Remember when your parents gave you chores & you totally slacked off on the quality you put forth on that chore, and then your parents made you do the chore again & again (& again for the tough-learners) until you did it with superior quality and at a level that they were satisfied with? Yeah, that’s not how your body works. There is a finite amount of quality movement before the movement pattern breaks down, eventually degrading enough that your body is at risk for a variety of issues, including injury, if it continues.

First, what is a movement pattern? It’s a classification of various movements that all humans should be able to do at any age regardless of size/gender, i.e. “push”, “pull”, “squat”, “carry”, etc. When I first meet a new potential client, I evaluate their movement patterns to determine what joints are moving well, which ones are not, and based on that, I know which muscles are either too short & tight or too long & weak – both of which need to be corrected in order for them to move optimally (example: you have bad posture at your desk job?…lots of pushups in your workout does not help you until you fix the icky-desk-posture; AND the pushups can, in fact, hurt you by further increasing the imbalance of the muscles attached to your shoulder, thereby angering everybody inside your shoulder joint). Continue reading →