Whole body movement - be ready for life
Why do I choose to move in the ways I do?
My movement choices in life have 4 key aims:
To be able to do the things I want to do in life and not feel that my body’s movement capability is restricting those choices
To feel good in my body and confident in its movements
To avoid going back into pain and injury as far as possible
To achieve 1-3 for every last decade of my life to be as independent as I can
Practicality in movement ‘training’
One of the things I struggle with is practising exercises or movement patterns that I don't feel have obvious uses in regular daily movement. Some things I've done in the past and even some things I still occasionally do, feel very reductionist in nature and repetitive.
When I can't imagine myself doing the movement in nature or around the house, I find it less easy to engage with the movement as I find myself thinking, ‘Why are we doing this again?’ If I don't know and can’t guess the answer, I quickly become disengaged.
I was instantly hooked when I found natural movement, on realising that all the movement patterns I was practising could be used in daily life. The focus of training natural movements was about all-round capability…becoming a better ‘general’ mover, rather than a ‘specialist’. This made me realise the list of different patterns humans are capable of using, but rarely do, because of our modern world set up and the long list of social norms it hadn’t even occurred to me, were restricting my movement choices.
I realised that improving my general movement capability, knowing where my strengths but, more importantly, my weaknesses were (and therefore where I could try to improve) was far more beneficial to me in both the short and long-term. It’s not very helpful getting better at the things you’re good at if you’re ignoring those you find more difficult, as your overall movement capability will not really be improving.
This is where ‘whole body movement’ comes in
What are whole-body movements? When a movement pattern involves using more than one area of your body through a kinetic chain (a co-ordinated chain of movement of your joints and muscles to create the appropriate forces to complete the task), you are mobilising and strengthening multiple areas all at once. These can be movements that either use only the weight of your own body (like when you get up from the ground, walk or jump) or that help you bear additional weight (e.g. when you lift and carry things).
Use it or lose it
Training the full spectrum of all the natural movements we are born with, helps us to condition the body to not only be effective, but to become efficient and adaptable for all life’s physical demands, particularly as we age.
Be ready for whatever life throws at us
To be truly adaptable to any unexpected ‘real-life’ situation, like avoiding a fall when we catch an uneven surface, having to suddenly run out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, or having to carry something heavier than we normally would over a long distance, we need to recruit many areas of our body simultaneously.
Whole-body movement training helps us to build that physical and mental (in terms of being confident we can) capability.
Efficiency in movement training time
If you struggle to carve out time to ‘train’ specific movement patterns, then the fact that natural movement training can also fit into ‘real life’ has the added benefit of being ‘time-saving’! Although I actually do enjoy ‘training sessions’ that I know many don’t, I still also like the feeling of killing two few birds with one stone when I move more by stacking healthy movements on top of daily tasks.
To add them into your day, think of movements that require bending, twisting, pulling, pushing, getting up and down from the ground, moving on the ground (eg crawling), lowering into a deep squat, moving at low levels, traversing objects, lifting, carrying and even fun, playful movements like jumping, climbing and hanging (very rarely used practically, but feel so good nonetheless!).
A plethora of useful benefits in ‘real-life’
Gain better mobility - movements that involve stretching, reaching, twisting and creating unusual ‘shapes’ in the body improve the body’s mobility which is essential for maintaining joint health and therefore reducing the risk of injuries, particularly as we age.
Improve your strength - carrying shopping, moving furniture, lifting (grand)children, lifting bags of compost, carrying bags without wheels, moving house. Generally enlisting the use of a few of the larger muscle groups means you are ‘training’ your body efficiently as you’re promoting muscle growth in key areas.
Improve your coordination - balancing movements to avoid falling, crawling patterns to aid upright movements such walking, running and jumping. This brain-body connection training improves our ability for our brain to know accurately where our body is in space (our proprioception) and to recruit the relevant muscles to keep it safe.
Mindfulness - when we’re using movements that often involve co-ordination, strength and mobility training all at once, we have to concentrate hard to ensure we avoid falling, or to improve the level of control in our movements. This is great for escaping other thoughts that may otherwise take us out of the body and into the mind.
Core activation - this can be done without having to bash out reps & sets of traditionally recognised exercises such as ‘sit ups’, as most whole-body movement patterns need the core to be engaged to stabilise the body and keep us balanced. The knock-on effects are pelvic floor health, better breathing and spinal stability during complex multi-dimensional movements.
Hearth health - elevating your heart rate with whole-body movement patterns, whether through more challenging longer training sessions or frequent short bouts of functional movements such as getting off the ground, walking up the stairs or carrying your shopping all help your fitness levels and ability to tolerate doing more difficult things for longer.
Choose natural movement
For all these reasons, whole-body movements in natural movement are something I feel passionately about and have adopted myself as a way of moving through life that steers all my daily movement choices.
If you’d like to hear more about how to start building natural movement into your daily life and be coached through some useful movements, then join my 5 Day Course, ‘Move more naturally to feel better’ from 11-15 September 2023 by clicking here or listening to the course introduction on YouTube below.
For all the course details and to sign up go to ‘Move wit RM’ in the main menu and select ‘5 Day Course’ in the drop-down menu or click this link:
