5 Simple Strategies to Elevate Your Movement Practice
Key Takeaways
Your body is built to move in patterns — and training those patterns with intention builds strength that actually translates to real life. By combining foundational movements, diverse planes of motion, and an understanding of how your body manages energy, you can train smarter, not harder.
Movement patterns like pushing, pulling, lunging, and walking mimic how we live, so include them all in your workouts.
Move in all directions; life doesn’t happen in a straight line; neither should your training.
Lifting well helps you sit, stand, carry, and recover with ease — it’s just practice for being human.
Foundations of Movement Patterns
There are somewhere between 5 and 7 fundamental movement patterns: gait, push, pull, anti/rotation, hip dominant, knee dominant, and lunge. An argument can be made that the latter three are really just variations of push or pull movements- a conversation for a different day. Our muscles and bones (and transitional tissues in between) are a series of pulleys and levers to make movement happen.
A full-body, valuable workout protocol incorporates all of these in some way. Some of them pair more nicely than others- for instance, a pull movement in the upper body pairs nicely with a pull movement in the lower body. That said, checking off the boxes is a level-one, solid start for any movement practice.
Planes of Motion
We move through 3 dimensions (though some of us might dive a bit deeper into the fourth): frontal, saggital, and transverse. The frontal plane is side-to-side movements, the saggital plane is front-and-back movements, and transverse is a lil bit of both*. Most all of us live most all of our time in the saggital plane. Loading weights, for sure, is most often moved through that plane of motion.
Incorporating the other two, especially integrating frontal plane movement, contributes to healthy, multidimensional joints. The transverse plane is an eventual byproduct of moving the full body, in a balanced way, through gravity’s constant pull.
*the transverse can be said to embody step one of an eventual thrust into the fourth dimension.
Practical Applications
We lift weights and stay strong so that we can perform best in our day-to-day life. I’ll say it over and over: movement, nutrition, and mindset are all just skills to be practiced. We continually arrive at deeper levels of nuance as we become more embodied and aware of our experiences. In life we sit and stand (knee dominant), we pick things up off the floor (hip dominant), we push a shopping cart, we pull a door open, we walk with a sleeping baby dangling off of us. All of these things are replicated in the gym setting, with the addition of load, in order to train and maintain the strength necessary to live with less injury.
Keep it simple! Over and Over, do the thing that looks like the things that you’re already doing and you’re likely to find that you end up doing the things in a way that feels a bit better every time.
Sleep: The Foundation of Health
For most of my life, sleep has been a nuisance. I yearned for all that I could accomplish in that time spent in slumber. As I’ve aged (and come to respect the value of 40 winks) my sleep quality has become a non-negotiable in my routine. That night time, melatonin-fueled semi-coma carries it’s weight in value for our lives. To avoid getting too in-the-weeds with the jargony bits of sleep science, consider this a high level understanding of all the systems invested in your good night’s sleep.
Digestive Health
You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it right here: your tummy is your brain’s brain. Our gut plays host to more microbes than the earth does humans. Each of our microbiomes is like a fingerprint, made up of a unique assortment of organisms specifically related to our current lifestyle and genetic factors. Digestion is a star player in the regularity of our circadian rhythms. As such, when our sleep is disturbed, our gut senses that and starts to make plans to adjust accordingly. Additionally, when
Our gut influences our sleep influences our guts in a lot of ways (see more here). Suffice it to say, though, that there are a few easy-peasy ways you can cultivate mindful habits that support sleep health through diet. These include:
Eating within the same time blocks throughout the day.
Avoiding eating within two hours before sleep time.
Following the 1-2-3 rule for fruits and (especially) veggies: 1 with breakfast, 2 with lunch, 3 with dinner.
Minimizing consumption of overly shelf-stable foods or highly processed, densely saturated foods.
Cognitive Function, Stress, and Regeneration
We need adequate sleep in order to replenish our brain stuffs after a day of being “things that think”. Our brains utilizes upwards of 20% of our energy resources to continue to conduct all of our bodily processes day-in and day-out. The byproducts of thinking get flushed out through the “glymphatic system” (the lymph of the central nervous system). This is an incredible feature and a high value mechanism that sleep enacts. Life without proper sleep is a lot like continuing to drive your car without an oil change. Its inefficient and sludges up the engine, rendering the vehicle a risk. Speaking of vehicles, scientists have studied the effects of poor (or no) sleep on cognition and have equated sleepless driving to driving while under the influence.
