This week, I was working with a client, who was thinking about how he stands. He realised he wasn’t using his legs as well as perhaps he might, as he was getting pain from them.
In our lesson I asked him to kneel, (standing over his knees) and then I worked on rotation from the heel. What was interesting was that he was holding his pelvis still. Until I pointed it out, he didn’t notice : this tension was beneath the surface of his awareness. He couldn’t feel it, but it was getting in the way of connected movement.
How does tension get in the way of your movement?
When you’re moving well, all the muscles groups work together to help out. But sometimes you don’t support the smaller muscles and bones of your body with the bigger ones. Whilst not wrong, over time, this over working of some muscles, and underworking of others can lead to stiffness, and reduced range of movement.
For example, if you’re moving your hand you can do it a more isolated or more global way. I can write this on my keyboard by only movind my fingers. Or, I can write using movements of my whole arm. In the first the hand moves without support from anywhere else in your body. In the second the rest of you helps out. When you move in a more integrated way the different muscles take on proportional loads: the big muslces do the big lifting, and the more delicate muscles the fine-tuning.
Inhibition or inclusion
If you’re not moving your pelvis at all when you move your foot, somewhere along the line, you’re adding tension. Tension that stops a proportional load and means that smaller muscles are doing more than they needs to. If you feel a sense of separation between your top and bottom halves, it’s likely you’re overtightening your abdominals and low back muscles. Using your core strength in a way that isn’t so useful day to day. To fully move and breathe you need to connect to the pelvis from above. and to move freely, you need to connect from the feet all the way up to the pelvis.
Transform how you move, feel and live 