Friday, 23 May 2014
On 19:12 by Unknown in Body Map No comments
photo by Anja Osenberg |
I used to hateworking out. Really, REALLY hate it. It made me sore, it
tensed me up, it made me feel inadequate when I couldn’t perform half the
movements in class, while the person next to me seemed to breeze through the
workout without even breaking a sweat. I quit going to gyms completely and
turned my back on anything that looked remotely like a PE class.
That has all
completely changed for me. Now I find myself
going to the gym 4 times a week where I run, jump, squat, ab-crunch, pull-up,
push-up and generally do, with great gusto, all the sorts of movements I used
to abhor.
What produced this
change in me? Becoming fairly fluent in psychophysical language.
One of the keys to
enjoying a workout is enjoying performing the movements that are an integral
part of it.
Granted, no one “enjoys” doing three sets of 10 burpees (squat-plank-squat-jump)
at the end of an hour long workout. But having good body mechanics can make the
whole difference between hating your trainer’s guts or taking it all in good stride
as part of what’s got to be done to complete that day’s workout.
Good body-mechanics
is something most people have lost somewhere down their lives’ paths. At some point bizarre ideas about how your body works and where
your body parts join each other have crept up on you, with the devastating
result that you move expending way more energy than necessary, and using
muscles ill-suited for the job at hand. No wonder you end up all tense and
exhausted. The worst part is that strain
injuries are only a step away from faulty body-use.
Any good trainer
will have an eye out for lousy body-mechanics, and will give you pointers on
how to correct your technique. The problem is that
it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll be able to put that advice into action. If your perception of
where your joints are really located in your body-map is a bit (or a lot) askew,
then you’re in for a lot of frustration.
Lousy body-mechanics
will become more evident once muscle fatigue settles in. You’re on the third round of the workout circuit and suddenly
your realize that your right shoulder and arm aren’t responding as efficiently
as your lefts, making you rely heavily and overuse the left side. Or perhaps
you’re at ab-crunch number 30 of the 4th round and you realize your previously
symmetrical torso rise has become a lopsided affair: you twist up instead of
rising up parallel.
This seeming trivial asymmetry wouldn’t have risen to the
surface if you hadn’t taken yourself to the limit. Perhaps you weren’t even
aware that you favored one side over the other, you were happily and
unconsciously compensating. You might be
tempted to think that all you need to do is “strengthen” the muscles on the
weak side. However “logical” this reasoning might appear, it is way off-target.
The asymmetry, or twist, that becomes evident when you take yourself to the
limit, is not something that wasn’t there before, it was there all along, it is how you habitually activate the
muscle pattern for that particular movement.
So, if strengthening
the weak side isn’t the solution; what is there to do?
You figure out if
you’ve got a stage 1, 2 or 3 problem.
Movement patterns
are learned and integrated in 3 stages, following the standard neurological
pathway of habit formation. So correcting body-mechanics is really all
about re-training habits.
STAGE ONE =
PERCEPTION TRAINING
The first stage is awareness.
You need to recognise 4 basic things:
1) The mechanics of what you want to do (e.g. what does a correct
squat entail);
2) What you are in fact doing (e.g. what am I doing when I squat);
3) In what ways what you want to do and what you are in fact doing
differ from each other;
4) What you need to (re)learn to get nearer to your goal.
Sometimes it’s hard to see this on your own (we can’t see what
we don’t know). So a good idea is to find outside help. Personally, what I do
is go to an Alexander Technique teacher or any other movement specialist who
has a really good eye for movement patterns and can tell me what I’m physically doing that is
manifesting as wrong muscle activation sequences. Such a teacher can also help
me figure out what wrong ideas I’m
harboring about my own body and its mechanics, and can help me see what mood is concomitant with this state of
affairs.
Stage one is all
about recognition, learning to perceive what you were blind to before. It’s basic body mapping, recognition of habitual muscle
activations patterns, becoming aware of discrepancies between my perception of
reality and what is really happening.
During this stage
you lay down new neural pathways.
STAGE TWO = MIND
TRAINING
The second stage is directed conscious application.
Every time you’re faced with a cue for action (e.g. “squat!”) You
need to practice NOT automatically doing how you did it before (this is harder
than it sounds, believe me), and instead doing it the new way.
Stage two is about
being able to consciously deactivate the sequence that’s causing the faulty
execution, and consciously choosing the new activation sequence, EVERY TIME the
action is called for. This stage requires ATTENTION & THOUGHT, you
need to be FOCUSED & PRECISE.
During this phase
you’re strengthening the new neural wiring you laid down in stage one.
STAGE THREE = REAL-LIFE TRAINING
The third stage is using your new knowledge in physical reality.
Stage three is when you take your newly integrated pattern and
test drive it in real life, in situations when you can’t over-think it, when
speed and power are called for. During this type of training you get to see how
much of the new sequence has become truly automatic and second nature.
After a while at this stage you will run into apparently new
(but in truth really old) faulty mechanics. Patterns that used to be hidden
under the old compensations will rise to the surface. But this time you’re
prepared: you won’t try to deal with them with more reps of the same; now you
know you have to get back to the drawing board.
Working out has
become not only a pleasure, it is now also a science. You’re
now not only stronger, faster, leaner, fitter, healthier; you’re also SMARTER.
So, if you’re stuck in your progress, if working out isn’t fun
anymore, if it is just too painful, or if you don’t seem to get any better… then
you might need to take yourself to stage one, and build yourself up again
towards finally embodying your true potential.
See you next week.
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If you’re interested in getting better and enjoying your
workouts more, then check out what my work is about or contact me
about lessons.
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