Tag: athletics

Natural Movement and Contralateral Reciprocation: A Perfect Harmony

Posted on by Michael Devon

When we talk about natural human movement, one of the most fascinating and essential concepts is contralateral reciprocation. This is the biomechanical process where opposite limbs (e.g., right arm and left leg) move in sync during activities like walking and running. It’s a fundamental aspect of how our bodies are designed to move, playing a key role in balance, coordination, and efficiency.

What Is Contralateral Reciprocation?

Contralateral reciprocation refers to the natural, coordinated movement of opposite sides of the body during locomotion. For example, when you take a step with your left leg, your right arm swings forward. This movement pattern is not random; it’s an integrated response that our nervous system has developed over millions of years of evolution.

This coordination allows us to move more efficiently and maintain balance. As one leg swings forward, the opposite arm counterbalances it, reducing the amount of twisting or rotating forces on the spine. This not only makes our movement smoother but also conserves energy, enabling us to walk or run for longer periods without tiring as quickly.

The Biological Basis:

Contralateral movement is deeply rooted in our nervous system. The brain and spinal cord are designed to coordinate these opposite limb movements through a network of neurons and reflexes. When one limb moves, signals are automatically sent to the opposite side of the body to engage the corresponding muscles.

This cross-body communication is what makes activities like walking and running feel natural and effortless. It’s also why these movements are prioritized in our workouts, as they are deeply embedded in our motor patterns.

The Importance of Contralateral Reciprocation in Daily Life:

In everyday life, contralateral reciprocation is essential for efficient and effective movement. It helps us maintain balance when walking on uneven surfaces, navigate obstacles, and even perform complex tasks that require full-body coordination.

Training and reinforcing contralateral movement patterns can enhance athletic performance, improve posture, and reduce the risk of injury. Exercises that emphasize cross-body movements can help fine-tune these natural patterns, ensuring that our bodies move as they are designed to.

Benefits of Embracing Natural Movement

By focusing on and enhancing contralateral reciprocation, we can achieve numerous benefits:

– **Improved Coordination:** Reinforcing these natural movement patterns sharpens overall coordination and motor skills, making everyday tasks easier and more efficient.

  

– **Better Balance:** Contralateral movements help distribute weight more evenly across the body, reducing the risk of falls and improving stability.

  

– **Enhanced Athletic Performance:** Athletes who train with an emphasis on contralateral movement patterns often experience better performance in activities that require full-body coordination, such as running.

– **Injury Prevention:** Proper contralateral movement reduces strain on the spine and joints, decreasing the likelihood of overuse injuries.

Contralateral reciprocation is a powerful reminder of the elegance and efficiency of natural human movement. By understanding and embracing this fundamental aspect of our biology, we can move through the world with greater ease, balance, and grace. Whether you’re walking, running, or training, paying attention to the harmony between your limbs can unlock the full potential of your body’s natural movement capabilities.

Your Guide to Squats

Posted on by Michael Devon

It’s time to educate yourself on the relevance of the squat. Prioritizing this movement in your training routine when it makes up a small amount of daily movement, neglects movements that you do majority of the time, like walking. Think about it… outside of the gym how many times a day do you squat compared to how many steps you take?

We aren’t kangaroos, we’re humans. We move around by transferring our weight from one leg to another in a contralateral pattern. Whereas a squat is going to keep your legs confined to a bilateral position. We aren’t saying squats aren’t important, but in the real world when you need to bend over and pick something up it happens a fraction of the time, it usually doesn’t happen repetitively, and you’re doing it for a specific purpose that normally doesn’t make up your entire day (unless your job or sport requires that, but we’re talking about general function).

When you use the squat as an exercise, you’re performing it for numerous reps with the intent to build muscle and get stronger. The problem with using squats (or any bilateral/sagittal based exercise) as the bulk of your leg training is that you’re building arbitrary muscle mass, meaning it doesn’t serve a purpose. The strength you built doesn’t carry over outside of the squat pattern, so the way your body moves most (ie; walking) doesn’t have the support it needs.

Come train with our trainers to learn how to build muscle that aligns with it’s function. Carrying over the strength you build in the gym to a stronger body outside of the gym. You’re human, it’s time you start training like one.

The Kinetic Chain

Posted on by Michael Devon

MUSCLE INTEGRATION MAKES UP EFFICIENT MOVEMENT. THIS IS BECAUSE ALL OF OUR MUSCLES ARE LINKED THROUGH THE KINETIC CHAIN. IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT HAPPENS IN ONE AREA OF THE BODY HAS A DIRECT OR INDIRECT EFFECT ELSEWHERE.

THE POWER OF THE KINETIC CHAIN CAN MAKE MOVEMENT THERAPEUTIC BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE KNEE PAIN, THE PAIN COULD BE CAUSED BY WEAK GLUTES. SO BY STRENGTHENING THE GLUTES, YOU RESOLVE YOUR KNEE PAIN.

