How To Be A Good Mover? Introduction To Easy Fitness With Body Awareness In Every Day Life

Many of us in the "West" have become stiff, overweight, uncoordinated and uncomfortable in our bodies through a sheer lack of plain ordinary "forgotten" movements. Movements like squatting, climbing, hanging, building, carrying weight etc.are so natural and obvious to many other cultures. Now they have to be bought in the form of memberships to health clubs. And even there, in the fitness industry, very little attention is paid to a simple, yet so rich human movement language we all know deep inside our genes and bodies from when we were children. This Hub attempts to re-awaken your body to face some hard facts, then take you back to the roots of human movement behaviour. With further articles in the EasyFitness Series, you will soon see how easy and how much fun it is to become a better mover. But first we must face facts.

The Obesity Pandemic

How can you become a good mover if you are too fat to move? With 2/3rd of adults and 15% of children under ten being overweight, confused by jargon which claims to disclose what additives and preservatives are lurking in food, the consumer needs a PhD in nutrition to make sense of it all. This is the first hub in the EasyFitness series where we examine current attitudes towards food and consider a new, more sensible approach to getting fit: by increasing body awareness and physical intelligence.

Blind Eye

James Baldwin described racial relations in the 1950's with this anecdote: Two friends are sitting in a room and they both know that one of them has just murdered his mother and put her body in the wardrobe. They are sitting there but cannot speak to each other in case one of them accidentally mentions anything to do with the body in the wardrobe. In a similar way people in the developed world turn a blind eye to the food industry. Where can we find real, healthy living food that is not infected, packaged, preserved, frozen-and-refrozen? What is the truth about the meat industry and food production?

Eating is the most basic need for survival but now cooking has become entertainment, TV shows, hobby, art, and competitive sport, aiming to fulfil all human desires. Is today's Western attitude to feeding oneself perhaps still at a Baroque, maybe even at the Roman stage of cultural evolution? Our very clever civilisation has forgotten that the purpose of eating is to maintain the shape and strength of the body. With this in mind it seems inappropriate to encourage fat people to lose weight with non-stop tantalising coloured images of mouth-watering dishes.

The obesity problem can not be solved by talking about food. Today's obsession with food created by the food industry is the cause of the obesity pandemic. Alongside the food scandal destroying human health, there looms the fitness industry taking advantage of its victims. No machines, pills, no amount of organic recipes will help people get back to normal unless they have a faint understanding of their own day-to day body movements. My aim in the EasyFitness series is to teach body awareness and physical intelligence. Those extra pounds then drop off naturally. Many ideas in this series of Fitness Hubs by Sue Adams are from a book called: The Kando Technique, by Juliette and Madeleine Kando. You can still get the book but have to bid for it as it is becoming a collectors' item in on the open web market.

Most people's day-to-day movement vocabulary consists of a limited number of actions ranging from sleeping, getting dressed, sitting, perhaps a little walking to the car, being at work (usually sitting), shopping, cooking food, watching TV or a computer, and sleeping again.

Now that won't do to satisfy the body's inherent need to be a healthy mover throughout it's lifetime. And this is why the fitness industry is booming with their expensive torturing, body-unfriendly, hard-metal exercise machines. It seems people want to be punished for being inactive. But there is another way: increase your natural day-to-day movement vocabulary and bingo, no more need for gyms or diets.

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What is Movement Vocabulary?

from Juliette Kando on wiki.answers.com :

Movement Vocabulary is the number of moves available at one's disposal for physical expression. Good alignment, posture, flexibility, balance, coordination, agility, grace, strength and timing all help to increase movement vocabulary. You could compare the moves in a person's body language to the vocabulary of words in spoken and written verbal language. But being an extortionist alone doesn't necessarily make you a good mover, or a physically intelligent person. Several more factors play a role in the "grammar" of body language to make someone a physically intelligent person. These include a sense of:

Location, Direction and Relationship

Tempo, Rhythm and Timing

Flow and Dynamics

Response and Reaction

The EasyFitness approach is different. With a little awareness, you too can learn how to become such a good mover that you will feel like a dancer among the crowds. The focus is taken away from the food issue altogether and re-directed towards improved physical intelligence in day-to-day behaviour.

We need to start at the beginning

The movement adventure begins by building a solid and effective posture to carry your body through its challenging life. As with any building, we begin at the base. Starting at the feet, the foundation of your postural edifice, you can create your body from scratch. But before that please quickly look at some (often ignored) basic principles so vital to a positive and efficient approach to fitness.

As balance is so vital to weight carriage, we'll build your body in 3D geometry. To cover the entire 3 dimensional spectrum of mobility you move through the Frontal, Transverse and Sagittal planes which I have renamed "Yes", "No", and "Maybe" for convenience. You can feel the motion through these planes by moving your head as in nodding "Yes", "No" and, "Maybe" (ears towards shoulders).

Yes, No and Maybe

Why not check if your head is placed correctly above your spine right now. On the "No" movement, when you look sideways as far as possible, you should see the top of your shoulder, not your chest. If this is not happening for you then go back to the neutral position (look straight ahead) and pull the upper back and base of the neck backwards and up while keeping the chin down. It feels like someone is pulling you up by a high ponytail. Now move your head as if to say "No" again and notice the change. Can you see the top of your shoulder? But I'm jumping the gun. We shall deal with the neck and head in greater detail in a future hub leading to a Natural Facelift.

Correct Posture, Flexibility and Weight-Loss are interdependent. Short ligaments prevent correct alignment as can be seen in the necks, shoulders, backs and knees of those who have lost the ability to even squat because their tendons are too short and their bellies too fat!

Did you know that you don't actually have to 'shrink' with age. Rather like an accordion, older people appear to become shorter because, over many years of focusing down towards busy hands, gravity has diminished the sponginess between the vertebrae and 'folded' them somewhat. But do not despair, I have ways and means of using gravity to the body's advantage rather than its detriment as you can see in my hub Hanging Upside Down.

Learning how to become a good mover is easy. Rather than aimlessly punishing yourself on torturing machines consider the EasyFitness approach.

• Become aware of your day-to-day movement habits
• lmprove posture, flexibility, strength and agility
• Be more comfortable, coordinated and confident in your body

Weight loss then automatically occurs as a consequence of increased knowledge, improved movement habits and lifestyle.

EasyFitness is a list of all the hubs in the series so far to date. You can see how we work progressively up the body, starting from the base, your feet, all the way up to your crown with a few necessary digressions on life style along the way.

Contents

1. How to Become a Good Mover ( this hub - introduction)
2. How To Structure An Exercise Session
3. The Feet You Walk On
4. Shoes Are Not Made For Walking
5. No More Swollen Ankles And Stiff Knees
6. Ankle and Wrist Weights
7. Redesign Your Work Station
8. How To Hold Your Pelvis To Get Rid Of A Fat Stomach
9. WEIGHT CONTROL with the Sneaky Fast Plan
10. Hanging Upiside Down
11. Natural Facelift
12. How to Read Your Date's Body Language
13. How To Be Your Own Personal Trainer
14. How To Cure Back Ache With Counter Moves
15. Shake Weight For Arms, Shoulders And Chest
16. Find Your Waistline Or Die
17. Dangers Of Meat Consumption
18. How To Treat A Stiff Neck
19. Better Eyesight Without Glasses
20. Baby Yoga For You And Your Child
21. Be As Fit As A Child With The Yoga Swing
22. Benefits of Aquatic Exercises with The Burdenko Method
23. Ten Best Types Of Exercises For Overweight People With Joint Pain