New habits are born easily!

You may recall many a post where I ramble on about functional movement, postural adaptations, sequence activation of muscles and the real meaning of core stability.

Haven't been here that long?? Go on, take a lookie, I'll wait..*taps foot to the tune of jeopardy*

Ready to move on? Great!

My main focus for these posts, and well, in a broader sense, this blog, is movement training. How to teach folks like you healthy movement patterns which can be integrated into day to day activity :: Achievement of successful motion which translates to a reduction of risk of injury and improved overall efficiency throughout our body system.

But, how can we get so this is automatic?

Think back to the days when you spent an hour of your day accompanied by the sweetness of the sun's rays and your biggest concern was how fast you could run to beat the line to the four-square court. Play days, days where exercise was natural and FUN! Most all of us look back and reminisce on fond memories of these days where we weren't restricted by 'poor posture', a 'bad back' and 'dodgy knees'.

So why and how did our bodies evolve so quickly to our current stage?! And will it ever get better!?

SURE!

Habits become integrated into our system when our brain dampens the excitement of nerves and the activity becomes automatic. This means that we can coast through something without giving it deliberate conscious thought (think walking and talking).

Think back to when you were stepping onto a broken escalator. Your brain sees escalator and anticipates the motion to take place under your feet, however there is no motion, and your brain has to register a new sensation. The feeling you get when you step onto it and begin to climb the stairs is a miscommunication between what your brain expects and what your body realizes. This excites the nerves in your brain in order to allow your body to adjust to a situation which would otherwise have been habitual.

If in your future, every escalator you ascended were broken, your brain would register them as stairs and the nerves would process the climb as a habit.

This is the same idea which occurs when we alter our posture and assume poor patterns. Our brain has learned that slouched is a preferred position for your body so when you are in that position, your brain turns off and goes into cruise control. The minute you sit upright, your brain is sending you signals that something is different!

So why not use exercise as your daily practice to alter your movement patterns with a final goal of achieving balance and integration of body motion.

Practice is the key to creating habits. Old habits can be replaced easily with new, fabulously functional ones which can help you age gracefully and move with ease!

TAKE AWAY MESSAGE: Our body and brain responds to the stimuli we present it with. If we present it with a continual stimulus, this stimulus eventually becomes natural and is integrated as a habit. This means we can reverse this process to create new, healthier habits at any time.

Using exercise as practice to help you achieve functional movement patterns (ex: upright posturing) can help you to re-wire your brain so that these motions become natural and less cognitively demanding.

Does this make you want to learn how your body functions and how it reacts to altered movement sensations? Do you get this message from the exercises you currently do and those you learn? Does this change the way you think of exercise!?