Move

Categories: Blog Jan 21, 2018

Nothing about you is separated from another part of you and everything about you is affected by any one part of you.

Soak that in for a minute.

You are wholly connected from the inside to the outside, from the mental to the physical, from the unseen to the seen, and from the unknown to the known. You are altogether together, and you’re an amazing creation.

I bring this up because in our world, we like to separate things and quantify things. We want hard lines and hard data. We are uncomfortable with what we can’t prove and we make rules to protect ourselves from things we don’t understand.

Ok, I realize this discussion could get deeper than quantum physics, so I’ll try to illustrate my point by keeping it at a strength and health training level.

In the “exercise” world, we like to separate the cardio from the muscular, the mobile from the stable, the fast from the slow, and the power from the endurance.

Can I tell you a secret? They are all the same thing. They are all parts of the whole. Together they yield “strength” or whatever else you want to call it, but it’s all the same.

Strength is mobility. Strength is stability. Strength is fast and slow. Strength is cardiovascular and muscular. And all of those qualities of strength are really different sides of the same thing. And if one is lacking, they are all lacking.

For example, if you lack stability, you lack mobility, and speed, and power, and endurance and strength, etc...

So, if everything about you is connected, what if the exercise world is missing the mark by focusing on, or trying to isolate, individual qualities of strength? Or, what if the exercise world was simply the wrong world to live in?

What if there was more to life than sets and reps? What if we weren’t really made to run on a treadmill for 45 minutes to keep our heart healthy? What if flexibility training was actually addressing the opposite need of the body (ponder this). What if we weren’t created to exercise at all? What if instead, we were simply made to move?

What if moving regularly through full ranges of motion, the ranges you were designed to have, was all you needed to do? What if moving the way you were designed was the one thing that would allow you to become strong and fast and powerful and mobile and stable and graceful and happy and calm and smart?

Remember, NOTHING about you is separated from any part of you. What if moving was the gateway to physical and mental health and wellbeing? What if moving was a gateway to further enlightenment beyond what you can see, touch and feel? If you think that’s a crazy thought, I invite you to go for a walk along the beach or a hike up in the mountains. To move your body through beauty connects you to something far greater than yourself.

Anyway, how strong could you become if you moved your body regularly through full ranges of motion? If you rocked, rolled, squatted, walked, skipped, carried things, crawled, and laughed? Laughter moves things, by the way - it certainly moves your face through a positive full range of motion.

I’m not saying you don’t need to exercise. I’m saying you need to move; often, like you were made to. If you do that, your efforts towards health and strength will be far more fruitful and less frustrating.

To strength train on top of a body incapable of moving through it’s full range of motion is the same as strength training on a body that doesn’t have all of it’s stability, all of its speed, and all of its power. Or, to try to increase your cardio in a body that lacks mobility is like trying to increase your cardio in a body that can’t move efficiently; lacking endurance, speed and power. It’s not the best scenario.

When we move well, the brakes are off. When we don’t move well, the brakes are on. When the brakes are on, everything is adversely affected.

Moving like we were made to move makes everything better: how strong we are, how efficient our heart is, how we feel, how we think, how we interact with the world, everything... Again, you are a whole being. Everything about you is connected. If you want a solid connection with yourself and your world, move.

---