INTRODUCTION
Let us pretend you are driving a very complicated machine such as a race car and your only task is to get the car around a track as fast as possible. Do you think you could complete this task as fast as a professional race car driver even if you have the exact same car? No, of course you couldn’t. In fact, you may not even be able to make it around the track once even though all the elements to complete this task are there.
The human body is much more complex than any race car, yet we don’t give enough credit to everyday tasks we complete, such as walking, sitting and standing, and even picking something up off the ground. To complete even the simplest task, we have to employ several mechanical systems that can work in endless variations to get the same end goal completed. When we look back on the trip around the race track we know there are several factors to getting the fastest time. Just because you have a vehicle that weighs 3000 pounds and has 700 horsepower doesn’t mean any driver can take it around the same exact track with the same exact time, even assuming the engine performs at 100% each time a driver takes it for a spin. That’s because there are several factors we need to ask about, how was the launch, did the driver hold back at all, did the driver take all the correct lines for the quickest path around the track, did the driver shift smoothly and remain in the optimal RPM range for the engine? There are countless other reasons, and these all apply to the control over our own amazing human machine that we want to master.
First you need to learn how to walk. You may think that you have already conquered this task at a very young age, however there is a good chance you are not benefitting from it as much as you could. Let’s take a look at the most simple mechanics of walking. From a standing position you will lean your center of gravity over your toes and lift a leg and place it in front of the other. From this position you will lean forward on the leading foot and move the back foot to some location forward of the previously leading foot. Ok, you have just taken your first two steps in your life of fitness. However, you did not address the quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteal muscles, core stability muscles, hip flexors, calf muscles, and all the other muscles that were completing this work. How did you fire those muscles, how did you open your hips, how did you plant your foot, how was your posture? People walk very differently, however people that are more athletic, seem to have a lot in common when it comes to how they walk.
I am a mechanical engineer and I spend a great deal of time analyzing everything around me, and I have always been this way in my life. I am always impressed more about the way things work rather than the actual work they complete. However it took me until now to realize that the most impressive and dynamically complex system to analyze was the human body. I have been Crossfitting since 2007 and I have seen the good the bad and the ugly when it comes to this sport. I have studied athletes and Olympic lifters, strong men, and power lifters for the past 9 years. I have noticed several similarities and differences in them. One thing I always noticed was that the “best” athletes weren’t the biggest or leanest or strongest; they were the ones that MOVED the best. They were the most in control with their bodies and because of this they were able to train harder and longer with better results. They didn’t have any quirky movements or imbalances in their movements, they seemed to have great flexibility and they also had a sort of “strut” to their walk.
I myself have re-learned how to walk at the age of 27 years old. One day I was watching member in the gym I went to who seemed to have it all, and I noticed this kind of different walk that he maintained. He seemed to move very well in most movements and always maintained huge amounts of strength from his hard work. I also so something similar in a coworker who used to be a successful power lifter who after 10 years kept a great deal of his strength. Then I thought of some of the people in my life that were just “naturally” strong. And then it hit me. These people were given roughly the same chance as me from a young age but they just moved better doing normal things which helped them build a strong and well balanced mechanical system for work. Whether it was playing with friends or sports growing up, or any supplemental exercises they were told to do at a young age, they became in tuned with how their body SHOULD move to get things done.
Right away I decided to look at how I moved and realized that I walked swiftly most of the time weight heavy on my toes and never really opened my hips. I walked like a wimp. I was a good athlete in my opinion and had been Crossfitting for almost seven years so I was capable of a great deal of things, but I lacked a great deal of strength and dealt with nagging pains and inflexibly all the time. My quads were always sore from working out and never my glutes or hamstrings. I started to realize that when I would talk to people who I would workout with we would complain about two different things usually, “Oh my quads kill me” or “Oh my butt is so sore”. This would be after doing the same workout, such as 150 wall balls for time. For those of you that don’t know, a wall ball is a squat while holding a 20 pound ball chest level and then standing aggressively and throwing the ball to a 10 foot target at the wall and catching it on the rebound for the next rep. Well, I was the one that would never have any issue with my posterior chain, hamstrings and glutes mainly, and struggle with the pain in my quads the next day. This is because I was quad dependent. I had over developed my quads my whole life, starting from when I began walking. This transferred to all of my movements with my legs. Without properly developed hamstrings no athlete can generate enough power to lift heavy weights. This was my issue, and this is probably the root cause for most peoples’ ability or non-ability to build strength quickly and safely.
I knew it was time for change so I began to walk using more of my posterior chain and after a few weeks it looked and felt completely normal. Almost immediately after, I noticed that during workouts and squat sessions, my hamstrings would be sore! I was happy to be sore there because I was NEVER sore in those areas. I also noticed that they would keep my legs in a balance and my quads wouldn’t kill me during certain training even on the days to follow. Also, I used to get pain in my patella tendons occasionally and roughly two years later I find this to be a rare occurrence.
