Fundamentals Of Movement - Movement Blogs

How To Improve Quality Of Movement

12/26/2015

The majority of people can walk in the street. A small percentage of these people to which we call athletes can also perform other types of movement, and a small percentage out of these can have the control of a higher percentage of their muscles to perform complex movements, manipulating their body against the environment and do what we call 'tricks' with their bodies. Out of these few people who can do tricks, very few can say they have suppleness and fine control of their body.

Many start their journey into movement qualities once becoming aware of their own physical limitations. Many do some improvements, become a bit more efficient within the borders of their lifestyles, not wanting to invest in major changes, and not being aware of how long the road goes. The saying goes that the more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know.

In modern life we have important commodities, be it good food, nice place to stay, important relationships, work conditions, money, vacations, transportation etc. These are important external things that might not seem influenced by how well we move, or how healthy we get, and they very well might not. It is the way we and our ancestors have designed our society, call it the incentive system we've implemented, going through different templates as our modern system evolved. The sad thing is that we have a bigger percentage of obesity and sickness, and a higher percent of sadness, mental health issues, broken marriages and dissatisfaction. Some people think that mental health and mental resilience are not linked to physical health. I have to disagree!

When compared with our hunter gatherer ancestors, as they were spreading throughout the planet, you know they were a very capable group of people, very different then what we've become. You can only imagine how connected we used to be with our bodies as a society back then.

There are many sports and healthy practices. When being asked to recommend sporting activities for kids, I always tell parents about gymnastics or classical ballet, the type of systems that later in life allow people to excel in many movement fields. Though there are many other fields, like certain martial arts and circus arts, at the end of the day it comes down to the awareness of the teacher teaching the material, the level that teacher has reached, his ability to convert it onto the students, and the ability of the practitioner to recognize that level.

I'm just putting this out here, I hope it helps someone to make a better decision

The Value Of Strength

12/26/2015

I've been seeing people working hard at getting specific Strength feats, whether it'd be Planches, Levers or various Handstands, as well as various maneuvers between those strength skills. Some people been employing these in order to get an advantage for their already established field of practice, while others try to achieve these road block in and of themselves.

Strength is a task specific/ alignment specific quality.

There are many different strength factors such as Endurance Strength, Flexibility Strength, Speed Strength and others.
Many people would say Strength is the most important factor in adaptability for new movements and sports, and for success within certain fields. Truth is that coordination is also just as an important factor for the ability to adapt well to new movement patterns and types, and both should be directly addressed for general adaptability.

Some patterns of strength will translate to other activities better then others. For the purpose of some activities, strength in relation to body mass (Relative Strength) will be the determining factor. For other sports it will be maximal strength, or the ability to produce strength in regardless of body mass.

Another big factor is the pattern of muscle recruitment, some body alignments within certain over all planning, will give the types of strength that could translate easier to many activities, where other types of strength might have a more narrow application. The best type of strength development for conditioning purposes would be the type that makes the closest mimic to the aplication of it.

The progress I've been seeing is still at an early phase and there is still lots of things to learn, I been seeing a growing awareness for balance in the practice in order to avoid imbalances that lead to injuries. That is a blessed direction, which deserves much more work. Another thing I've been noticing is the ease with which people adopt to the new pattern, Majority of people are all looking to acquire the same strength skills as road blocks, while there are so many other great skills to acquire that are worth the while (if you look at gymnastics where we take many of these strength skills, not everybody is a rings specialist). For example, look at the Thomas flares from Gymnastics, I have hardly seen fitness people working on that one, many people would like to develop great straight arm strength and are approaching the gymnastics rings for it. But how about static explosive strength under full body load, landing on the elbows for the intensity you only get with the Thomas Flares.

It is a big picture, there is a lot to be able to think with it, everything is individual, and there is much more material to explore then what we have seen so far.

We live in an exciting era, where we get to see where the fitness industry is being lead to. It has a gynormous potential to effect people's approach to training, and it's place in our lives. To my view it should be the answer for the "boxed" (as in a box) lifestyles many of us are living, and not just another "boxed" necessity.

Working with Strength And Skill

12/26/2015

The right balance between those two can be very elusive, unless it is clearly a strength skill. For most other bodily skills, the better you get at it, the less strength it requires.

People that engage in a high strength practice with little or no skill involved, be usually more in the category of fitness people, while people that fully engage in skill work would be ranging from artists to athletes.

But other then categorizing people, strength is generally known as one of the biggest factors that determines improvement in a sport, and adaptability to new patterns. Strength does help in the first steps of acquiring new skill, before higher efficiency sets in and strength become less of a factor. Which also mean that weaker people could acquire it with more patience.

