The way you move during weight training and exercise influences the way you move in life.
Poor movement patterns in the gym need to be eliminated to prevent injury and elicit the most amount of efficiency and benefit during your workout, but most importantly in our everyday lives.
When you work out you can do one of two things. You can be sloppy and not care about your form or you can focus and move with intention, putting your mind into your movement and move as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Being sloppy will burn calories, gain some strength and speed, and you will leave the gym feeling accomplished but with minimal gains. Sloppy careless exercise will put you at a much higher risk for injury not only in the gym but outside the gym as well through the development of poor movement patterns. more on that in a moment…
With focus and solid form you will see greater increases in strength and solidify good movement patterns that will transfer to everything you do outside the gym. Every time you pick something up off the floor, carry something heavy, wash your hands, push against something, pull on something etc. your body is running on auto pilot, aka muscle memory, and repeating learned movement patterns. These movement patterns are instinctual in babies and toddlers, but somewhere along the line many of us lose this, and develop faulty movement patterns. When these faulty movement patterns are done repeatedly over years it leads to were and tear on our bodies causing joint pain especially in the knees, hips, shoulders and lower back. These movement patterns are a result of our Central Nervous System (CNS) searching for the path of least resistance. This path develops correctly in infants and toddlers and I believe becomes skewed as we get older due in large part to sitting in chairs and functioning in a world of inventions that make navigating our surrounding “easier”.
The instinctual movement patterns can be re-learned but not without
1. Knowing how a certain movement should be performed
2. Perfecting that movement with the help of a coach and dedicated practice
3. Mindful repetition
To learn how certain movements should be performed you will need to have a knowledgeable coach watch you move, make adjustment to your movement, and make sure you hold certain positions so you develop a feel for them. This will give your CNS landmarks to hit when performing movements to aid in the creation of new muscle memory.
Muscle memory is your body’s auto pilot. To see this first hand, close your eyes and tie your shoes. You don’t have to think about it, you can just do it. This muscle memory is developed from tying your shoes thousands of times aka auto pilot.
Perfecting movement, as I just mentioned, takes thousands of repetitions of mindful, purposeful, focused repetitions. Without being Mindful, purposeful and focused our CNS will default to our old movement patterns and fly on autopilot.
In addition to being mindful it is important to have a coach’s eye watching, giving instant feedback, and making on the spot corrections because what we feel to be correct, may not be correct, and the coach’s job is to ensure we understand the difference. Every repetition is moving us one step closer to our new movement pattern and if we’re learning the wrong pattern were not improving our current movement and we are moving further in the wrong direction.
Once you have your new movement pattern memorized and it can be reproduced over and over with accuracy, you will need to continue to utilize mindful repetition until this new movement becomes your new autopilot/default movement pattern.
This process can take months or years depending on how much focus and attention you put into it. When you take the time to learn correct movement patterns you will reap the benefits and see faster gains, fewer injuries, and navigate life and sports with greater ease and efficiency.
Coach Josh
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