Physical Literacy: Revisited

For as long as I can remember my main form of training myself was either bodybuilding, Olympic lifting, or powerlifting. I always thought that there was a need for external weights barbells and dumbbells and brand name weight equipment like Cybex, Lifefitness, etc to get a good workout.

In 2014, however, I made a paradigm shift about how I train and also how I approach training my clients. I have always tried to adhere to proper biomechanics and teaching fundamental alignment has been critical to the health and wellness of my clients. I also preached function over aesthetics. My paradigm shift came into a great focus particularly when I ran into two Ido Portal practitioners, Johnny and Rachel. The way they trained was definitely different from anything I’d ever done. Often they would practice gymnastic types of movement like handstands and one arm handstands, one arm chins, bending and twisting their bodies like circus acrobats.

Physical Literacy
After thinking, searching, reading, doing, and experimenting, I began to realize that one of the best ways to train the body for any activity is simply to use the body or educate the body like kids do in their formative years. It dawned on me that our fitness shouldn’t be about “body” building or losing X number of pounds, but it should be about function and skill building. Once this is done, the aesthetics usually follow.

Whether I am working with a high level athlete or a 75 year-old retiree, without function, it would be “all show, no go.” Here is a video of an impressive functional 80 years old Shaolin monk.

We spend our early years educating our minds– learning to read, speak, and write, for example–but, I think it takes just as much, if not more to train a strong and fit body. In the words of former Cirque de Soliel training director, we must develop physical literacy. In fact, I am witnessing the harbinger of physical literacy in my 1 1/2 year old son.

​As we grow into adulthood, most of us settle into a sedentary lifestyle that shortens and stiffens our muscles. In conjunction with this lack of activity, the skeletal system begins to go out of alignment due to this shortening and stiffening, which then can cause a bad cycle of trigger points (muscle pain) and more stiffness.

In the last two years, I only been mostly using my bodyweight for my training. Not only am I healthier and more limber, but my body is much more in tune. I have greater freedom to move into different positions and have more of what exercise scientists call inter-muscular coordination where muscles work together to create coordination, balance, and mobility.

It takes little more work than a typical gym workout but I think the reward, greater physical literacy, is well worthy it.