The Nutshell

We have reached the end of the rabbit hole. It’s time to look at where we have come from to understand where we will go. Over the next few months we’re going to crawl back out of the rabbit hole and all the information in this post will serve as a baseline template for your fitness or movement practice. Hopefully this is inducing a slight paradigm shift for you, the reader. Read on and recap.

The future of fitness is constantly moving into a more integrated methodology that highlights the value of the entirety of the human being, not just parts and pieces. There is no separation between your mind and body! Fitness is moving more and more towards the truth, and farther away from the confines of ego in every respect.

You are a primal being built for survival. Movement itself is hardwired into your physicality, mentality, emotionality and spirituality. Fitness is movement; movement is life. If you treat fitness like play you’ll engage all the right parts of your brain to succeed across a wide number of paradigms.

Your neurology is pliable and meant to adapt. You have the ability to learn and master new skills. The harder a skill is, the more likely you should work on it. Sucking at something is the first step to being awesome at something.

The spine is the cornerstone of your movement and the root (literally) of your neurology. Mastering the basic spinal biomechanic of growing tall promotes good neurological energy flow and good technique in all movement. Being able to keep your spine tall through a wide variety of techniques, intensities, and loads is the key.

You move from your center. Your ideal center is the space, front-side-and-back, from the bottom of your ribcage to the tops of your knees. We call this your “core”. It encompases your hip, pelvic floor, rear end, diaphragm, abdominals and lumbar extensors. Your core exists to provide stability, not movement, houses your center of mass and is greatly affected by your breath. The more stable this is during movement the more exotic and powerful your techniques can be.

Breathing is vital to life and movement. The more you move the more you need to breath. Proper breathing can help brace your spine and core, and provide stability in movement. It can also affect your mind and body depending on its depth and rapidity. Be conscious of your breath.

You are the self regenerating organic machine, and you are meant to move! If you stay asleep to that reality you will find yourself asleep in life. Wake up! Stop moving on auto-pilot and stop living from the neck up and expecting miracles of fitness to occur from the neck down.

Functional movements are the cornerstone to a good movement practice. Functional movements are developers of great performance but can also be reverse engineered into therapeutic components. Master the basic functional movements, the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press and train your body for work, not for sexiness. In other words, train for function, not aesthetic.

Train the functional movements in ever-lengthening durations of stillness. Stillness of position highlights much more readily the subtlety of technique and over time allows the mind to grasp control of the most strenuous part of the movement with ease.

Develop a movement practice that promotes all 15 fitness domains:

1. Cardiovascular/Respiratory endurance – the ability of body systems to gather, process and deliver oxygen.

2. Stamina – the ability of body systems to process, deliver, store and utilize energy.

3. Strength – the ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.

4. Flexibility – the ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint.

5. Power – the ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.

6. Speed – the ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.

7. Coordination – the ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.

8. Agility – the ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.

9. Balance – the ability to control the placement of the body’s center of gravity in relation to its support base.

10. Accuracy – the ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.

11. Focus - the ability of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy to be directed entirely and cohesively in a single moment or task, or a series of continuing moments and tasks.

12. Determination - the ability to harness physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy for task completion at varying intensities across broad time and modal domains.

13. Awareness - the ability to create instant physical, mental, emotional and spiritual connections to the subtlest movements, moments, existences, or energies.

14. Expression - the ability to use physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy to communicate a genuine state of existence through your physical body.

15. Stillness - the ability to rapidly release control of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy and enter a state of complete conscious relaxation.

This is the picture we have been painting. This is the foundation of where we’re going to head in the next 37 weeks. If any of this is still a mystery, still hard to understand, or difficult to grasp; that’s okay. Use what works, discard the rest.

For now, sit back and digest.