Monday, May 12, 2008

Universal Recruitment Patterning



If Aliens existed (Clearly they do, Adrian was abducted and given freaky powers after the probing.) and were to examine your muscles, brain, bones, muscle attachments, and joints, they would come up with elemental human movements like the squat, press, deadlift, etc. No one invented the squat, a few hundred thousand generations of human evolution endowed you with a set of hamstrings, glutes, and quads designed to lower your center of gravity and increase your base of support while at the same time being able to generate huge amounts of force (i.e. the Squat, if you didn't recognize it by it's longish other name).

A quick glance at the fitness landscape would have you believe that you are additionally wired to perform the likes of "cable wood chop twists" while sitting on a rubber ball. And you can to be sure, but you were never intended to. Doing so moves you into a lower valence shell of potential fitness efficacy.

The real question is: When and how did we stop moving correctly? When did we start knee bending instead of squatting? Or, at what age did we "decide" to start to heel strike during a casual run down a trampoline in red star leggings? Ask Georgia and she'll say never. Turns out she's wired to have pretty near perfect POSE running technique. Oh, I guess someone didn't invent that fancy running style either. They just invented how to teach it to us again after we'd already forgotten it.


Coach Kstar

4 comments:

Nick said...

Its amazing how all of these movements are so natural to us as children, but after years of neglect/learning bad habits, we fall away from them. It makes you question if we should really be teaching our kids the way we currently teach them. Or if we should just let them learn on their own....

Person said...

"The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything [including universal recruitment]; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things [like proper squat form]; there is no difficulty in her eliciting--or, as men say, learning--out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection."

--Plato, Meno

Anonymous said...

Great post, and wow, what an awesome quote.

On a less intellectual note, i think the question on everyone's mind is whether Georgia's leggings will be making a cameo appearance on Kelly's pythons in the near future.

;) Kitty

Steven Low said...

Little late but...

It's definitely shoes and sitting.