I am a lifelong learner. One of my favorite things about being a Strength Coach is that it requires consistent training. I have to recertify for all my credentials every two years through continuing education. I'm also working toward my 1000 yoga hours (I’ve earned 500+ so far). I am always in school, and I love it.
The class I just completed through Yoga Medicine was called Movement Intelligence. The title alone was a grabber, and the subtitle a lean-in: “An introduction to neuromechanics.”
For me, movement intelligence is understanding how we move, what we engage, what we relax, how we transition, and how we conclude a movement. Neuromechanics is the study of how the nervous system controls the muscular and skeletal systems to produce movement.
Research shows that muscles and bones need stimulation to grow. The same is true for the nervous system. When we move, the nervous system lays down a map for how to perform the action. When we sit a lot, the nervous system knows how to sit. Older clients have shared with me that it has become more difficult for them to stand up from sitting. When we move, whether walking, running, biking, rowing, playing golf, picking up grandkids, and the like, our nervous system has figured out how to do that. A smart nervous system supports good mobility.
Even if we are active, we can sometimes fall into the same groove. We may tend to do the same exercises or approach our sport in the same way. Repetition is useful for building skill and strength. Variety helps by challenging muscles, joints, bones, and the nervous system to try something new.
In my coaching, I teach the specifics of each exercise to ensure proper form and effectiveness. When training a specific muscle, such as the chest, I program three different exercises. It is more common to ask for three sets of 8-12 chest press repetitions. I program three sets for the chest, but I’ll ask for 1) push-up; 2) chest press; and 3) chest fly. I believe varying exercises to strengthen the same muscles is beneficial because each exercise asks the muscle to do something slightly different. Most of my clients appreciate the range of options and report feeling stronger. Every once in a while, a client prefers fewer exercises and more sets of each, so I provide that
I take a similar approach in my Yoga classes. Moving into a pose like Triangle can become overly comfortable and familiar. To maintain challenge and keep training the nervous system, I’ll bring people in and out of poses in unexpected ways. Reversibility, or the ability to easily reverse a movement, is part of my intent. As we build strength, we might enter Triangle pose with ease but jerk as we come out, or vice versa. Over time, we can work to smooth our transitions. My students tell me they find my classes both fun and engaging.
In both strength training and yoga, the goal is to increase body awareness. I ask clients where they feel an exercise to see which muscles they perceive are engaged. A neuromechanical concept called parasitic tension refers to the unnecessary recruitment of muscles not needed to perform the movement. I have a client who struggles to avoid over-clenching her upper front core muscles. I’ve had other clients who, at first, can’t identify which muscle is doing the work. Building body awareness takes time and patience.
I remind clients that feeling clumsy is part of learning. Elite athletes look so smooth because they have learned to engage the muscles needed for the task and relax the others. In fact, relaxing a muscle is more challenging than activating it. I have had clients who tend to be in fight-or-flight mode with their shoulders tense and raised. I bring in breathwork, stretching and myofascial release to retrain the shoulders to relax. I work on both sides of the equation with my clients.
The phrase "use it or lose it" is instructive. If we challenge our body – muscles, joints, bones, and nervous system – we will build strength for the long haul. If we are sedentary, we will lose mobility over time.
I celebrate and follow the advice of Physical Therapist Greg Lehman: “We fundamentally believe with movement optimism that movement preparation trumps movement quality. So you can get into these weird positions and thrive with them provided you slowly build up your tolerance to them.” I like weird. I like clumsy. I like discovering what we can do.
The future I’m training for is one where I keep discovering what I can do—even when it feels weird or clumsy.