Creating Shapes With Mobility

Movement is a science that we have to teach ourselves. Movement is a never-ending learning process because it is a physical expression of intelligence not a by product of work or effort, or even a goal with some sort of an end to the journey. The movement journey ends when you finally hold still.

When we're young we learn how to move through observation. There's almost no processing time lost between observation and action as a toddler. A child will walk like their parents, behave like their parents, friends, relatives etc... Mimicry through observation is part of how we are designed to move. Even as adults when we look around the world we mimic the people we see. There's a bit more of a delay between observation and action but none the less we still mimic our environment. So you moving well is acting as a role model for others who observe you.

But sadly, our movement IQs are low. We don’t live in a society where the majority of people move well anymore. So when we’re young we observe and learn bad habits and now teach those bad habits to everyone around us. What a friggin’ rut! Therefore, anything and everything we can do to increase our movement IQ benefits as a person and as a society.

If you are an instructor of movement it is your job to increase your own movement IQ and to increase the people around you. Movement is not about performance, gains or turning your client into products that you think they should be. It is about raising people's awareness of themselves on deeper and deeper levels so that they can understand their own movement patterns and how to improve and remedy themselves.

You can’t cultivate what you’re not aware of. Most people are not aware that they move poorly. Hell, I’m not even aware of how poorly I move until someone helps me understand! The best way to see how poorly we move is to work on the basics of mobility, then try to express that mobility in our functional movements.

All functional movements are just shapes that we want to be able to create with the body. On your way to creating those shapes you may be limited by tightness in your muscle systems. This tightness limits your mobility/flexibility and teaches your body that it’s okay not to be able to express that rage of motion. Well that’s just wrong! You’re hurting everyone around you by moving like crap.

So here’s Mobility in a nutshell:

While keeping your lumbar spine stable, practice putting your hips and shoulders into as many varied positions available, into the farthest range of motion possible, for at least 15 minutes a day. If you find that you’re particularly bad at a certain position, that’s your weak spot, practice that exclusively until you get better.

Below are a list of picture that can help you build a mobility routine. You can pick any/all of these pictures to create a mobility routine. Keep in mind, these are just shapes that you want to be able to create with your body. The precision of how you create the shape will determine the benefit you’ll receive from it, so be mindful. They are here to teach you about yourself if you listen to your body when you do them. If you cannot create the shape, then reverse engineer the shape into something simpler that you can handle. If you can create all the below shapes accurately, bravo!