Tag: running

The Evolutionary Benefits of Running: How Our Muscles Are Built for It

Posted on by Michael Devon

Running is more than just a modern fitness trend; it’s deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. Our muscles, bones, and cardiovascular system have evolved specifically to support this high-endurance activity. Here’s why running is not only beneficial but also a natural part of who we are as humans.

Evolutionary Background: Born to Run

1. **Human Anatomy and Endurance**: Our bodies are uniquely designed for long-distance running. Unlike most animals, humans can run long distances thanks to our upright posture, long legs, and efficient cooling system (sweating). These traits helped early humans hunt and scavenge over vast terrains.

2. **Muscle Development**: The muscles in our legs, hips, and core are optimized for running. The large gluteal muscles (glutes) stabilize our hips, while the long tendons in our legs act as springs, storing and releasing energy with each stride. These adaptations make running an energy-efficient way to travel long distances.

3. **Cardiovascular Efficiency**: Running requires a well-developed cardiovascular system, and our hearts and lungs are up to the task. The ability to sustain moderate to high levels of physical exertion over extended periods likely played a role in our ancestors’ survival, allowing them to outrun prey or persist until the prey was too exhausted to continue.

•Physical Benefits: Tapping into Our Natural Potential

1. **Improved Muscular Strength and Endurance**: Running regularly taps into the full potential of our muscle groups, particularly in the lower body. This not only strengthens the muscles but also increases their endurance, enabling them to perform efficiently for longer periods.

2. **Bone Density and Health**: The repetitive impact of running stimulates bone growth and density, a trait that has been critical for our survival in the wild. By running, you maintain and even enhance this natural bone strength, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and fractures.

3. **Efficient Fat Burning**: As an evolutionary advantage, running promotes fat burning by utilizing it as a primary energy source during prolonged activity. This process helped our ancestors survive in times of food scarcity and continues to be a highly effective way to manage weight today.

•Mental and Psychological Benefits: Built-In Rewards

1. **Natural Stress Relief**: The “runner’s high,” characterized by a release of endorphins, is an evolutionary reward system that encourages continued activity. This natural high helped our ancestors stay motivated during long hunts and now serves as an excellent way to combat modern-day stress.

2. **Enhanced Focus and Cognitive Function**: Running improves brain function by increasing blood flow and oxygen supply to the brain. This evolutionary trait likely developed to help early humans stay alert and focused during endurance tasks, and it continues to benefit cognitive health today.

3. **Improved Mood and Mental Resilience**: The regular practice of running boosts mental resilience, a trait that was essential for survival in challenging environments. Today, this translates into better emotional regulation and a stronger ability to cope with life’s challenges.

Conclusion: Embrace Your Evolutionary Heritage

Running is not just a workout—it’s an activity deeply embedded in our evolutionary history. Our muscles, bones, and cardiovascular system have evolved specifically to make us excellent endurance runners. By running, you’re not only staying fit but also tapping into the very essence of what makes us human. Embrace this natural ability and experience the profound physical and mental benefits that come from moving the way our bodies were designed to move.

Your Fundamental Movement

Posted on by Michael Devon

Our exercises load the patterns of the gait cycle. Which means the mechanics of the exercises carry over to the mechanics of walking and running. This is important because as humans we walk daily, it’s one of our most frequently used movements so our goal is to get your body strong in that fundamental context; which will carry over to other aspects of function.

Bipedal contralateral movement is what developed our muscles and why they function the way they do. Modern times have made it difficult to keep our muscles functioning the way they were designed because we use the wrong lifting patterns when we exercise, we’re sedentary… and then we SIT on an exercise bike for “exercise”, we stretch the wrong way resulting in flaccid muscle tissue. All of these variables effect the way your body functions in real life.

In our gym we train your body to move the way your body naturally moves in life outside the gym. Simple looking, but not so easy to perform (correctly) when your body has been out of touch with these foundational movements. It takes time and repetition to reconnect your muscles and get them working optimally.

Contact us to set up an introductory session to assess your current movement patterns and why they’re causing your body problems. Learn to solve those problems with exercise that simultaneously builds strength and mobility, while addressing dysfunctional mechanics and correcting your functions back to optimal so your body can move well and perform without pain.

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.

Exercise for Life

Posted on by Michael Devon

We teach our clients to move intentionally to connect the upper body and lower body contralaterally. Bipedal contralateral movement is what developed our muscles, and why they function the way they do.

