Movement Literacy

Last Friday I met "The Exercise Doctor"--Dr. Gerald Larson. He used a term that I really liked: movement literacy. We both agreed that many people, old and young, don't know how to move well. Vern Gambetta knows it. We don't learn how to move in PE--we learn how to play games; we don't learn how to move in organized sports--we learn how to do specific sport-related skills. Boys have Tommy John elbow surgery and girls tear their ACLs because they are doing skills their movement systems cannot yet handle.

By the time our physicians refer us to a physical therapist, our poor movement strategies have usually caused us pain or injury, and our insurance company won't pay for the time it would take for the therapist to re-educate our bodies and minds. They just pay to address the symptoms, if that.

My idea, with Iron Maven, is to teach people how to move well, framing the idea as physical health. My first goal is to get to the adult athlete to buy into this, but then hopefully get to the average Jane / Joe. Get them to understand that moving well every day helps the musculoskeletal system stay healthy. Get everyone to understand that moving well when exercising, especially resistance training, is imperative to performance and to physical health.

Trouble is, most people have trouble appreciating this concept. For many, exercise is about looking good. For athletes, there is a lack of respect for the skills that are involved in training in the weight room. And they are skills that should be learned. But then from whom? Many people turn to personal trainers because these are the people who advertise and these are the people who LOOK fit, so obviously they must know their stuff, right? Not always so.

And then there are the physical therapists of the world--locked behind the doors of physician referral and insurance reimbursement. We fail to market ourselves and our skills to the apparently healthy population--something we can do in Missouri. And it is my observation that many therapists do not set a good example for the public by being healthy and fit. Would you pay money out of pocket to learn how to move well and exercise from an overweight, frumpy person with a giant Diet Coke sitting on the desk?

How do we get the average person to appreciate the benefits of movement literacy? Through what avenue? Do we have to pose as a buff personal trainer to attract their attention and then WHAM!--sneak up on them with movement instruction?

I am currently working with a retired MD (in his 80s) who is recovering from a hip fracture. He's astounded at how much he didn't know about movement and moving well. Getting out of a chair and walking safely with a cane are his goals. Now moving is literally about survival, safety and living life to its fullest. My guess is he'd recommend a little movement literacy for us all, sooner than later.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more