EXERCISES THAT TRAIN MOVEMENT

Now that I have explained about training movement not muscle, it would be a good idea to tell you what the best types of exercises are to give you the best results.

First of all we need to look at human movement, so what are the main movements available to us that form the basis of all our movement? Well according to Juan Carlos Santana,(Renowned  Strength and conditioning expert)  they are:

1. Locomotion, moving forward backward and side to side
2. Changing levels, bending, extending, squatting, jumping type movement
3. Pushing and Pulling
4. Rotation , rotation is extremely important because in almost all of our movement we have to either rotate or counter the forces of rotation, especially when walking or running.

You will hardly be able to disagree with him.

After studying the above movements, it makes sense that to strengthen these movements will improve your daily life (especially as you get older) and will also have a dramatic affect on your sporting performance should you participate in one.

The next phase is to look at the exercises that you can use to strengthen all these movements.   To do this you need exercises that will not necessarily replicate the movement exactly, but will set of the movement chain of events that are associated with the movement you are trying to strengthen. So this means picking exercises that will work multiple joints and muscles incorporating the core and that take into account balance and stability issues associated with daily life and sporting performance.

First let’s look at;

 Locomotion.

Locomotion includes, running, walking, climbing steps or stairs, changing direction.

In my opinion the best exercises to strengthen these movements are the Walking Lunge, Lateral Lunge and the Single leg step up. They mimic these movements, really well, although exaggerated to place more demand on the joints and muscles. It is not a good idea to go straight into these exercises in their final form, but it is best to build up through a series of progressions, these progressions could look like this.

The Static Lunge in place

1. The Lunge
2. The Alternate Leg Lunge
3. The Reverse Lunge
4. The Walking lunge
5. The Walking lunge to push press
6. The Marine Lunge walk
7. All the above in a lateral direction

For climbing steps;

1. The alternate leg step up (boxes of increasing heights)
2. The Single leg step up (boxes of increasing heights)

Changing Levels

Changing levels is an everyday part of life, squatting, bending over to pick things up can’t be avoided, on the Sports field is the same, lowering your centre of gravity for rapid movement, or jumping. For all these types of movement you are changing levels. Exercises that will help you strengthen changing levels are:

1. The Squat and its many variants
2. The Dead lift and variants
3. The Squat to press
4. The clean and Press

Not only do these exercises strengthen your movement, but they also tend to pack on mass, so they give great bang for buck.

That is all for tonight, tomorrow I will cover Push/Pull and Rotation.

Have a good one

Steve