Train Movements, Not Muscles

The body was created to move as a unit. All of our real world activities, whether it's competitive sports, running errands, playing with the kids, climbing a mountain, or putting the groceries away requires full body movements and a certain degree of mobility and flexibility. With that in mind, when we train the body we should do so such that the gains made in training will translate directly to our activities and interests. It makes sense that we should train full body movements with and without resistance to build functional strength and endurance. We should also regularly perform mobility exercises to keep our joints working in perfect order which is key to injury prevention.

Human movement can be broken down into 5 categories: Pushing, Pulling, Locomotion, Rotating, and Level Changing (for example, squatting). These movements can be further broken down into sub-categories. There is vertical and horizontal pushing and pulling, there are hip dominated and thigh dominated level changes. Locomotion can come from a wide variety of activities such as running, jumping, climbing, and crawling.

When you're putting together a training plan for yourself you want to incorporate at least one exercise per movement to ensure that you are giving your body a complete workout. For pushing exercises, you can use different types of pushups, overhead presses, and dips. For pulling exercises there are pullups, inverted body rows, and several different pulling exercises with handheld weights such as a dumbbell or kettlebell row. Rotation can involve seated or standing russian twists, rotating medicine ball exercises, twisting Iranian pushups (integrates both a pushing and twisting exercise in 1!). The level changes are either hip dominated or quad dominated. Anything that has a squat in it would be a quad dominated level change. For hip dominated level changes you could do deadlifts or any number of different kettlebell swinging type exercises such as kettlebell swings, cleans and snatches. Locomotion has a ton of different options with so many variations of running, jumping, crawling type exercises.

You put all of these together and the variations are endless which keep the workouts fun, interesting, always different, and always effective. Here's an example workout that integrates all forms of human movement:

Set up in a space where you have about 20 yards and set a kettlebell at one end. Start at the end that doesn't have the kettlebell... Do 10 pushups Bear crawl 20 yards Do 25 kettlebell swings Sprint back to the other end Do 10 burpees Bear crawl back to the other end Do 10 kettlebell lunge rows on each side Sprint back Do 30 Hindu Squats Bear crawl to other side Do 20 seated kettlebell russian twists Sprint back... Repeat for as many rounds as you can get in 20 minutes.. This is a phenomenal full body workout that works every form of natural body movement and will leave you with a huge surge of energy.