When we are stressed, though, our relationship with sleep gets even more complex. For instance, the stress hormone, cortisol, mobilizes stored glucose into the circulatory system to provide working muscles more readily available energy resources. If you’re into this shit, you’re into it and already know it. If you’re not into it, or you’re not interested in knowing more about it, don’t worry. Again, the bottom line is that sleep is intended to be a regenerative moment for our bodies to process out it’s waste. The efficacy of those processes is dependent on our circumstances. Because we exist in a hyper-active, hyper-productive world, that’s not always easy. When push comes to shove, if sleep is becoming a problem due to stress, there are a few measures we can take before calling our primary. These include:
Having a bed time routine. We are not immune to Pavlovian response. Put a few key actions into sequence to trigger your brain into “power down” mode.
Reduce or eliminate blue light after 8pm. Blue light stimulates receptors in the eyes to produce more cortisol.
Be observant of the effects that fluctuations on your emotions have on your relationship with sleep. Anxiety begets anxiety, how can you notice those feelings arise without feeding their flames?
The Short of It
We are not exempt from the natural law. Without adequate, quality regenerative time, our bodies run on fumes eventually breaking down from lack of resources. Prioritize that rest time, lean into feeling recovered, and live better for it!
Op/Ed: Make a Choice- On Purpose
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make the horse drink. You can give your dog some cheese, point right to it, and they’ll still go sniffing in all the wrong places. Change psychology, particularly in this ultra-informed population, has begun to feel outdated at best, jaded at worst. These musings come from my years of struggling through (and eventually recovering from) these same afflictions.
Each day I am presented with various forms of “I saw a TikTok that said X, so I thought I would give it a try”, “I know what I need to do to make meaningful change, I just haven’t yet”, and the famous “I can change at anytime, I’d just prefer that the variables be perfectly aligned with my expectations before doing that”. It feels a lot like talking to a wall.
How do we reconcile that pursuing our dreams feels at odds with caring for ourselves in the present? Have we lost touch completely with our intuition, or whatever it is that guides us towards our goals? Or, is it that our ego has commandeered our inner compass, insatiable unless met with unbound success? As always, more questions than answers.
I recently sat with a line from the book “Inner Excellence” by Jim Murphy that read “The Ego is obsessed with outcomes” and, man, did that hit. As I’ve sought to unravel these blockages in my life decisions, this sentiment is echoed through the hallways of my past. Ego as a concept has historically been tough for me to understand.
At it’s base, Ego is the internalization of the performance that we put on daily. That performance is determined by the lives that we’ve lived, the interactions we’ve had. The narratives we’ve curated about our past unfold in the present and influence the outcomes of our future. We are the cruise directors on our life’s journey, and the Ego infiltrates our passage through protective mechanisms based on our past. At some point, the ego hijacks our inner guide and we lose the creative power of multitudes in pursuit of the singular endgame.
All this to say that we can lead ourselves to water, we can take ourselves right to the door of satisfaction and, instead, turn just to the left, choosing to look out the window and get so lost in the view that we neglect to actually get outside. Knowledge is power, and turning into the shadows can elucidate more tools for the fight- so, while answers may not fully materialize, contemplation is a gift! Keep searching, experimenting, and adjusting to meet the moment. That, I think, is the greatest joy of life.
Sleep Science: It’s Nothing to Snore About
Sleep- we see it happen to others, but we’re unconscious when it happens to us. What exactly is going on with and while we sleep? Knowledge is power, and a brief overview of the chemistry of sleep might be just what the doctor ordered to drive the value of sleep home for those of you who leave your sleep health wanting.
Gut and Neurotransmitters
The gut is often referred to as our primitive brain because, before we had a brain, we were simply an anus. When embryos develop, the first thing to form is tube that runs from mouth to anus. While the brain has clearly presented itself and evolved into who it is today, the gut continues to be the man-behind-the-curtain, shouting cues, directing the whole operation. Our stomachs are the primary production site of several neurotransmitters and the home to gazillions of microbes.
The neurotransmitter, serotonin, is one of these aforementioned transmitters that heavily influence the cadence and quality of our sleep. Serotonin is most well known as a “happy hormone”, mostly produced in the gut (90%), that plays a role in temperature regulation and sleep health. Serotonin is a byproduct of essential amino acid tryptophan (popularized by the post-thanksgiving siesta), only accessible through the foods we eat. When we’re not eating right, our sleep quality diminishes as well. This contributes to lower immune health and increased vulnerability to all sorts of dis-ease.
