an integrated unit; they should be trained in a similar manner.
Strength training is a means to an end, not an end itself. Start by developing healthy movement pattens using just bodyweight exercises (i.e. push ups, pull ups, air squats, toe touches). This will develop strength along with the balance, proprioception, and synergistic muscles needed to allow for proper progression and preparation for more challenging resistance.
Another great way to train functional strength is through movements that use multiple joints, in multiple planes of motion like working diagonally and rotationally. Using tools like kettlebells and dumbbells (or medium-sized rocks!) allow for these large, multi-directional/-planar movements while working just one side of the body. This will simultaneously improve strength while challenging balance and stabilization across the body.
