Panjabi divided the motor control system for the spine into three distinct subsystems - passive, active and neural. I like applying this idea to the whole body, partly because I find it an interesting way to distinguish different strategies for movement and posture, based on preferential use of one subsystem over the others. The passive… Continue Reading
Move better. Feel better.
Category Archives: strength
Extreme Performance or Optimal Health? Pick One!
Many of my clients will ask my opinion about whether a particular sport or activity promotes movement health. Yoga, running, swimming, weight training, ballet, soccer, gymnastics, crossfit. (People are especially interested in whether these activities will be healthy for their kids.) It’s an interesting question because almost any physical activity you can think of has… Continue Reading
Interview with Rafe Kelley from Parkour Visions
Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Rafe Kelley, who owns and operates a parkour gym here in Seattle called Parkour Visions. Rafe is a very knowledgeable movement geek, so we had a great time chatting. (He’s also a real movement stud, see video below for evidence.) He shared so much interesting information that I… Continue Reading
The World’s Best Athlete, Part Two
Welcome to part two of my argument for who is the world’s greatest athlete. Here is a brief summary of part one. First, I concede there is no way to arrive at a truly objective answer here, because it necessarily calls into play subjective preferences. However, after starting with some admittedly arbitrary ground rules, I… Continue Reading
Flexibility and Sports Performance
In this post I have put together a few semi random thoughts on flexibility and its relationship to sports performance and injury prevention. Flexibility defined Flexibility is basically the range of motion at a particular joint – how far it can move from A to B. I like to think of flexibility as the quantity… Continue Reading
Stretching Increases Strength in Contralateral Muscle
I am too busy right now to do any in depth posts, so here’s a quick little review of an interesting study I just read. I’ve written several times before on this blog about how unilateral exercise can have significant effects on the contralateral side. I find this interesting not just because it’s kind of… Continue Reading
The Arthrokinetic Reflex
What is the arthrokinetic reflex and what does it have to do with strength, mobility, flexibility and joint mobility drills? Here is a (very) quick explanation. The arthrokinetic reflex defined Arthro means joint. Kinetic means movement. Reflex means involuntary movement in response to a stimulus. Put them together and you have a term coined by… Continue Reading
Feldenkrais, High Intensity Training, and Everything in Between
When you work on your movement or physical function, are you trying to learn how to move better, or are you just exercising and placing a healthy form of stress on the body? Maybe you are doing both at the same time, or maybe you are focused on only one of these elements. Either way,… Continue Reading
Jump Therapy
I noticed something in my own training recently that I wanted to share, because it illustrates an interesting way that training can make you perform and feel better. One day last summer at the playground with my five year old, I was watching kids effortlessly land jumps off various structures. I decided that landing a… Continue Reading
More on Fatigue: Math Makes You Weak
In a previous post I discussed the idea that fatigue, much like pain, is a subjective experience created by the brain to protect you from physical threats caused by the stress of heavy physical exertion. So when we experience fatigue, it’s not so much that the body can’t, it’s that the brain won’t. An interesting… Continue Reading