Glymphatic System
Sleep is so important for us to get in proper amounts because we “thinking things”. The act of thinking is an effortful process (for some more than others) that results in waste byproducts that need to be cleared out of the brain. In Ayurveda, this waste elimination system is called “ambu vaha strotas”- it is the waterways of the body that clarify the waste, circulate the vitality, and keep us operating on all cylinders. Of the fluid systems in our bodyes, the “lymphatic system”is our liquidy-juiciness that transports nutrients, immune response, and nuerotransmitters.
Our central nervous system has it’s own specialized lymph to clarify built up waste product- called the Cerebro-spinal Fluid, part of the “glymphatic system”. At night, when we sleep, this system awakens and flushes our brain and nervous tissue so that we can wake up fresh and ready to go the next day. Long term, low quality sleep contributes to neurodegenerative diseases and cardiovascular disease.
The Pineal & Adrenals
Finally, the enigmatic pineal gland and the energetic adrenals, our internal metronomes. Through sensory input processing of light received via the visual cortex, our pineal gland excretes sleep promoting hormones. Low spectrum to no light, soft sounds, neutral temperature, satiated gut are all signals. These send a cascade of messages out to downshift the system, we are fed and safe, prepare for sleep mode. Blood pressure drops along with body temperature, excretory functioning slows down, and our body goes into phases semi-paralysis.
In the morning, wake-promoting hormones begin to pour into our blood. Digestive processes are energized back into life, the heart beats with a little more razzle-dazzle, and our sense perception eagerly receives the world around it. In stressful times, that energy spike is exacerbated, spiraling into persistent states of unrest while crowding out deep, regenerative rest opportunities.
Heavily stimulating activities in the hours just before sleep are a recipe for underwhelming sleep. Shocking a system in need of repair is burning the candle at both ends, unwittingly taking years away from your life.
Learning and Consolidation
There’s too much reality to face before expecting perfection in any wellness ritual. Systemic and systematic disruption to access to basic needs will always be part of our lives. That said, why wave the white flag and succumb to those habits when you do have those glimmers of “you” time? In the name of true self care, any effort toward your healthiest future is a worthwhile endeavor. Each choice to do so is a vote in favor of your life.
Self-Efficacy and Other “Best Kept Secrets” to Success
How often do you steel a quick glance around of your peers to pass a judgment on their progress in relation to yours? While there is no way that we can know what other folks have going on, inevitably we measure ourselves to our perception of their accomplishments. To imply otherwise is, in my opinion, a lie. The intention can be there, right? “Don’t look at what others are doing”. “Just focus on your path”. The energy sent out to “read the room” could have been used to keep progressing your journey. Yes, comparison is the thief of joy. It also happens to be a very normal, human thing to do nonetheless.
When we pop our head up during an exam to note the temperature of the room at large (is everyone else sweating profusely, too?) it either affirms or upset our current progress. In the real world, though, we’re surrounded by a bunch of folks masking their real experience as a way of maintaining social norms. It’s all cool and great, but somewhere along the way we might feel further behind because the masks that we see mute the internal screams of panic that everyone else is also screaming.
Through these same masks, coaches tout their methods- affirming the value of buying into their particular program. Let them tell you how to live and you’ll certainly end up looking just like them*.
With great power comes great responsibility. Unfortunately, the coaching industry’s exponential growth moment has not come with regulation. As a result, we’ve ended up with harm done and poorly researched information disseminated. The coaching industry can be highly toxic at it’s worst. Because we don’t make money when you don’t spend money on us, coaches are likely to retain you through disempowering practices that keep y’all feeling incapable of “going at it on your own”.
Below, you’ll find a quick list of real, results driving practices that are free to explore and readily a part of your self-preservation toolbox already :)
Self Efficacy
Self efficacy is a belief that you can persevere. We are able to adapt through the constant process of learning, failing, recounting, and realigning to attempt better outcomes. When we are inundated with imagery that reflects the oxymoron that everyone else is okay and succeeding alongside the impossibility of making ends meet in this current capitalist culture, the essence of self efficacy is harder to adopt.