IMAGINE YOUR KINETIC CHAIN LIKE A ROW TEAM, WHEN ALL YOUR TEAMMATES ARE ROWING AND DOING THEIR PART, THE BOAT MOVES WITH LESS EFFORT. BUT WHEN ONE OF THE ROWERS ISN’T DOING THEIR JOB, IT PUTS MORE RESPONSIBILITY ON THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE TEAM. THE TEAM GETS TIRED FASTER, BECAUSE EACH MEMBER GETS OVER WORKED,

WHEN LINKS ARE WEAK AND NOT DOING THEIR JOB (LIKE THE ROW TEAM ANALOGY), MOTOR COMPENSATIONS DRIVE YOUR MOVEMENTS. WHEN YOU DON’T MOVE WITH OPTIMAL MECHANICS YOU RISK INJURY AND REPETITIVE  DYSFUNCTIONAL MECHANICS LEAD TO PAIN.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO GET YOUR KINETIC CHAIN LINKED UP AND FUNCTIONING LIKE A ROW TEAM THATS IN SYNCH. WHEN YOU EXERCISE IN A WAY THAT ADDRESSES THE WHOLE SYSTEM AND THE WAY IT INTERCONNECTS, YOU BUILD MUSCLE FOR THE WAY YOUR BODY IS GOING TO USE IT IN REAL WORLD CONDITIONS.

 

A Different Kind Of Gym

Posted on by Michael Devon

What makes our gym different from other gyms? Why do our trainers utilize the Functional Patterns training system? We’ll answer that by looking at the way humans were conditioned through evolution.

Over millions of years the human body evolved to do 4 things with precision, that other animals can’t do. As humans, we stand upright on both legs, we walk and run upright on both legs, and we throw overhead.

These functions were necessary for survival- running from predators, throwing spears to kill prey and feed ourselves, and walking long distances to migrate to better climates, all while standing upright.

As a result of these movements in our early years, our muscles learned to contract a specific way to support these necessary actions and the repetitive contractions shaped our muscles and gave them the tone that we have today.

The reason our trainers learn and teach Functional Patterns is because the foundation of this training system, recognizes and respects these 4 fundamental functions with all of the exercises. It’s a system that was created for humans that reinforces the way the human body evolved to move and exist.

As we train these fundamental functions, our bodies learn to move in line with our ancestral movement patterns. The result is strength on a wide scale because the body is learning to create muscle to support the way it moves everyday- the same way humans have moved everyday for several million years.

We run into trouble when we perform exercises that break the mold that shaped us. Our muscles learn functions that it doesn’t need and forgets functions that supports the way the body naturally moves. This results in aches, pains, and injuries because the body is out of its element and muscles fight through and compensate in ways they didn’t evolve to.

Working out, exercising, training, lifting, whatever you want to call it should NOT cause pain or only make you strong in the gym. It should enhance your natural functions, so other functions come along for the ride, and without all the drama. It’s not normal to wake up with aches every day, live with pain, or chronically work around injuries.

The right kind of training (backed by the 4 fundamental human functions) will provide strength, mobility, and endurance for any scenario. Once your body is functional (by the above standards), that function carries over to activity, performance, and general movement to support your body without fearing pain or risking injury. That is what fitness is.

If you want to be functional and fit for your life apart from the gym, now and in the long run, train with the above in mind. If you need help figuring out what exactly that means, and you want to feel what an exercise feels like when executed correctly, instead of just copying the movement from YouTube or a “fitness” app then contact us today. Call, stop by, or book online to try your first introductory session!

Want Strong Muscles? Do This.

Posted on by Michael Devon

Most training and rehab methodologies have oversimplified the mechanics of the human body. When in reality, moving well is complex. We know that if you move well, your likelihood of injury decreases and developing pain from long term compensation diminishes because the body isn’t out of balance when you move. So to simply think that lifting weights is going to make you strong without any negative consequences is shortsighted. It boils down to how you “lift weights” and we aren’t talking about your form on a bench press or a dumbbell raise. We mean how your body looks when you’re lifting. Are you doing simple exercise to stimulate a muscle but then not teaching that muscle how to function when you, as a human, move (upright, on 2 legs).

It goes deeper than just this mindset and these arbitrary exercises:

Want strong glutes? —> do squats.

Want strong arms? —> do bicep curls.

Strong hamstrings? —> deadlifts.

Shoulder pain? —> banded scapula retractions.

This issues with these movements is that you almost never find them in real life.

Think about it for a minute.

How many times do you squat or deadlift when you run or play sports?

How many times do you isolate a bicep curl when you’re in your day to day life?

These exercise can make your muscles “stronger” but what ensures that those muscles will actually perform their job when you need them most during daily demands?

