Restoring vs Correcting, or Understanding vs Knowing

Categories: Blog Sep 18, 2016

Last week, a friend and OS Coach, Patrick Gililov from Germany, sent me the following email. I liked it and asked if I could share it with our readers. This is a great post if you are a coach or a trainer. If you're not a coach or trainer, you underestimate the influence you have over your own body! Anyway, here it goes...

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Hey Tim,

There is a little adjustment I have recently made to my coaching practice and I wanted to ask you for your opinion on that. Namely, I don't cue my clients to hold their heads up anymore, because keeping their heads up with force makes them tense up, lose diaphragmatic breathing and move in a chaotic fashion. In fact, the only cues I now use are "keep your tongue on the roof of your mouth", "breathe through your nose" and "move as far as your body will comfortably go". If someone asks me where to hold their head, I tell them to have it where it feels best - where it wants to be by itself. This way I find it easier to be in line with the OS guidelines and principles:

- diaphragmatic breathing is dramatically improved;

- the vestibular system is still activated and trained;

- crossing midline and engaging in contralateral patterns is more efficient and refreshing;

- it's a positive and restorative approach to reflexive strength.

All in all, it seems to me that removing postural constraints (except tongue position, which insures the connection between head and trunk and is therfore fundamental to body integration) is beneficial on all levels, yields faster and more durable results and makes movement practice and exploration more natural and playful. Eventually, the head will be up anyway.

What do you think of it?

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I think Patrick is a great coach. He has found a method and a way to communicate with his clients  that helps them optimally press reset. As coaches, we need to know our audience and how to best communicate with them. We have to be able to see individuals and not standards or protocols. This is what Patrick has done. He knows what he wants to see and he has found a  way, for him, that best helps his clients press reset.

In OS we do tell people to hold their head up when they are down on all fours. We do this because we want the Vestibular System to be level with the horizon. However, not everyone can comfortably get there in the beginning. A good coach like Patrick may be able to see that a person is trying too hard or even moving into pain - inhibiting the restorative effect of the movements, making them anything but a reset.

If you are a coach, this email can be powerful because it can help you see that you can understand a system and use it to best help your clients. If you are just a person reading this, wanting to simply be healthy, this email can be powerful because it gives you the freedom to move your way into perfection, and not start from it.

We often tell people that it is "okay to look like an accident." Meaning how you move is good, from there you can move on into better, then best. For example, if a person cannot crawl with their head held up, that is good - it is never bad. The more they crawl, the more they work their contra-lateral crawling pattern, feeding their nervous system with wonderful information, the better their posture will eventually become, especially if they are patient enough to enjoy the process. The best thing you can do as a person seeking to have optimal health and movement is to simply start where you are.

Yes, I will still ask people to hold their heads up. But if they cannot start there, like Patrick, I will ask them to do what they can do without moving into pain or stress. Because from there, like Patrick said and knows, "Eventually, the head will be up anyway."

 

Are you in or around Germany? If so, look up Patrick Gililov. He is an amazing person! He is the first Original Strength Certified Coach of Germany. Before discovering Original Strength and joining the mission of setting people free through movement, he used to work as a linguist and a piano teacher. In the spring of 2016, he founded a school of movement, where he teaches classes to people of all ages and physical abilities. He holds a Fitness Trainer License and a Master degree in Romance and general linguistics as well as in music education.

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