Us believing that we can persist, regardless of past failures, is a manifestation of “the american dream”. As an institution, America was founded on the backs of othering, subversion, and abuse. The American dream was established for the folks who reaped the rewards of the systematic subjugation and abuse of anyone else who didn’t fit that mold. Due to the deep seated fractures in our current state of things, self efficacy became a privilege only affirmed for the few that were given the advantage of believing that they could.
The brain constructs its reality based on continually confirmed behaviors by the folks who rear you and the community that you’re brought up in. These realities create a unique system of optimization for resources that the command center needs to survive each day. At this point in late-stage capitalism, we are all targeted by strategic marketing boosted by research that has proven the mechanisms for human behavior. Us believing that we can persevere is something that disrupts the system enough- not all can, otherwise the system will collapse. It wasn’t built for one-for-all.
When your systems optimization methods don’t quite mesh well with practices that will yield positive results, it takes an extra effort to unlearn and relearn in a new way. Humans who are categorically kept from equal access are immediately at a disadvantage from believing that they can. It’s exhausting. Now that megacorporations have the research and the tools to keep us looking away from the “man behind the curtain”, our global sense of self-efficacy feels at-risk.
To recenter yourself and your outcomes, consider all of the trials you’ve overcome so far. When you find yourself in a rut, return to examples of times that you’ve felt the same and ended up with a positive outcome. Persistence doesn’t have to be grandiose, it can be simply getting up and completing the intentions for the day when you were particularly dark, ya know? Wins are wins, you’ve made it this far, and you can keep making it onward as a result.
Agency
A sense of agency, I believe, is our easy act of revolution. Agency is our sense of self-determination. When we feel “agency”, we see ourselves in the driver’s seat. We are the director, the performer, and the audience determining the success of the performance. Our agency is taken from us when we’re constantly inundated with messaging that leaves us feeling helpless. Whether it’s content that we directly engage with or the sounds, sites, and sensations that surround us regularly, it’s easy to have taken when we’re most vulnerable.
Us reclaiming our sense of agency is us returning to our roots, serving our needs, and standing in our power. We aren’t ideal consumers when we are in our skin, on our feet, and thriving. We are sold on dreams that we’re told to have, and encouraged to match and outdo our peers in the rat race for attention. Not only do we need to carry the burden of the daily stress of showing up right, we also end up exhausted in our pursuit of some ideal that we believe we need to experience.
We can begin to reclaim our sense of agency from within. Our thoughts become our words which are spoken into action which persist as habits and we leave this earthly form by way of the legacy that those actions have left. When I’m feeling particularly disempowered, I’ll imagine my perfect day. “Your Perfect Day” exercise is meant to inspire the steps necessary to get you from the moment you’re in and to motivate you towards just where you can go. Imagine your perfect day, take note of the sounds, the locations, the feelings, and (most importantly) the actions that you take to make that day most perfect. How do you get there? What can you do this month, this week, this day to realize that dream? That’s action, that’s agency. Uncontrollables aside, knowing just how much you can influence your outcomes is addictive.
Simplicity
Finally, and one of my hardest pills to swallow: Simplicity. The quality of being easy to understand or to do except as it pertains to personal growth. Everyone has an opinion and, if you open yourself up to those opinions, you may be at risk of having your own opinions elbowed out. For those of us who can’t quite accept things at face value and who worry that the simplest solution might, in fact, be the most negligent, accepting simplicity is scary.
For a broader system that gives all voices something like a platform, elevating the most clickable and provocative voices, simplicity isn’t sexy so it’s unworthy of amplification. Other than the clickbait-devoid-ness of simplicity, the hyper-productivity driven information economy relegates simplicity to the margins, unworthy of a second glace. That’s it, that’s the post. Simplicity doesn’t play into the narratives that want confusion in order to facilitate buy-in for the solution.
When we’re just setting out on a fresh day, there may be a million things we want to do, there may be a handful of things we need to do, and there may be the grey area tasks that we neither want to nor need to do (but that we might be more than happy to use to procrastinate). It’s useful to map out this brain clutter into a handful of buckets: high priority, low priority, exciting, distracting. Categorizing the mish-mash in our brains is a helpful way to simplify, to clarify the intentions of our actions, and make the choices that will most efficiently get us where we need to go so that we can exist how we want.
All in all, and if you’ve gotten this far, remember that you are the driver of your life. You have all of the tools, they just may take a bit more practice than you expect. Believe in you, advocate for your best interests, and watch your energies shift :)