Modern times have made it difficult to keep our muscles functioning the way they were designed because we use the wrong lifting patterns when we exercise, we’re sedentary… and then we SIT on an exercise bike for “exercise”, we stretch the wrong way resulting in flaccid muscle tissue. All of these variables effect the way your body functions in real life.

In our gym we train your body to move the way your body naturally moves in life outside the gym. Simple looking, but not so easy to perform (correctly) when your body has been out of touch with these foundational movements. It takes time and repetition to reconnect your muscles and get them working optimally.

Force

Posted on by Michael Devon

Your body encounters and responds to multiple forces to propel through space.

Your body rotates, shifts, adducts, abducts, flexes, extends, undulates, spirals, pronates, supinates, and more- all at the same time.

These functions are necessary to move yourself efficiently through multiple planes of motion without pain and dysfunction.

As a human, your natural movement revolves around your gait cycle and the functions that make it successful.

To elaborate further- these functions work in oppositional harmony and set off a domino effect through your kinetic chain with every motion you do. Sometimes more or less depending on the movements.

To simplify- you need to be good at performing these functions. Your muscles contract better and your body moves better when natural functions aren’t compensated for.

Train with our team of Functional Patterns practitioners to address dysfunctional movement and restore your natural performance.

Functionalpatterns.com

Functional Fitness Part 2

Posted on by Michael Devon

We know by now that our body is one integrated unit, so repetitive movements that isolate it into sections cause disconnections throughout your kinetic chain. In our previous post Functional Fitness Part 1 we highlighted some exercise techniques that get a lot of hype, but don’t necessarily deliver the most bang for your buck. In this post we’ll explain why we believe there are better methods to ensure prolonged health and fitness for your body.

We know that the human body evolved to walk upright on both legs, so regressing your training to crawling movements won’t help your daily function. Yes, you’ll feel your muscles working and your brain will think you’re doing something good for your body, but since we don’t walk on our hands our shoulders need a different kind of support relative to our legs. So crawling movements won’t enhance or coincide with the functions of human movement discussed in our previous post- standing, walking, running, and throwing.

HIIT workouts are stressful on your body, and too much stress spikes cortisol and makes it hard to lose fat anyway (plus it’s cumbersome on your joints and hard to sustain for more than a few weeks without some form of pain or injury). So if you’re doing HIIT workouts to lose weight, do the longevity of your body a favor, and stop eating so much. Then just exercise to stimulate muscle tissue in a manner than mimics the way it functions in the real world, so you can sustain your fitness as you age.

Powerlifting can make you stronger but usually at the expense of hernias, stress fractures, disc herniations, torn tendons and ligaments, and compression on your spine. So it’s high risk, low reward because once you injure yourself it’s hard to recovery back to 100%. And in reality why do we need to lift such heavy objects? Humans have developed brains to work smarter not harder. We’ve developed pulley systems, levers, and machines to move objects and do the heavy lifting for us. Compared to other animals, like a silver back guerrilla, we are extremely weak. So the next time you need to move a piece of furniture use a friend to help, or on those rare occasions when you need to move a big rock or firewood, use a wheelbarrow. And get strong at what you do most, standing, walking, running, and throwing. This will help cultivate strength that you can use without damaging your joints.

We share these thoughts to spread relevant information about the human body and the repercussions of the way we treat it. If you like what you do and your body feels okay, keep doing it. But if not, we offer an alternative way to train and sustain your health and fitness.

*Hint; check out the picture from this post, and our last one. Compare how confined the squat pattern is, versus the running one. The bar on the back causes compression, and the running (assuming your joints are adequate- we can help with that) can engage the entire body through horizontal force distribution and create strength and mobility that you can use more often.

Functional Fitness Part 1

Posted on by Michael Devon

Functional training can mean different things to different people. In our gym, it means exercising to coincide and enhance your body’s natural movements- like walking, running, lifting objects, standing, and navigating daily demands without pains or injuries limiting your function.

Humans innate biology designed us to stand, walk, run, and throw. These functions shaped our muscles and the way our muscles work. This is why our trainers prioritize exercises that match these types of movements. The outcome is a well connected, strong, and mobile body that can withstand the demands of the real world, because real life enforces these mechanics consistently. As opposed to movements like crawling (not a regular function after we learn to walk), burpees (beating your body up to burn calories from overeating), step aerobics (repetitive strain on your knee joints), spin classes (conditioning your hips to be stuck in flexion, like sitting all day) , or powerlifting (not the same demand as lifting an object because the barbell limits your range of motion).