Such a simple change helped me move my fitness to the next level, increasing the work capacity and power my legs could generate. It even caused me to change jean sizes and fabric makeup so that I could have a more flexible fit. There wasn’t all good news however. My hips had been “unhappy” about the change. This was due to the tightness that I had caused in them with the way I lived my normal day to day life outside of the gym and the way I moved casually around my life. We should always be moving with purpose if we want to be the best athlete in any sport. This goes for eating, sleeping, stretching, relaxing, and training with purpose as well.
Enough about me, and let us go over the rules you need to LIVE BY to become the most physically fit athlete you can be at this point in life. You should begin analyzing everything that you do inside and outside of the gym. Because if walking can be this complicated, and it is, then think about how complicated the other dynamic exercises and other daily tasks can be. We use several mechanical systems in the body to complete the simplest tasks to the most complex ones.
ALWAYS MOVE WITH PURPOSE
Allow me to fill your imagination with a scene of two very different men walking. First you see a big huge strong angry man walking down the street at you. Now you see this wimpy passive little man walking at you. In those two scenes did the two men in question walk the same? NO. One was walking with larger steps, a wide open hip area, almost pushing the ground under him away, while the other was almost tip toeing around as if not the be noticed. It is easy to argue that the way these people walk may be due to their personalities but also helped SHAPE them into the person they are. Take a second and walk like a big tough guy and pay attention to the muscles that are being used your body and the order in which they are being fired, and do the same as if you were the little wimpy guy. You will feel how much more your body is working to walk like a tough guy, you can feel the muscles firing, and your hips being opened and stretched. It feels more taxing because it is. The wimpy guy stays forward weighted in his steps, uses basically only his quads to walk and keeps his hips closed, very little effort and very little gain.
As a developing child we are learning how to do things by imitating the ones around us. However one of the earliest things we learn as a movement that we maintain throughout our life is how we walk. Now would you take advice from an infant in how to do anything? That is why for some people, this needs to be re-learned. Every person should have a different walk, it is not logical to believe that we can all look the same when we do anything. The point of this exercise in walking is to become more in tuned with your body and begin to understand everything it has been doing for you.
The next time you go for a walk analyze yourself and make notes of all the intricacies in your movement. How is the weight of your body balanced during your steps? Are you taking strides that will move and loosen your hips? Are there areas of high pressure in certain parts of the foot? What muscles do you fire when you are pushing off and landing with each step? Is your chest up and shoulders externally rotated open? Do you have any imbalances in your steps between right and left legs? The list goes on, and you should know that it is most ideal to be balanced and relaxed yet maintain great posture and be deliberate with each step. Your body is always talking to you, and now you just have to listen.
Hopefully it will be easy to find some areas that need to be improved upon. Make sure that you adjust your walking and maintain it long enough that it becomes the new norm. It is also important to develop any imbalances along the way, such as keeping the foot flexed or curling in the toes. You may even want to take the time to feel a slight stretch in certain areas of your hips and legs with each step as long as it’s comfortable. It will take time and patience and will lead to some discomfort in the beginning but will be highly beneficial for the rest of your life. This is not anything new, people know of this and talk about it all the time. For instance, when you continue limping around with an injured leg you may feel pain in the opposing hip. This is because there is a high imbalance in a very symmetrical muscular system. That hip imbalance can lead to lower back pain and lower back pain can lead to poor posture, the domino effect can truly be devastating for some people. Covering all the minor imbalances has the same benefit and will literally heal the body and help it build and maintain strength in and out of the gym.
Besides walking correctly, everyone needs to move correctly in all forms. An Olympic lifting coach will tell his/her lifters that no matter the how light the weight you are lifting, move the bar the same intensity and form you would move your max weight. This is because while warming up you need to take advantage of the lighter weight to train the body to move correctly in the lift. Watch any good Olympic lifter and see even with an empty bar, there is a great speed and intensity in the lift. During all movements it is ideal to maintain good position and correct use of the muscle systems designed for the task. This means no knees pointing inward when bending down to pick up your jump rope on the second round of a workout when your heart rate is at 180 beats per minute. That jump rope is your empty bar and the act of bending down is the lift. This requires a great deal of honesty with one’s self. People can be peppered with bad habits at even the earliest of ages. Especially with the current life style that most people live in their youth.
Slow down with everything you do in the beginning, take a second to analyze what you just did or what you are about to do. A good rule to follow is, did it look good? When the body move correctly, it looks good. Question everything you do until all your bad habits diminish to nothing. This will happen quickly if you are honest with yourself. Eventually you will begin realizing which impurities in your movements can be fixed with re-learning and which cannot. Some movements have been slowly implemented in our bodies do to past injuries, excess body weight, inflexibility, over flexibility, etc. Time needs to be taken on each and every one of these if you want to live a better, fitter, life.
NUTRITION
The goal of moving well requires the body to eventually be in its ideal form. This means no excess fat, no high internal stress, and requires the body to heal quickly and recover from training efficiently. Proper nutrition is the key to looking like an athlete, it also is used to provide proper recovery for athletes in training or people recovering from injury. Without proper nutrition there is no foundation for fitness and no chance of a healthy life. Move well, now eat better.
