Movement is a word that’s gaining a huge amount of momentum.
get it?
Momentum…..movement……?
No?
Ok, less puns, more blogging…..
Yesterday I had a lad in for an Assessment.
He told me that his goal was to move better. And that he knows that martial arts people know how to move.
Here’s a young Jet Li putting us all to shame:
Yesterdays client’s own training, while having gotten him very strong, has also left him immobile, muscle bound.
Which is all too common.
And this is something that has always bothered me, ever since I first picked up a barbell.
Back when I started in the weight room, the goal was to get stronger, faster and more powerful to become better at Karate. I knew that the only way to be good at karate was to train karate, but that being stronger might allow me be better.
And it did.
I got faster, I developed power and my goals were realised.
Gym work allowed me move better.
Getting my Kenpo 1st Dan in 2001
So why are so many now moving so poorly?
And why on the back of this has the whole “Movement” thing springboarded itself into the mainstream?
Obviously the Conor McGregor / Ido Portal thing is a big part.
But even before that people were cottoning on to the idea of mobility practice, yoga type flows, animal movements etc.
These are all things that were always part of training back in the day, but somewhere along the line they dropped out of fashion.
Is it mere correlation that as the “Fitness industry” grew, the well rounded training approach went out the window.
As the Strength Coach became ever more popular and people wanted bigger and bigger numbers in the “functional” lifts aka the Big 3
As research grew around the most prevalent training techniques but not so much around the more esoteric / unorthodox stuff.
People moved away from well rounded training and became pseudo-powerlifters or faux-strongmen. Strong in the big barbell lifts, in the sagittal plane but useless outside.
Back in the day, weights were lifted in order to improve an athletes performance in sport. Now weights are lifted in lieu of sport.
Yeah, whatever
Peoples sporting practice offered the 3 dimensional, dynamic, chaotic movement that the human animal requires in order to thrive.
Now people just go to the gym and lift in straight lines, never expressing that strength anywhere else.
So when former gymnasts started posting their practices on youtube & instagram. As did wrestlers, BJJ players and MMA fighters. As did dancers, and Yogi’s
Here’s former gymnast turned Judo and movement junkie, Ryan Hurst of Gold Medal Bodies:
A video posted by Ryan Hurst (@ryhurst) on Dec 23, 2015 at 6:24pm PST
People started to take notice.
They saw that there’s more to life than the basic lifts, that the body is more than just a hoist for lifting iron.
That developing strength, mobility and endurance is far from an ends in itself.
It is only a means to an end.
The human animal needs 3 dimensional, chaotic movement.
It needs to make take that strength and make it reactive, responsive by dealing with the unpredictability of sport.
Movement as it’s currently being viewed is almost the perfect answer.
Build strength and mobility, then test it with animal moves, gymnastic drills and surprise surprise, martial arts drills.
Just like we’ve been doing at WG-Fit for like, ever!
Movement is is how we express our fitness and our physicality.
Your movement may be Rugby, it maybe Muay Thai, it may be mountain running, it may be playing with your kids.
But move.
It’s what we were built for.
It got forgotten for a while there, but it’s back.
You don’t need to pay an online coach a small fortune, movement is free, it’s simple.
So simple that kids do it better than anyone.
But developing the body that has the potential to move, well that’s where you may need some help.
You know who to call in that regard.
Don’t you?
Regards
Dave Hedges www.WG-Fit.com
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