Our bodies are a collection of dynamic systems that are designed to thrive under the right amount of stress. But what is ‘the right amount of stress?’ The reality is that we don’t know. As a species we are better at doing, than thinking. Thinking can often bring us unstuck, especially when we focus on the negative. ie. what we can’t do. A growth mindset approach is to start with the ‘hardest thing you do well’.
We were born with an amazing blueprint for movement that takes us from being completely helpless to crawling, standing, walking, running, jumping, climbing, swimming and some may argue, flying. While it can be argued that other species have a more efficient blueprint (ie. foals are up and walking within an hour of birth), ours is effectively the most adaptable. Unfortunately, this doesn’t come without its downside. This extreme adaptability makes our movement blueprint vulnerable to ‘mutation’. Experiences such as pain, comfort, injury and biases (eg. handedness) can change our default patterns of movement and embed habits that can often create problems that present later.
A classic example of this is young mothers who (perfectly understandably) gravitate towards holding their babies on their non-preferred side to keep their strongest, most dexterous side free to perform all of the tasks they need to manage while holding their child. 12-24 months of carrying their infant 90% of the time on the same hip is more than enough to change their default standing posture. This often becomes the source of future lower back pain or knee dysfunction, or if you’re really unlucky, both.
Hence, the overarching goal of any treating practitioner should be to identify and peel back these mutations to reveal the ‘pure’ movement patterns our bodies were designed to perform. This embodies our philosophy of thinking software (not hardware) and thinking function (not structure). If we can help you identify the ‘hardest thing’ you do with an efficient and effective movement pattern, that’s our starting point.
Then it’s up to you to set the functional goals for your program. Whether you want to simply take the fear of pain away from things you enjoy doing, get back to your weekly tennis game without thinking that your knee could collapse at any moment or breaking through that achilles tendon issue that is impeding your marathon training program, the foundation from which to chart your improvement is the same. The hardest thing you do well!
