Movement Matters

A large part of my work day is spent observing how people move when they exercise. Regardless of fitness level, there’s much more to exercising than meets the eye. I believe that everyone needs to learn how to move properly either before, or as part of their fitness program. One of my teachers and mentors, Paul Chek, HHP, NMT has written a great book on this topic that I highly recommend titled, “Movement That Matters”.

In my ten years of experience as a personal trainer and coach, I have observed that strength training with weights and jogging are the dominant forms of exercise. It’s also been my observation that the skills of balance, stability and coordination are far more important to human development in gaining strength and improving athletic performance than most people realize. The vast majority of fitness experts and exercise enthusiasts don’t realize the vital role played by the Central Nervous System (CNS).

In short, training the CNS is the most important element that a training program needs to include. A training program that does not address the needs of the CNS is an incomplete, inefficient and less than effective program. The CNS can be trained in a variety of ways, and the easiest way to work on the CNS is to include exercises that involve multiple muscle groups and that are performed while standing and moving.

These relatively simple movements will improve your balance, stability and proprioception. (PRO-pree-o-SEP-shun). That’s a ten dollar word that means the sense that you are moving properly and are aware of what your various body parts are doing.

The worst thing that a beginner can do is to try to do exercises with an “external load”, that’s another fancy term that means “lifting weights” – before learning how to move properly and developing the requisite balance and stability skills. One of the worst things that anyone can do is to just jump on exercise equipment and start cranking out reps.

I’m not a fan of most exercise machines. The problem with machine-based exercise is that the machines provide all the stability and balance for you so that your body never has to work on these skills. The pillars of human movement are pushing, pulling, bending, twisting, raising and lowering (squatting) and locating (walking, running, etc). When you combine movement patterns that require the body to use many muscles and multiple joints at one time, you are far better off than using any machine that isolates one muscle group at a time.

By adding external load (weights) and challenging balance, the CNS must adapt to the new way of doing things. This “stimulus” to the muscles and the CNS is what the body adapts to. Thus we improve our ability to move, flex, extend, and balance, and ultimately we get stronger too.

I’m a big fan of body weight exercises like mountain climbers, squat thrusts, lunges, and push-ups, etc. There are too many to list. Personal trainers and strength coaches who are doing their jobs properly will have their clients working on these dynamic and functional exercises before progressing to adding weights.

In closing, CNS training is more complicated than weight lifting, and a program that works on the skills of balance, stability and proprioception will allow people to get the most out of their exercise time and effort. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather complete my workout in less time, burn more fat and build more muscle. Wouldn't you agree?