So if you want to build strong glutes and turn to an exercise like the squat as your main lift, then you’re not training your glutes to be functional, the way they need to be to move your body. When you walk, you’re upright on 2 legs and both legs alternate bearing weight and help push off the ground to move you forward. If we were kangaroos then an exercise like the squat might carry over more to life outside the gym, but if you look at the traditional squat all it provides is an exercise to make you feel like you’re working out. It doesn’t offer single leg weight bearing, weight transfer during movement, and the worst is that it builds your glutes through an up and down (vertical) motion instead of the horizontal motion that your glutes should be using when you walk or run. So if you rely on squats and think they’re your staple to build strong glutes, think again. They’re only building strong glutes to squat and while humans do squat it’s usually not repetitious and only for a few moments to complete a task. What is repetitive on the flute muscles in walking and so if you don’t build your glutes in that context then you lose your ability to walk well over time. And if you think about it, humans were born to walk. Babies squat before they learn the complex motor skills to walk because squatting is simple to coordinate. When it comes time to walk, more muscles (besides the glutes) contract to produce the motion and when your muscles lose touch with their fundamental functions then your body begins to fall into compensatory patterns and pain and injuries eventually set in. Of all the thousands of steps you take in a day (versus all the squats required of you in a day) the best way to build strong muscles and a strong body is to use exercise to enhance what you do most. To get better at the necessary functions of human movements, then if you want to squat you can work that in later as an accessory exercise. But it won’t look the way you used to train squats, with a bar on your back or a dumbbell between your arms as you squat down. A functional squat is one that respects the weight distribution of human mechanics, the reciprocal actions of muscle chains, the integrative actions of other muscles, and the timing of certain principles that circle back to human function.

So as you train the way you train, ask yourself; is this really paying off in my day to day function or am I just exercising for the sake of exercising? Do my muscles learn to behave more optimally as it relates to the way I move in life outside the gym or am I just packing on useless muscle mass that doesn’t function to help me move?

Aesthetics vs. Athletics

Posted on by Michael Devon

When we hear the word athletics, we automatically think of Michael Jordan or Emmitt Smith, individuals capable of accomplishing great movements with their bodies. But you don’t have to be an elite athlete to train your body to move better. When we only think about working out to get a six-pack or bigger biceps, because the magazines tell us that’s what we should look like, we miss the opportunity for exercise to enhance our quality of life. Rather than moving in respect to our human anatomy we contort our bodies and make ourselves so sore that we can barely walk the next day or can’t get on and off the toilet.

Human anatomy dictates the way our body functions based on the way our muscles connect with each other. The less connected your muscles are during movement the more likely your chance of injury is. Since all of our muscles are connected they never work independently, so isolating your body when you workout can potentially disrupt your muscle connections and cause your body to compensate when you move. When you move, your body is conditioned to absorb force in your joints instead of transmitting the force through a connected web of muscles. It’s like your muscles are clocking out early every day and your joints are working over time without pay, because isolated exercises utilize your joints as levers instead of transmitting force through our muscle chains. The goal with exercise should be to connect one chain of muscle with another through reciprocation, since human movement entails reciprocal forces, like opposing limbs uniting when we walk. The more your muscles work in harmony with each other, the more efficient your body will move, decreasing the likelihood of injuries, aches, and pains.

Since we all walk, an exercise like the barbell squat won’t translate as efficiently to the patterns we use on a consistent basis. The glutes developed primarily through walking and running mechanics so for most humans, squatting isn’t the most efficient way to condition your glutes for real world use. If you’re intent is to develop strength through lifting free weights then make sure the strength you develop can be transferable to other scenarios. You limit yourself by getting really strong at a particular lift but the only time you can apply that strength is when you’re performing that exercise. When you’re out with friends, walking your dog, or running errands, strength manifests in the form of comfort that you have in that scenario. If you’re standing in a group of friends and you can’t stand without leaning against a wall or shifting your weight from one leg to another, you have no relative strength- your strength only manifests when you’re in the gym doing your exercise. If fitness is meant to enhance our lives then why would you want your hours spent working hard in the gym to only apply to when you’re in the gym? Not all functional training is truly functional and when you’re trying to function and exist in the real world on a daily basis your body should be prepared.

When you exercise, prioritizing Functional Patterns of movement will condition your body for operating in reality. Training for athletics, or the goal of moving better, will outweigh the benefits of training only for aesthetics, a goal of only looking better. Working out to just build a bigger chest and arms, without taking into consideration that too much muscle mass can lead to imbalances in the body, can become disastrous for how well your body can move. Exercise patterns should mirror the mechanics of how humans move. A foundational human movement is walking, so when you exercise to only look better naked, you neglect the basic principle that the body is designed to move outside of the confines of weight machines and exercises that restrict force transmission through the entire web of muscles. Once the muscles are conditioned to support your body when you walk, without compensations like swaying hips, knees turning in, arms not moving, or a tilted ribcage, other movements, inside and outside of the gym, are streamlined. So, by addressing the way your body moves when you walk, other movements like playing ball with your friends, running a 5k, playing tennis or golf, and performing exercises that respect human body mechanics, are automatically improved.

Athletic training and aesthetic training can go hand in hand, when all systems of the body are operating in harmony, less energy is wasted and more muscle tissue is utilized, so eventually your goal of looking better naked will be achieved. The more muscles that you can integrate into one rep, the more energy you expend, so more calories are being burned per workout. Pair that with the proper nutritional habits, and it’s an efficient recipe for weight loss. Weight loss that comes as a result of better body mechanics and natural movement, not beating your body up with traditional weight lifting that leaves you hurting and injury prone so you’re unable to workout and the weight just piles on. Respect the way your body was designed to operate and keep yourself in the game so that you can move well and sustain a healthy weight for the entirety of your life.