Most people are not exactly sure how to accomplish their
goals or what type of training should be utilized in order to achieve the
desired results. Your goals, physical limitations, muscle imbalances, time,
commitment, and many other factors will influence the type of training in which
you will and should be participating.
Frankly, no program is the same, nor is it designed to fit
everyone. Marketing companies would like you to believe otherwise. Some of
these tactics include fancy ads with sculpted bodies, weird and unsafe gadgets,
and cool exercise program names designed to pump you up and make you believe
they address your real issues when, in the end, they are most likely useless if
not put together in a structured way.
Several years ago, I was introduced to the concept of human
movement, popularized by many fitness gurus and experts. Today, human movement has been the backbone of my training programs.
It doesn’t matters who I’m coaching – whether it’s a soccer athlete, a group
of bootcampers, a fat loss program to someone with more physical limitations – I have found that, although a
client’s program must be
designed around his or her specific needs, all must be based on the “pillars of human movement”. And this concept is what I
believe is missing in many training programs from the majority of people who go
to the gym or exercise at home.
No matter what our ultimate goals may be, we must all address the
issues of body mechanics, mobility issues, strength, and conditioning. Failure
to do so will create an environment of muscle imbalance, lack of performance,
and poor results, and may lead to injuries.
Human movement can be broken down into the following four
categories:
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| Medicine Ball Squat |
(2) Level Change:
Refers to a non-locomotor’s
motion in which your body changes elevation. Level change can go from up to
down or vice versa. An example would be
bending down to pick something up or getting down to the floor. Exercises
commonly used to describe this motion are the squat and dead lift. However,
there is a combination of movement in pillars when referring to lunges and
going up and down the stairs, such as Locomotion with Level Change.
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| Full Push Up |
(3) Push/Pull:
Push is to press (with arms or legs) on or against something with force to move
it away. Pull, on the other hand, is to draw or haul (with arms or legs)
something toward oneself. When it comes to exercise, selection balance is the key
if you wish to avoid muscle imbalances. An example of this motion would be
opening or closing a door. Exercises that describe a push motion would be a
push up, an overhead press, a squat, or a leg press. Pulling exercises can include a pull up, any
rowing motion, or hamstring curls. It is imperative to understand that pushing
and pulling work against each other AND with each other. Therefore, proper and
symmetrical training is encouraged in order to avoid muscle imbalance. Muscle imbalance
can lead to problems such as rotator cuff injuries, back injuries, shoulder
impingement.
 |
| Twisting Bicycle Crunches |
(4) Rotation: The
act of rotating or turning around as on an axis (in this case your spine is the
axis). Rotation C is responsible for changes of direction and rotational
production. Rotation is perhaps the most neglected of all pillars, but it is so
important because most people spend their days sitting down or lying around and
not training their torso stabilizers. Just think about how many muscles in your
body need to rotate. Rotating is much more important that just getting rid of
love handles, since it relates to almost every other movement patterns
mentioned in the above three pillars. In either case, you must incorporate
rotational exercises into your program. Examples of such are cable/band lateral
rotations, woodchops, bicycle crunches and Russian twists.
When considering all four pillars of movement, one can
notice the benefits of incorporating all of them together in an exercise
program that will enhance functionality, strength, performance, and reduce the
risk of injuries.
Most gym equipments are designed to have you sitting for for most exercise moves and typically favor only one of the pillars of
movement which barely requires balancing, core strength, or overall
functionality. Whether you are performing daily tasks, playing sports, or doing
more strenuous exercise, your body requires movement: it goes up, down, forward, back,
side to side and rotating. Therefore,
performing exercises that enhance mobility and require you to move will give
you better overall results, regardless of your fitness level and health goals.
