Muscles and Movement
Effective Exercise
is exercise that’s done to support the movement patterns you require. Biomechanics is the scientific study of movement or as the National Institute Of Health put it ‘the study of forces acting on and generated within the body and of the effects of these forces on the tissues, fluids, or materials used for diagnosis, treatment, or research purposes’.
Let’s unpack the meaning of this.
‘Forces acting on and generated within the body ‘ is describing the impact of movement within the body ‘the effects of these forces on tissues, fluids, or materials used for diagnosis, treatment or research purposes’ is describing how muscles and fluids respond to movement, this information can be used to diagnose exercise, treatment i.e. physio, massage therapy or drugs.
As Personal Trainers (PT’s) we specialise in movement patterns which are more commonly known as exercise. Movement patterns matters for a number of reasons:
The support our ability to function
They support our participation in every-day life
They support our ability to self-care- especially as we age
They support performance
They support cognition- there is growing body of research there especially around age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia
They support sports performance- you don’t see rugby players training the same way as swimmers their function and performance need differ
Certain sports or recreational activities such as Cross-Fit, running, tri-athalon have high injury rates amongst amateurs as the intensity and requirement needs are often not coached for and therefore contrary muscular movements can contribute to a foot out of place, bad landing, gait issues, and compensatory muscle use rather than intentional practiced movements leading to higher risk of injury.
At Embrace Life UK we have stuck to fundamental principles on movement and exercise to help our clients understand how to achieve what they want in the safest way so they get to keep their gains. Sometimes that requires a number of contrary movements, for example we have trained military and firefighters who have to be able to run at a decent speed and often lift heavy loads, this causes contrary movement of squat and deadlift vs running, they are very different movement patterns and not complimentary in strength or endurance training. Focus is always on longevity and well-being thus reducing risk of injury. Injury can always occur, there are never guarantees just safer practices.
With this in mind no matter what level you think you train at consider how you move and what muscles are affected as primary targets and what muscles are affected as secondary supportive movers. Consider what you want to be able to do movement wise and what exercise supports the performance of that movement. Use our Pinterest board on Muscles and Movement to help you.
Final Note: You need to fuel for movement our Pinterest Board on Physiology will help you understand how muscles use fuel and therefore what you need to fuel muscles, new content is uploaded weekly on a Tuesday to help you build a full picture of exercise that would be targeted to suit your needs and performance desires. You can do this all yourself without need of weekly PT sessions and save yourself money as you get started, we do offer ad-hoc coaching if you do get stuck and would benefit from some further guidance you can book a zoom session with us and get answers to your questions there.
I hope you enjoyed this article and took some useable knowledge from it to help you understand your biology and meet your needs in relation to your goals. Please leave a comment, press the heart button and share it to help more people take control of their health, well-being and fitness.
Samantha