Strength and flexibility also play a big part in injury prevention. Flexibility in yielding to unexpected impacts and strength for joint stability.

For fitness people, getting into skill work might not be a requirement of their field, but it always broaden their perspective and understanding of their field and would have a big impact on their coordination and quality of performance even in their fitness field, if only due to the fact that the central nerves system gets so much more developed in this type of activity.

For skill people, strength work could offer a bridge to brake through plateaus, but here it is much more individualized and the main purpose should be kept strongly in mind, it is a matter of a fine balance and setting clear goals, or even periodic goals to allow measuring the progress throughout the years.

Function

12/26/2015

Little kids are such bouncy spirits, they are not so focused on their bodies, their body is only there to function and express themselves. It doesn't take much focus on its own. Similar to animals.

As we grow older seem we are more and more conscious of our body, specially if it give us hard times. I don't think that is a necessary process, at least not as long as the body keeps its original purpose, as a mean for an end and not the end in and of itself. We should allow ourselves to stay free spirits true to our nature and not bogged down by this material body.

Keep your function strong!

Capoeira

12/26/2015

The Capoeira game is a complex body dialog, most people that never done Capoeira will have hard time understanding what they are seeing. And for a complex game like this even Capoeira practitioners have hard time seeing all that is happening.

It is a fight like game, where in the more advanced level every single move or gesture would have a reason, be that getting to a better strategical position, marking an attack, or escaping.

When an attack become real it might slow down the interaction having to wait a player to recover and taking away from density of the game, but that does need to happen sometimes in order to keep the game real.

Let's see if you can find the reasons for each move here, and if you are more advanced, can you find the subtleties.

The fine line between Form and Art

12/26/2015

Since the 70's and 80's 'fitness' had become mainstream, with the desire to look better, whatever that means, and the advance of bodybuilding.

Nowdays while fitness is still strong, seem like people have found that sport rather empty and are now looking into movement, bettering movement, whatever that means.

And I'm just thinking... The real beauty of the body, the real magic, and where the value is, is in the expression, you can say art.

Looks and movement is form, a mean to an end and meaningless by itself. It is the content that is interesting.

It seem like people are so invested in this form and that one, that the reason behind the form get obscured and forgotten.

Physical culture used to be about health, bodybuilding eliminated that aspect.

Health introduced balance and host of beautiful concepts but the world left that behind..

form has triumphed over content, and love has lost its meaning.

Amir Solsky.

Mediocrity in Training

12/26/2015

Resistance training with body weight follows many similar principles to training with weights.
Everybody knows that going to the gym can have an effect. We've all seen the Body Builder and the such or the Aerobics Instructor. Yet many people go to the gym for years and experience no major changes.

On the one hand people say "I don't want to be a workout fanatic, I want balance in my life". On the other hand people cling to various excuses, like bad genetics, and others.

Resistance training with body weight isn't different than the gym in this regard. If you are not willing to make the lifestyle changes to support the practice, giving all that you got, don't be surprised if the years go by, and you spend countless hours in the gym watching other people tone up and getting stronger while you stay the same.

It isn't a matter of fanaticism, or even of balance in life. It is a matter of the scientific effort it takes to get results. If you are not willing to make a change, extend a real effort, make a sacrifice, then don't be surprised and don't look for excuses when you get 10% of the results possible from your form of training.

It does take sound nutrition to succeed, since love by itself is not sufficient in providing all the building blocks of a healthy body for most people.

If you are willing to spend hours training, be willing to make some dietary and lifestyle changes to support it.

It is a very important path, taking care of this body you were given tends to change peoples perspective and appreciation for other things and improve the probability of a satisfying lifetime.

People now days want to do less for themselves and get more. Nothing wrong with being efficient, but how about doing that and doing more.

Find a path that makes sense to you, and follow it with all that you got, holding back on it, is holding back from yourself. Give it your whole for a few months, then look back and ask yourself if it was worth it. Most likely you will just dive back in harder.

Amir Solsky.

"Cardio" vs. High Intensity Interval Training.

12/26/2015

Or LISS (Low Intensity Steady State Cardio) vs. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) Simply put, "Cardio" is bad for you.

It make you produce a stress hormone called Cortisol, which in turn break down muscle (and make you gain fat). Also it usually pound the joints to dust since your muscles are too loose to absorb the impact. all in all, surely an inferior practice.

In HIIT on the other hand your muscles absorb the shocks of the movement and take away unnecessary and floppy load off of your joints. Hence, muscles get stronger. The body secrete androgen which are helpful hormones that help build muscle and burn fat in addition for increasing libido (so that after your workout you are in a more energized social mood).

