The Movement Guy

Helping learn how you get more out of his hips and movement

A lot of folks ask about the ball and if you can use different things, load etc, which you can and tbh when I'm working with someone with a bit of muscle and the type of tension the gym builds, load can help

Here we're using it just like the ball, as a tool to teach us where to put our weight to create stability and mobility and open up the tissues, especially the glutes

If we get it right we remain stable, the movement is fluid and the tension drops, but if we don't the movement becomes rigid, we'll be unstable and the tissue locks up

That's the point of a lot of the drills I do, to teach you where to put your weight so you can move efficiently and restore the natural gait pattern - head over foot

My 'mobility' sessions used to last hours, loading, probing and banding my way into new ranges

I tried it all, but the juice wasn't worth the squeeze and while all that effort made me flexible, I still moved and felt like 💩

If I could go back and give myself one piece of advice to help streamline the whole process it would be to put myself in places I don't feel confident/competent and learn to move

Squat down and see how much I can move, can I twist, turn, generate power? Go into a lunge and try to switch legs without coming up too much, squat down and try to move forwards, backwards, side to side..... I'd tell myself to move and let my bodyweight and gravity teach me where I need to work

Stretching won't improve how you move, neither will 90/90s or sticking a band wherever you can and doing some questionable movements (apologies to my old training partners) - movement will

I try to choose my words carefully on here, I don't want to be one of those guys who spends his days saying 'everything else is 💩, buy my program' while adding nothing of value to the conversation. Just as I don't want this to become another movement cult that requires an overpriced membership, specialist equipment and for you to be shirtless while I incant a bunch of made up terminology to keep you under my spell

I share my work, my experiences and my observations and give opinions based on them and I'm doing my utmost to stop this from becoming another thing, another limiting system that takes over a person's life

You can do these drills with zero equipment, in a tiny space and I prefer you to do them little and often, especially early on, but this is not intended to be a stand-alone thing

This is a movement first aid kit, a re-Map, an upgrade, designed to restore the body's natural biomechanical patterns, teach you the why's and how's and give you all the tools you need to be one you're own meat mechanic

Once you've done the work you'll have a body that works as it should and is capable of doing a bunch of cool stuff

And that's exactly what I want you to do, I want you to get back into the sport you left behind, pick the instrument back up, reconnect with the old hobby, try the thing you never got the chance to do and most importantly, explore movement and have fun

It's sometimes quite difficult to answer specific questions about this stuff, especially sets, reps, frequency, etc. It's all just so new and I've still got so much to figure out

I train people once a week who are now more athletic than they've ever been and others who are now doing things once deemed impossible due to their diagnosis, but then again others require a lot of work, especially in the beginning

I myself don't follow any sort of structured training, I just move with clients and do fun bits when I get the chance, but each time I revisit something, it's easier/better

Then again I did a lot of work in the beginning and endless hours experimenting with movements, even if a lot of that was refining things and trimming the fat

Little and often is definitely a good way to go early on while the tissues remodel and the patterns form, but once you get the basics, every movement you do, even walking becomes biomechanical medicine

I think what this is, what it's becoming, is a system to help restore your body's natural biomechanics/rhythm, but, once that's done it's more like movement maintenance, something you pop in here and there to help keep things you moving well while doing fun things that would get teenage, jackass and dbz inspired, you excited

is one of the most inspirational people I've ever met, her attitude towards everything that's happened to her is.... It's unreal

She is another example of why you can't succumb to a diagnosis, why you have to keep asking questions and why you have to keep pushing forward, no matter what anyone says

I love this 💩 so much, every day I learn something new, every day I get better and every day I find more pieces to a seemingly endless puzzle

I don't know whether everything is planned, if it's all on repeat or if there are multiple paths we can walk but, one thing I'm certain of, is that this is what I'm supposed to be doing and what life and my own journey was preparing me for

The movement experiment continues

I'm opening up more sessions on a Tuesday so get in touch if you'd like to upgrade your movement

I do a lot of different drills and patterns with people to help them get to know their bodies, enhance their mind/muscle connection and calm their nervous system, but the most transformative movements are the ones with a bit of pop

There's a mechanism within the body called reciprocal inhibition, one thing (or several) contracts, another lengthens (think bicep/tricep) so if we want to move well we need a balance of both and we need to be able to do it quickly

Pain, injury, trauma, repetitive movements/postures, life, these can all tip the balance towards more tension, making it harder to let go and move - you lose that spring in your step

But it's not just the tissues, the NS becomes more guarded too, reinforcing that tension, which in turn ramps up the NS and now you're a ball of tension whose bandwidth is being drained constantly

Everything becomes more stressful, more energy draining and less joyful - you can't handle anything the way you used to and over time you become less, you

Stretching and mobility work won't fix this, they'll make it worse and create more dysregulation within the tissues and the NS

Learning to move quickly on the other hand, while daunting at first, will help to restore and regulate both giving you back that childlike enthusiasm for movement and life

Another day, another set of hips that only know how to move in a very limited way, and now even that hurts and it's causing a bunch of other issues too

Con has been through a lot in recent months and now he's ready to get his body moving like it used to do we started where the vast majority of issues can trace their roots, hips and glutes

They should be mobile, supple and capable of a wide variety of movements, but sadly modern training neglects huge chunks of their movement/development, leading gait and movement altering tension that leads to secondary issues like back pain and knee problems

This was our first session which focused on learning how to access range safely, without forcing it and how to use our glutes to stabilise as we twist, turn and change levels, like most movements outside of the gym

It went well and I reckon the bouncy, quick stuff will be finding its way into our sessions pretty quickly

You can't force neuro rehab, it takes time and you need to respect the Nervous System/how it feels about what you're asking the body to do

It's closed down for a reason and while the danger may have passed and the damage has begun healing, the NS is still on guard

We learn to move by using the sensors in the tissues to map movements in conjunction with the information coming in from the eyes and vestibular system, gradually building patterns

That's why I start with basic movements/activations and gradually add more complexity, like the arm twist with Dan while still using the cross body to fire up his brain

Glutes are probably one of the most sought after muscles, especially in recent years, but a lot of the movements used to target them only focus on a small percentage of their movement potential, so we end up with junk in the trunk that has very little movement

All those horses, but no gallop

The problem is that even the 'corrective' exercises can be too much at first and other muscles can take over, so I like to spend a bit of time focusing on that signal, learning to sit into it and expanding the movement, nourishing that neurology and reintegrating it into more complex patterns

Once we do this, every movement, including walking becomes a movement that nourishes and strengthens the glutes