The purpose of exercise is not to be good at exercise but to, in some way, enhance your quality of life. This is something readily achieved through any improvement in movement. The usual way of thinking goes something along the lines of the the Olympic motto - Citius, Altius, Fortius - Faster, higher, stronger.
An amplification of quantity.
But, we are not pro-athletes. We are not required to jump to a certain height, lift a particular weight or run at a given speed. In a world that somehow turned the idea of functional training into handstands on a swiss ball, there can be no better definition of functional than - that which serves our purpose.
For pro-athletes, game day. For the rest of us, life.
Movement is (intelligent) life.
Movement is nothing less than the raison d’etre of your entire nervous system. Your brain's original purpose had nothing to do with quadratic equations, poetry, love, music, or thought. As neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert explains in his TED talk (below), the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement.
Rather than waiting for food to come to them, our early anemone ancestors decided they might like to eat out once in a while.
Still life with hypertension
Society becomes sedentary, and we see the rise of first-world diseases - obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Little of our work is physical. Despite this, there is a symmetry we are only beginning to appreciate. As movement was dependent on a brain, so the brain is dependent on movement with Depression, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other brain disorders now also linked to a sedentary lifestyle.
This is unsurprising when you consider, as Wolpert points out, that although computers can process enormous amounts of information, even the most powerful are overwhelmed by the calculations required for even the simplest of motor tasks, such as pouring a glass of water.
The task for your brain is not just in the sudoku puzzle, but also in picking up a pencil and finding the page.
Stand tall.
Inevitably, with the decline in the quantity of movement, there has been a corresponding decline in the quality of it.
Quite aside from a sedentary lifestyle there are endless contributing factors to poor movement - injury, bad posture, lack of sleep, and muscle imbalances to name a few. It is common for us all to have some form of limitation or restriction.
But physical capabilities aside, our movements also help to convey our emotional state. And there is another symmetry at work here. Although our movements can suggest power, competence, confidence, and ease to others. We interpret these same cues ourselves.
Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy, again on TED, shows how we can influence both our emotions, and our own physiology through our body language.
Fluid, efficient movement is the baseline.
For those of us that don’t have a game on Saturday night or a time-trial on Monday morning, the greatest benefit we can derive from training is in improving the quality of our movement. The exact opposite of the Olympic ideal, our initial focus is on slower, lower and weaker. Helping the brain to accurately map our movement patterns, and detect inefficiencies. We all have different aspirations in our sports, and activities but rather than a side-step or detour, this serves to accelerate our ultimate goals whether performance or appearance based. Be the tortoise.
This is the approach now taken by the professionals also - those that do have extreme performance demands. The search for that 1% improvement in areas such as strength and endurance, has inevitably lead back to first ensuring efficiency.
Use it or lose it.
You are a highly complex anatomical structure evolved to perform a series of movements - crawl, walk, run, climb, jump, swim and fight. You are capable of lifting, throwing, swinging, dancing, and you have a brain and central nervous system that demand it. By focusing on quality of movement and developing a heightened sense of body awareness, you enrich and refine your body's language, moving from gibberish to poetry, noise to music.
Your body is the instrument and medium through which you engage in life. Tune it.
If you found any of this valuable please share it by hitting the button below. Thanks.
TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_wolpert_the_real_reason_for_brains.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html
Further reading:
http://www.bettermovement.org/2010/why-practice-slow-movement/