Friday, October 10, 2014

The Magic is in the Details

Every day I'm asked if this is a good exercise or if this is good for "me."

We often look for magical exercises that can change us from one quality to another.  It doesn't matter if the quality is weakness to strength, pain to pain free, small to muscular or slow to fast.  What must be understood is that there are no magical exercises.  There are only magical details.

I'm not saying one exercise isn't better then the other.  You will get more improvement in sprinting if you did a proper squat vs a dumbbell curl.  But, you can't take that and say "If I do squats, I'll get better at sprinting."

If your squat looks like this, no improvement will happen.



If your squat looks like this, chances are you will get better.



Learning to do an exercise correctly can take time.  Do not load an exercise with weight until the bodyweight version looks and feels correct.

How will you know?

Find a way to film yourself doing the exercise, it's pretty easy these days with smart phones and compare it to someones tutorial video you respect.  Better yet, have your coach/therapist film you doing it correctly so you have a reference for yourself.

You should always feel better after doing the exercise.  Why is this?  Because, exercises that are good and healthy and beneficial to us, obey the natural laws of movement.  They reinforce how we are supposed to move.  We are all made to squat, walk, push, pull, deadlift, reach and crawl.  When we do these things well, it feels good and reunites our bodies built in patterns.

So let go of magical exercises and start the process of exploring magical details.

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