Protecting Your Potential | Part 1

Apr 2

I’ve mentioned human movement patterns in prior posts, but in this one, I’m talking about another aspect of evolution: complexity. I’ll make it simple to understand too. Take these evolutionary pathways for example: single-celled organisms gave way to multicellular ones, isolated tribal villages lit only by fires, moons, and stars became interconnected electric metropolises, and simple hydrophilic organisms with only two limbs turned into land-loving, tetrapodal, and intricate. Mother nature increases the complexities of her creations.

Fish, an ancient species, have fewer joints than humans and, thus, fewer movement options. They swim, and they just keep swimming. Humans swim too, but they also stanky leg, swing, and samba; they play hopscotch, Cops and Robbers, Steal the Bacon, and The Floor Is Lava. They compete in kickball, cricket, and quidditch too. You get it. Our complexity affords us options—when it’s available.

However, since none of you are immersed in the environments that evolved and maintained your structures, your freed forelimbs and vertical vertebrae come with risks—or responsibilities.

To keep your two-footed ambling affluence, you (or your coach) must understand the human patterns that best orchestrate your upright ensemble of marrow and muscle. Then, you’ll move the way you evolved to and earn a more natural risk of noncontact injury, which is minuscule. You’ll feel better than you ever have, and it’s easier to play better when you don’t feel like soggy bread. You’ll have access to and control more joints and have more potential than your devolved counterparts. More joints, more options.

If you lose what evolution gave you, your chance of crashing in a crescendo of cruciate calamity, or some other athletic atrocity, remains higher than you’d like it to be. Athletes with fewer degrees of freedom (fewer options) harbor higher injury risks and worse stats.

So how do you know if your movement has become remedial? Keep reading because I’ve put a few simple answers in this post. I teach the intricate ones in my course.

Here’s a video of one of my best students, Nick. I asked him to perform this deep split squat as part of his evaluation. I wanted to see how his legs flexed and extended.

Since Nick’s not adept at this movement yet, his brain simplified the task (split-squat) by stiffening his arms. That reduced his complexity and “froze” some of his joints and options, perhaps giving him extra stability. This simplification is normal when you’re learning something new, like a deep split squat, a golf swing, or how to throw. Consider Charles Barkley’s old golf swing that looked like he reduced 300+ joints to five. Or imagine the stereotypical dart-like throw by someone young or old who’s never played catch—few joints move and tens of vertebra move as one. Now compare that to the elaborate coordination of an MLB pitcher who moves at every one of his joints and vertebrae to whizz a fastball across home plate.

If someone continues to freeze their joints after plenty of experience with the skill, or if they maintain unnecessary contractions during movement, it’s devolution. It’s a reduction of human complexity. More evolved things are more complex. For example, I asked an athlete to walk on his toes the other day, and his right arm and hand became as rigid as a board while his left swung freely. This stuff is easy to see if you look for it.

The easiest place to spot this simplification is in our elders. Their bodies reflect a lifetime of routines that usually get fewer in number as they age. Less variability, worse health. Their spines are all but set in stone because at some point in their thirties or forties, they started bending at one vertebral joint instead of all of them. Senior’s shoulders and hips seem glued into specific postures that look effortful and unnatural. If you see someone in their seventies or eighties who still moves well and uses most of their joints, chances are they’ve still got their wits about them and lived an interesting life too.

Elders who move remedially started their degradation in their youth. Adults, teens, and even children lose the ability to move certain joints despite having the range of motion available. (Stretching will not and cannot fix it.) Despite these degradations caused by modern lifestyles, adults still find ways to put one cockeyed foot in front of the other after making resolutions in early January, kids harbor the seeds of compensations but still keep their feetsies safe from the magma-covered floor, and athletes still hit forehands, fastballs, or top sprint speeds with looming injury risks. The fact humans can still play in diverse ways without all their parts in working order is miraculous—but unsustainable.

What This Means For You

So what does this mean for you? Break your routines, no matter your age. Change the rules of your sport, if only for the warm-up. Make every rep different from the last. Notice unnecessary contractions and relax them. Tie one hand behind your back—just to see what happens.

You own and operate the most complex thing in the universe between your ears and behind your eyes. It can and should drive a complex body. You'll be and feel better if you can move with increasing intricacy.

Our sophistication was once nurtured by the nature in which we lived. Now it comes from human creativity in unnatural environments. So, be creative.

— AE