With all the hybridization going on in the movement and fitness community, it's hard to keep up with what's popular versus what's useful. For every imagination that gets let out into the world with a trainer credential, there's a marketing ploy to disseminate their mash-up to the boredom-avoidance mavens labeled as "creative," "fresh," or "new."
Newsflash: the really *boring* stuff can get you pretty far along in life. For example: sitting on a cushion paying attention to your breath--it's been around for thousands of years. It works. Picking up heavy things off the ground and becoming strong--it too works--not flashy, but effective.
As long as we've been moving our bodies, we've been discovering ourselves. We started moving when we were born, when we gravitated towards mother's breast, we moved away from danger. We moved.
We moved and we learned something about ourselves. We learned what was possible.
Daniel Wolpert's TED talk should pack it up nicely.
In sum, we have brains so that we can move. Emotions are chemical instructions on how to move our body and how to relate to our environment. Later, language develops and can help us develop movements that go well beyond those preverbal chemical instructions designed merely for survivalist function. Imagine a dancer who is in no threat or danger and dances for the sheer loveliness of the act; he or she has developed complexity well beyond limbic, animal survival.
So is there a trend now to mash up Kinesiological 101 biomechanics ideology and isolation exercises largely from the
sport of bodybuilding, wherein representing a well-proportioned physique is important aesthetically, and inserting this into the movement and awareness practices? When we take an isolation approach to a muscle or muscle group, we find that it doesn't have a robust impact on quality of movement. In fact, muscle functioning can change dramatically during the course of a movement--for example, some hip muscles can play the role of extensors or flexors depending on the flexion level of the hip.
All this to say: The brain understands movement not muscles.
So we might ask: When we train a muscle to "fire" are we simply improving our ability to mindfully connect to a muscle or do we hope to improve our quality or complexity of movement [carryover]? When we "activate our glute," have we asked the question why it is inhibited at all?
Why did I stop moving?
"You will inhibit your glutes in many situations because you don’t have the available range of motion in the hip. It’s not because the glutes can’t be fired, but it would be inefficient to fire a glute near the end range because micro-trauma and damage of the joint could occur" [Gray Cook].
Let's consider why we have introduced isolation, a reductionist approach to the body. Does the focus on a muscle group truly improve movement quality or is this a way to lose ourselves in the minutia of muscular phenomenology? If we have come to the point wherein we're sniper-targeting muscle groups to create [enriched] interest or [processed] focus, is it possible our movement diet is not supplying us with whole nutrition? Playing frisbee in the park, running a sprint, kayaking, skateboarding, or stand up paddle boarding, and then going back to movement and awareness practices will yield richness beyond our imagination because we have dined on variety already. We learned what more is possible when we climbed ropes and took a gymnastics class; the "interest" supplements have been taken care of by movement rich lives. Go do interesting things and enjoy boring--it's good for you!
Newsflash: the really *boring* stuff can get you pretty far along in life. For example: sitting on a cushion paying attention to your breath--it's been around for thousands of years. It works. Picking up heavy things off the ground and becoming strong--it too works--not flashy, but effective.
As long as we've been moving our bodies, we've been discovering ourselves. We started moving when we were born, when we gravitated towards mother's breast, we moved away from danger. We moved.
We moved and we learned something about ourselves. We learned what was possible.
Daniel Wolpert's TED talk should pack it up nicely.
In sum, we have brains so that we can move. Emotions are chemical instructions on how to move our body and how to relate to our environment. Later, language develops and can help us develop movements that go well beyond those preverbal chemical instructions designed merely for survivalist function. Imagine a dancer who is in no threat or danger and dances for the sheer loveliness of the act; he or she has developed complexity well beyond limbic, animal survival.
So is there a trend now to mash up Kinesiological 101 biomechanics ideology and isolation exercises largely from the
sport of bodybuilding, wherein representing a well-proportioned physique is important aesthetically, and inserting this into the movement and awareness practices? When we take an isolation approach to a muscle or muscle group, we find that it doesn't have a robust impact on quality of movement. In fact, muscle functioning can change dramatically during the course of a movement--for example, some hip muscles can play the role of extensors or flexors depending on the flexion level of the hip.
All this to say: The brain understands movement not muscles.
So we might ask: When we train a muscle to "fire" are we simply improving our ability to mindfully connect to a muscle or do we hope to improve our quality or complexity of movement [carryover]? When we "activate our glute," have we asked the question why it is inhibited at all?
Why did I stop moving?
"You will inhibit your glutes in many situations because you don’t have the available range of motion in the hip. It’s not because the glutes can’t be fired, but it would be inefficient to fire a glute near the end range because micro-trauma and damage of the joint could occur" [Gray Cook].
Let's consider why we have introduced isolation, a reductionist approach to the body. Does the focus on a muscle group truly improve movement quality or is this a way to lose ourselves in the minutia of muscular phenomenology? If we have come to the point wherein we're sniper-targeting muscle groups to create [enriched] interest or [processed] focus, is it possible our movement diet is not supplying us with whole nutrition? Playing frisbee in the park, running a sprint, kayaking, skateboarding, or stand up paddle boarding, and then going back to movement and awareness practices will yield richness beyond our imagination because we have dined on variety already. We learned what more is possible when we climbed ropes and took a gymnastics class; the "interest" supplements have been taken care of by movement rich lives. Go do interesting things and enjoy boring--it's good for you!
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