In the next installment of this fundamental movement series, we’re finally diving into how to progress your movement! We built a really strong foundation (and hopefully you did too with the fundamentals we’ve discussed) and now we’re going over the best ways to progressively overload and challenge yourself.
As a recap of earlier installments first we talked about 9 Fundamental Movements to Master and then we talked about Why Start Bodyweight in Part I.
But first, one more pitstop before we dive into the progression: why should you even care about how to properly progress a movement?
Why Even Bother Following a Proper Progression?
I’ve always been a stickler for form so I highly recommend everyone master a movement in it’s most basic, fundamental (often bodyweight) form before trying to spice it up and up the challenge.
While it’s not always necessary to do bodyweight before adding resistance, it is often recommended because it helps reduce your risk of injury and often ensures you’re actually completing the movement correctly to get the full effect and efficacy of the movement. Usually, one of the best ways to get the full effect of any exercise is to make sure you’re getting full range of motion.
As I was alluding to before, most people can pick up a pair of 10 lbs dumbbells and perform some of these fundamental movements fine without having to first master the body weight movement. However, when you start really loading a barbell, there is a massive difference between a 200 lbs quarter squat and a 200 lbs full squat. This is because a full range of motion squat recruits more muscles and puts a higher demand on your body to execute the full movement. There can be a time and a place for a quarter squat, but ultimately when we’re developing fundamental movement patterns we want to have our body adapt to a full range of motion squat.
Even if you’re like “...but I’m not trying to squat 200 lbs…”, these principles still apply because the whole point of exercise is to get your body to adapt. One of the best ways we’ve found to get our body to adapt is through incremental progression. And with that, let’s talk about how we can incrementally progress your movement.
Refresher: Start with Bilateral, Stable, Body Weight
In the previous article I wrote about why I often have people start with bilateral, stable, bodyweight movement.
★ When we’re learning how to properly move many of us can be unstable, like a newborn deer learning how to walk. Instability is a form of resistance and we want to eliminate as much external instability as possible when we’re first learning how to move so that we can learn proper movement patterns.
★ We want to start bilateral so that we have the best base of support which translates to we don’t need to focus as much on creating our own stability and can prioritize properly learning how to activate our muscles.
★ We typically want to start bodyweight because adding load without proper mechanics can be a quick way to injuring yourself. Think of someone who threw out their back lifting something heavy.
Based on these 3 fundamental starting blocks, we’ll look at how we can advance each of these.
Resistance/Load
This is one of the first ways people will challenge and advance exercise. Once proper, functional movement patterns are mastered, adding ressitance/load causes our muscles to work harder. As our muscles are rebuilding themselves from that hard work, they adapt and become able to handle even more challenge. You don’t need to be able to squat 200 lbs in order for this principle to work. But, the idea is if you can successfully master some fundamental, functional movement patterns, then when it comes time to lift your suitcase to the overhead compartment on a plane, you’ll be able to do so with ease and reduce your risk of injury when doing so.
Instability/Unilateral
When we throw in elements of instability we have to create even more stability to do the movement. This requires us to recruit even more muscle fibers to successfully complete a movement. We want to make sure though, that when we’re purposely training with instability that we are recruiting and using all the appropriate muscles we want to target in the movement before we’re recruiting all of our additional stabilizing muscles.
For example, when you do a single arm bench press, most of us will have to do less weight than if we were to do a bench press with both arms, because we have to focus on stabilizing both sides of the body in different ways. We have to split our focus to stabilizing the side of our body not moving and then stabilizing the other side of the body that is moving. Your body has to work harder to make sure it’s being as stable as possible throughout the movement while making different parts of the body do different things. The major benefit of doing unilateral movement like this is to see where your inefficiencies are and correcting and strengthening those inefficiencies to make your bilateral, stable movement stronger and more efficient.
Plyometric/Speed
Before you can jump, you must be able to squat. Without deep diving into the mechanics and instead focusing on the benefits of training with plyometrics and speed, essentially this form of advancement is a great way to add a cardiovascular component to your movement. You’d be surprised at how out of breath you can get when lifting heavy (I know I was…), but think of it as a sprint is more cardiovascularly taxing than a walk. Similarly, a series of rapid fire squats or jump squats is more cardiovascularly challenging than a slow and steady squat. Training your cardiovascular system has a myriad of benefits, but to keep this short and sweet this can be a good way to advance your training without resistance/load.
Why We Even Need to Consider Progressing Movement
Our body’s main priority is to keep us alive while doing as little work as possible. Yet, our bodies are also incredibly resilient and meant to adapt.
And it can go both ways. Our bodies can adapt to a sedentary lifestyle or our bodies can adapt to an active lifestyle.
Every time we challenge our body, the body adapts and grows stronger and more resilient. The stronger and more resilient are, the more functional our body is. The more functional our body is, the less prone we are to disease and injury. When we’re optimally functioning, ideally, we’re able to live our best, fullest lives.