We talk a lot about the importance of good movement around here. I often sum up our basic training philosophy with the phrase, “First move well, then move strong.”
(As some of you are probably aware, that’s a modification of the Functional Movement Screen slogan, which is: “First move well, then move a lot.” Which is also good advice.)
But most fitness programs don’t make such a big deal about movement. So why do we place so much emphasis on addressing movement issues BEFORE we start working out hard?
Very simple — we don’t want you to get hurt. If you get hurt, then you can’t train. At least not as well as you could if you weren’t hurt. And if you have problems with your underlying movement patterns, then you’re much more likely to get hurt when you try to exercise.
Movement is the foundation for all exercise. The exercises we do to improve fitness are almost always either loaded movement — movement with added resistance to make it harder — or movement repeated to the point of fatigue.
As an example, let’s take the squat. A squat is a fundamental human movement pattern that primarily involves triple flexion — meaning you flex, or bend, at the three primary joints in your lower body: hips, knees, and ankles. That lowers you down toward the floor. To stand back up, you extend (or straighten out) at those same three joints. Ideally, this is done with a neutral and relatively upright spine, and with the knees tracking in the same direction as the toes. There are plenty of other factors that contribute to good technique in the squat, but those are the basics.
In an exercise program, we might do bodyweight squats for a certain number of reps — that’s the basic movement pattern repeated to fatigue.
Or we might pick up a kettlebell, hold it in front of your chest, and do goblet squats — that’s the basic movement pattern done with added resistance.
In either case, we’re just taking the basic squat pattern and finding a way to make it hard enough to create a training effect and improve fitness.
(Someone will undoubtedly point out that we can also do isometric exercises which don’t involve any movement — for example, a wall squat where you just hold a squat position leaning against a wall. It’s true that no movement is occurring during the static hold, but you did have to move to get into that position, and you’ll have to move again to get out of it. So an isometric hold like that is really just the basic movement pattern paused for a certain length of time at a certain point in the movement, possibly with the generation of additional muscle tension at that point. The underlying movement pattern itself still matters.)
The key point is this: if you can’t do the basic squat movement pattern correctly and well by itself, it’s not going to get better when you do it over and over again or when you do it with added weight. Just the opposite in most cases — it’s going to get worse. Maybe your spine will round, or your heels will come off the floor, or your knees will collapse inward, or whatever. And that’s when you’re likely to get injured.
As the creators of the Functional Movement Screen have said, trying to stack fitness on top of dysfunctional movement is just asking for an injury. A much better way is to assess and, if necessary, improve your movement baseline first. Then we can build better fitness on top of a solid foundation of movement.
That’s why we want to do a Functional Movement Screen on everyone we train before we have you jump into a workout. We want to know whether you have adequate mobility at key joints, whether your core is doing its job of stabilizing your spine well enough, and whether you are able to execute fundamental movement patterns like the squat well or not.
For movements that look good, you’re ready to learn some exercises that involve those movements and start training.
If there are problems in any key aspects of movement, then it should be a priority to improve the problematic movement patterns before challenging them in an exercise program.
In case that wasn’t clear — focusing on movement first doesn’t mean you can’t exercise or burn any calories or begin improving your fitness at all. It just means we aren’t going to challenge the particular movement patterns that are problematic until they’ve improved. We CAN start challenging movement patterns that are in good shape while we work on improving others.
So maybe your shoulders have restricted mobility and you don’t squat well, but your hip mobility and core stability are fine. In that situation, we wouldn’t want you doing overhead presses with a kettlebell or squatting with weight, but you might be fine training swings and step-ups and the first few steps of the Turkish Get-Up. So you could work out hard on those and various other things while we work on improving your shoulder mobility and moving toward a better squat.
As those problematic patterns improve, the repertoire of exercises you can safely use will grow. And you might be surprised how difficult and challenging the “corrective” exercises for the problematic movement patterns can be.
So do yourself a favor: get a movement screen and train with someone who can help you improve the aspects of your movement that need work. We do this with everyone who trains with us, and you can test-drive our training program for two weeks to see if it’s right for you. Learn more here.
