Movement Substitutions: The Benevolent Yet Bewildering Cause

In my previous post, I wrote about movement substitutions, what they are, their effects, and their various causes. One of those causes needed its own home: well-intentioned but ultimately ill-advisable ideas. 

These outlandish and often wacky ideas don’t sprout out of thin air. They grow in the failing soil of traditional training and rehab. These traditions don’t fail everyone, but they fail enough people. And people in pain, physical or emotional, become desperate and look for something different, rightfully so. Even the most illogical idea seems like a saving grace when you’re in a world of hurt. 

I’ve been there. 

Odd concepts offer the faintest glimmer of hope, “I haven’t tried that before. Maybe this ‘simple but effective’ technique will help me!” I’m all for variation and novelty, sincerely, but some of these oddities scroll onto your screen in a vertical parade of movement nonsense. 

Each poorly rationalized idea brings substitutions: spines do the jobs of hips, hips do the jobs of ankles, fifth metatarsals stand in lieu of the first, shoulder blades do what shoulders should, and cognitive biases and the cultish language of fanatics replace science and logic. 

These preachers insist their way is the only stairway to heaven, but if curing Achilles' tears were as simple as being on your toes all the time, we wouldn’t see them rupture anymore, and the preachers would have won a Nobel prize. 

This is where we take a left turn from Substitutionsville to the bigger problem.

Let’s say you question these well-intended bearers of skeptical ideas. You ask for reasoning and evidence, sensible items, and their acolytes go to war, attacking you and defending their saviors because all words but their prophet's are threatening and blasphemous. 

So these dubious ideas go on living—festering, really—and leave a slew of problems in their wake. Movement substitutions are one, but there are so many others.

I want to help you make informed and effective choices. I want to spread logic, science, and effective principles in this sea contaminated with bias and deceit. (It’s why I struggle to write three-paragraph blog posts.) Your career, athletic or coaching, is too important to let drown.

Navigating Deceptive Marketing

These ideas cross your path, and they sound compelling! They make bold claims and promise results (or your money back!). They make you feel there’s an escape from your world of hurt, and it’s their three easy steps. 

Hope and fear are duplicitous products to sell.

“Discover the Truth about rehab and training!”

“Say goodbye to chronic pain with this secret technique of Olympic athletes.”

“Usain Bolt and Michael Jordan did it.”

“That’s Fake Strength! I’ll show you how to get real strength.” He might as well throw in a 7-minute ab program too. (If you’re unsatisfied, you get the eighth minute free.)

“Rocky did it.” (True story. Someone tried legitimizing their biomechanical belief because Sylvester Stallone did it on the silver screen.) 

Without sorting the gold from the garbage, movement substitutions spread, among many other nefarious things. So, who is responsible for sifting through this parade of cognitive bias, deceptive marketing, and reductionism? 

Coaches? Clinicians? Athletes? Leaders? You? 

Ultimately, it’s you because it’s your body and mind. 

But there are two obstacles:

First, you have so much other stuff going on, and it’s not your job to scour the depths of Google Scholar. (I don’t like doing it either.) You want something understandable, effective, and delivered to your inbox. You deserve that. (I want that, lol.) It’s why I write this blog.

If you have questions or if something in your feed seems fishy, ask for evidence or an explanation. If they attack you, that tells you a lot about the strength of their ideas and the quality of their character. 

Or ask someone who’s a fan of the scientific process. (Hi, it me.) Every week, I do an AMA. I’m happy to relay research, provide my opinion, or tell you “I don’t know.”

Secondly, leaders in our fields of movement and sport have the evidence and ability to sort through the aforementioned shitstorm, and the general public doesn’t. So if we don’t, who can?

This hurricane of horrendous and heroic ideas needs the leaders and the public to do different things: 

• I want leaders who want to teach, to do so in ways that let you evaluate other people’s ideas. I prefer this strategy to leaders giving a stamp of approval or rejection because it gets you to think for yourself. 

• I want you to ask questions about principles so you can make better decisions. Ask questions to yourself too, “Am I buying into hope because I yearn for greatness or health? Or am I buying into an idea that’s proven effective with people just like me?”

The more you understand, the better decisions you make, the fewer substitutions you harbor, and your injury risk lowers, and the probability of performance rises. 

In the next blog post, I go into the eye of the storm, dissecting the wild and true claims that swirl around us.