Heart rate go higher then in the low intensity version, which improve cardiac vascular systems to a much better extent. And you can instal better patterns of movement that can help with other skill work, since the many repetition performed are that much more controlled.

For further information and comparison between the two, click here:"http://www.simplyshredded.com/cardio-for-fat-loss-high-intensity-interval-training-cardio-vs-low-intensity-steady-state-cardio.html

Amir Solsky.

Strategy In Training

12/26/2015

physical achievements is riddled with fear of failing to achieve objectives. With every successful practice, meal or decision, we enforce our faith in succeeding and arriving to our destination. Investing in a commitment to a long term strategy of practice, nutrition, and education help pounding that fear to further away territories.
If you're not into over achieving is for a different story...

Amir Solsky.

Keeping safe while training

12/26/2015

Over the time I spent in the fitness industry I couldn’t count how many times I saw that guy in the gym, at the beach, or elsewhere come up with all sorts of creative resistance work. Some times there would be interesting qualities to those, but mostly he would be a reason for mockery among the viewers.

Truth is that as obvious as this case is, it is hard not to justify the reputation that training has achieved, as far as the health benefit verses the risk of injury or creation of weakness and various wrong/overuse syndromes.

As a rule of thumb exercising should throw the body out of balance, where the body can eventually super compensate and find a new balance within a stronger structure. when the structure is weakened without getting stronger the work load isn’t a proper one.
With that said there are specific alignments for loading the body with resistance, and there is a lot of structural knowledge needed in order to do so safely.

Here is part of a conversation I had with one of my online trainees:

Me :
“Well performance on the squats, I would slowly lower you to a full squat as these are called half squat, that way you get to work the pelvic floor muscle and it has many other benefits over the half squats. that is as long as we don't lose form, form is the main thing.
As far as the Dead-lifts, I would avoid it for now, you are putting lots of pressure on your lower back (L3, L4, L5, S1) for the fact that your back is rounded at the bottom and your hip a bit protracted, it should be retracted.

I will give you a warm up mobilization routine that will help you articulate those hip angles.

When the Hip is retracted and the back extended, the erector spinae muscle takes the load. the way you do it most of the load falls on the disc, vertebrates and rest of the structure in a way that can cause disc issues.”

Tom:
“Hi Amir,

That's fair enough....I knew I wasn't quite going full range on the squats. I didn't honestly realize I was rounding my back on the deadlifts...but yeah, if we have to avoid those exercises for now so be it. I won't say I'm happy about it - I quite like doing them - but I am happy to take a step backwards in order to take 2 forwards, and obviously being able to do them with great form and most importantly safely is definitely two (or many more!) steps forward. “

Me:
“I wanted to see those lifts cause there are different approaches about the execution on them, some actually promote rounding the back at the bottom, especially with SLDL, saying if you don't have a problem in the back then it's not an issue.
I am sided with those who call this practice “hanging by your back ligaments.”, I believe that this movement is a natural one when it's unloaded, but loading your body this heavy I believe should only be directed to strong structure that is supported by the flexed muscles.
With that said I like dead lifts a lot myself, but I would just want to see proper back technique, one that I wouldn't have to worry could lead to issues.
Again, this is just commenting on the video of what you been doing, regardless of the program that i am putting together for you.
There are lots of ways to work these muscles, and I will choose the ones that would bring you to your goals the fastest, and it is good to change exercises in any how once you might got adapted to them.”

The lower back has an interesting structure, the disc between the vertebrates often compared to donuts where once flexed under some pressure could squeeze its content toward the spinal cord in various ways resulting in different issues that many people have unknowingly.

Sitting in a chair with the natural curvature of the spine will add %40 pressures on the lower back as the lower joints are not involved in bearing this pressure, where leaning forward will make it % 90 pressures and that even before loading your upper body with weights as you guys like to do at the gym.

And this regards only a few of the problematic joints.
Tom (fake name) was a competitive athlete with lots of knowledge about training and very nice ability. As you can see there is a lot of knowledge to be learned, mistakes could cost not only in health, but also in bad patterns that would inhibit development and take longer time to change then it takes a beginner to learn.

The lesson to learn is when coming to developing skills, fitness or health, if you are not a hundred percent sure about the safety of your practice (and even if you are sure about it as you can see), make sure to find a good practitioner to help you out. Certificates are nice, but I find personally more important the ability to demonstrate personal results as well as results with other people.

If there ever was an investment that gives back the most for your money, it’s your health.