There are a lot of bad choices around us and life can be busy and time can be sparse. This means a quick trip to the drive-thru after work can provide a nice filling dinner. However for anyone with any goals of being fit and healthy, this is not an option. All people now know that fast food is bad, but the truth is that all processed foods have downsides that out weight any good their nutrition can provide. Nutrition is not a puzzle, eat real foods and you will not be overweight. Period. If a person has a diet of fresh vegetables, properly raised meats or fish, healthy grains, fresh fruits, and good fats, they can stay full if they are active and be in great physical shape. If you want to get calories into some perspective take the iconic Big Mac at 219 grams has 563 calories, now 219 grams of chicken breast has 359 calories. This doesn’t seem like a huge difference, however calories are the least of any athlete’s worries. The difference lies in the composition of the food and the calories. There are 33 grams of fat and 44 carbs in the Big Mac, and around 8 grams protein and 0 grams of carbs in the chicken breast. This comparison was chosen because depending on how nutrition facts are read, it is easy to be confused or deceived.
We need more than just proteins fats and carbs, and remember carbs are NOT the enemy. We need them for energy, recovery, and growth (muscular). Yes you should be balancing and making sure you take in appropriate amounts, but that is old news. What people don’t give enough credit to the nutrient rich foods we need. You need to eat whole foods. This means sardines with skin and bones, animal organ meats, fruits and veggies with all edible parts including skin and cores. Food is designed to be balanced, but we pick and choose parts to eat and parts to discard. This is not how it was meant to be. There is also a time and place to eat, high fat, high protein, low carb meals in the morning to start the day is excellent. A few small balanced meals with good whole foods before midday, and a nice carb and protein meal after a workout. It is not meant to be difficult to understand, it is however the most difficult part to implement with a busy schedule.
Planning ahead is the best and only way to be prepared for your day or even week ahead. If you don’t have a personal chef and like to spend lots of money on eating, then you can skip this next part. If not, you must realize that you need to cook, or at least find someone to do it for you. Crock pots work excellent, throw in some meat and veggies and stock, boom come home from work or wake up in the morning, and there is food for a few meals. This is a go to in my opinion as it can save tons of time in the kitchen and provide a great tasty meal. Otherwise, the grill is a much underrated device when it comes to decreasing time spent cooking. It doesn’t need to hit a sink or dishwasher, and it can cook food very quickly. It’s ok to use it in the winter, your toes aren’t going to freeze off.
There is no need to weigh and balance healthy meals, it will be difficult to overeat if you are taking in whole unprocessed foods. Use spices and seasoning, cinnamon can provide good fiber, and some such as turmeric can provide anti-inflammatory responses in the body. Best of all spices will keep you interested in meals. Change is mandatory as you do not want to burn out with the same tastes over and over. When eating correctly, you will be full, have tons of energy and your body will thank you. A healing process will take over, inflammation will be reduced in the body, and all organ health will begin to repair. People understand that when they eat better “their skin clears up” well remember, skin is an organ just like the ones it covers up. Garbage in garbage out is exactly what happens when someone is training hard against others that are training hard and eating well, there is just not chance of competing.
TRAINING
This is what you love to do. Time to do it well, and not waste time and energy on injuries and poor exercise routines. Focus on developing weaknesses and learning something new about yourself every now and then. See what you can and can’t do, and use your peers as examples of what is possible. If you see someone walking on their hands and you feel that it is something that you can do as well, practice. You at the very least will get stronger trying. We all know that Routine is the enemy, but it can be used for keeping you on track. It is very important to be consistent with hard work and constant self-assessment to see if you need to refocus your training on some other weakness you have been avoiding.
Avoid overworking and diminishing returns on workouts. It is possible to overwork and beat your body down and become less fit. People walking around in constant pain from their workouts are not fitter than before, in fact they may be less fit. Training should require a proper warm-up with mobility and a primer to get your heart pumping and have your lungs expanded. It is not something that can be rushed or skipped, it is just as important as the workout or strength efforts at hand that day. As for diminishing returns on workouts, be aware why you are training. Do not spent countless hours running or biking when after 30 minutes of an elevated heart rate, diminishing returns begin. Short intervals of running are very difficult and can be done in 10 minutes of your time. A simple and effective workout is 4x400 meters with 45 seconds rest between. This done a few times a week will make you an excellent runner for the majority of encounters that most people face in their fit lives.
HEART TO HEART
I hope that this article inspires people to become more aware of their bodies and what actually is going on during exercise. We have to look deep within ourselves and be honest. Ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?”, “Am I working hard and backing it up with a dedicated lifestyle?”, “Am I progressing?”… We never want to waste anyone’s time, especially our own. I plan on writing articles to help people with everyday occurrences, with great detail and deep inner thought connections that we all have but may ignore. I am devoted to living a healthy lifestyle both for yourself and the people around you and want to help everyone live better healthier lives each and every day. Please don’t be shy to comment and critique me, and give me suggestions as to what you would want to read next. Nothing is too big or too small of a problem to be solved. Thank you and I love you all.