If you like disconnecting your legs from your upper body during spin class, overdoing HIIT classes to punish your body from overeating, using your lumbar spine as a lever during powerlifting, or just like acting like an animal and crawling around the floor- then you do you. BUT if you’re only doing these types of things because you’ve been told they’re healthy or they’re going to help you, then stop and reconsider how your body actually functions (standing, walking, running, throwing) and if these types of exercises are reinforcing these functions or causing dysfunction.

Stay tuned for our next post as we elaborate further on these different modalities.

How Do You Train Your Pecs?

Posted on by Michael Devon

Did you know your chest muscles (the pecs) dominate movements like punching, throwing, and even running?

The pecs were designed for these functions via human evolution- throwing spears, pumping the upper body when running from danger, and fighting for survival.

These muscles also connect into multiple kinetic chains and when we move, they function together with the rest of the chain to produce more power and efficiency. For example, the pecs share functions with the nearby oblique muscles and function more often through rotational mechanics, like throwing, instead of exclusively pressing motions.

Traditional chest training like the bench press and pushups will make your pecs stronger, but not the rest of the chain your pecs connect to. Therefore you’re only strong at the bench press and not functional activities that require you to use your pecs the way they were designed.

The bench press is one exercise we were taught to make our chest stronger, but the chest predominately functions in different patterns than the bench. When we go to use our pecs the way nature designed them, but we’re unnaturally training them, they aren’t prepared for reality and injury risk goes up.

Come work with trainers who know the way your muscles need to be trained, and how to teach exercises that go hand in hand with their natural function(s). At our gym, your muscles are prepared for real life so your body can function without pains and injuries, the true meaning of strength.

How Do You Build Strong Glutes?

Posted on by Michael Devon

Having strong glutes is crucial for a strong body, because your glutes play a role in all of your movements. As trainers, we work to build functional strength in the glutes to improve our clients ability to use their hips more efficiently in sports, like running, boxing, or golf, and for EVERYDAY use.

What does “functional strength” mean? Strength that translates to the way your body uses that strength in the real world. Most trainers or exercisers only use squat variations or mini band exercises to build their glute muscles, without considering how those exercise patterns translate (or don’t translate) to their movement patterns in real life.

In other words, context matters because the way the glutes function during a golf swing, for example, is primarily through rotation of the pelvis- a HUGE difference from what the pelvis is doing in squats (pictured) and mini band exercises. If we train our client’s glutes for rotational function, the muscle strength carries over to the way their body uses it during golf and daily movement.

If you train exclusively in the sagittal plane with expectations that you’re going to build functional strength, you’re missing the context that your body needs to operate smoothly. Did you know your glutes rotate your pelvis when you walk, run, and throw? Most athletes perform all of these functions at some point, and most humans perform at least one every day (walking), and it’s important to remember that if your training doesn’t factor functions that relate to the way you use your body in reality, into your exercises, your strength will be confined to the gym. Period.

Start training your body for the life it lives outside of the gym. Context matters. Our trainers recognize that not all exercises translate to the what your body needs, unless it’s specific to how your body moves. Squats would be more useful to us if we were kangaroos, but since our glutes primarily contract in a horizontal direction, as with walking, we need to train them and prepare them for what they do most. This is how strength translates to function!

Functional Exercises

Posted on by Michael Devon

In order to classify an exercise as functional, it should carry over to everyday life. Squats, pushups, and pull-ups are often lumped in the functional category because they integrate multiple muscles at once and display bodily strength. However, how often in your day to day movement (away from the gym) do you really use these movements?

Day to day, the human structure moves through contralateral patterns, like walking, more frequently than a squat or push-ups and pull-ups. From a biological standpoint when the body encounters a flight or fight scenario, mechanisms activate in your body that cause you to run from danger- another contralateral movement.

Instead of categorizing exercises as functional just because you aren’t doing yoga or meathead bodybuilding and powerlifting, you should consider how much carry over that exercise will have in life outside of the gym. Will it help your mechanics when you walk and run, or will it sound and look cool but really not have much impact on how your body moves most?

Functional training, when done correctly, will build muscle and strength that translates to movement patterns that your body uses on a daily basis. The stronger you are at what you do most, will result in more efficiency and less wear and tear on your body.