(As some of you are probably aware, that’s a modification of the Functional Movement Screen slogan, which is: “First move well, then move a lot.” Which is also good advice.)
But most fitness programs don’t make such a big deal about movement. So why do we place so much emphasis on addressing movement issues BEFORE we start working out hard?
Very simple — we don’t want you to get hurt. If you get hurt, then you can’t train. At least not as well as you could if you weren’t hurt. And if you have problems with your underlying movement patterns, then you’re much more likely to get hurt when you try to exercise.
Movement is the foundation for all exercise. The exercises we do to improve fitness are almost always either loaded movement — movement with added resistance to make it harder — or movement repeated to the point of fatigue.
As an example, let’s take the squat. A squat is a fundamental human movement pattern that primarily involves triple flexion — meaning you flex, or bend, at the three primary joints in your lower body: hips, knees, and ankles. That lowers you down toward the floor. To stand back up, you extend (or straighten out) at those same three joints. Ideally, this is done with a neutral and relatively upright spine, and with the knees tracking in the same direction as the toes. There are plenty of other factors that contribute to good technique in the squat, but those are the basics.
In an exercise program, we might do bodyweight squats for a certain number of reps — that’s the basic movement pattern repeated to fatigue.
Or we might pick up a kettlebell, hold it in front of your chest, and do goblet squats — that’s the basic movement pattern done with added resistance.
In either case, we’re just taking the basic squat pattern and finding a way to make it hard enough to create a training effect and improve fitness.
(Someone will undoubtedly point out that we can also do isometric exercises which don’t involve any movement — for example, a wall squat where you just hold a squat position leaning against a wall. It’s true that no movement is occurring during the static hold, but you did have to move to get into that position, and you’ll have to move again to get out of it. So an isometric hold like that is really just the basic movement pattern paused for a certain length of time at a certain point in the movement, possibly with the generation of additional muscle tension at that point. The underlying movement pattern itself still matters.)
The key point is this: if you can’t do the basic squat movement pattern correctly and well by itself, it’s not going to get better when you do it over and over again or when you do it with added weight. Just the opposite in most cases — it’s going to get worse. Maybe your spine will round, or your heels will come off the floor, or your knees will collapse inward, or whatever. And that’s when you’re likely to get injured.
As the creators of the Functional Movement Screen have said, trying to stack fitness on top of dysfunctional movement is just asking for an injury. A much better way is to assess and, if necessary, improve your movement baseline first. Then we can build better fitness on top of a solid foundation of movement.
That’s why we want to do a Functional Movement Screen on everyone we train before we have you jump into a workout. We want to know whether you have adequate mobility at key joints, whether your core is doing its job of stabilizing your spine well enough, and whether you are able to execute fundamental movement patterns like the squat well or not.
For movements that look good, you’re ready to learn some exercises that involve those movements and start training.
If there are problems in any key aspects of movement, then it should be a priority to improve the problematic movement patterns before challenging them in an exercise program.
In case that wasn’t clear — focusing on movement first doesn’t mean you can’t exercise or burn any calories or begin improving your fitness at all. It just means we aren’t going to challenge the particular movement patterns that are problematic until they’ve improved. We CAN start challenging movement patterns that are in good shape while we work on improving others.
So maybe your shoulders have restricted mobility and you don’t squat well, but your hip mobility and core stability are fine. In that situation, we wouldn’t want you doing overhead presses with a kettlebell or squatting with weight, but you might be fine training swings and step-ups and the first few steps of the Turkish Get-Up. So you could work out hard on those and various other things while we work on improving your shoulder mobility and moving toward a better squat.
As those problematic patterns improve, the repertoire of exercises you can safely use will grow. And you might be surprised how difficult and challenging the “corrective” exercises for the problematic movement patterns can be.
So do yourself a favor: get a movement screen and train with someone who can help you improve the aspects of your movement that need work. We do this with everyone who trains with us, and you can test-drive our training program for two weeks to see if it’s right for you. Learn more here.