The Movement Guy

I love it every time Kurtis comes in, he's very open minded, easy to coach and gives you a bunch of feedback, the conversations are really interesting too

Like me he's the guy in his friend group who lives life a little differently, he doesn't follow traditional health and diet advice and he doesn't live in the gym. But, at 50 he looks and moves better than most 30 year Olds, despite an extensive history of injuries, really bad ones

Something I tell my kids is to not just pay attention to people's words, pay attention to what they do and their outcomes

When you go against the grain people don't like it and they'll tell you your wrong, your being naive, even that what you're doing is dangerous - there's loads of this in health right now - but if Kurtis had followed the traditional path he'd probably be in a chair full of drugs

A lot of people in the rehab/physio world are still arguing that biomechanics don't matter, that asymmetries don't matter, that posture doesn't matter, but they're aging like milk, especially in their ability to move, so IMMA keep exploring this weird path I've found instead

Evidence Based.....

I like research, it can be useful and it can help to move the conversation forward, but it's often flawed, like the testosterone/prostate study people still quote that was done on 3 people and was a complete shambles or the early Parkinson's research that got it so wrong it put everything back decades

Outside of that just look around, look at people's mental and physical health, look at the rise in every disease, obesity and diabetes and how half the population now rattle when they walk and rely on injections to lose weight, but, despite the drugs, we're sicker than ever

We're also moving worse than ever too and have double the pain, injuries and disabilities, despite having triple the clinicians - the model isn't just flawed, it's failing catastrophically

So when people start talking about evidence based etc I can't help but wonder if they're paying attention to where the evidence based approach has gotten us?

Evidence based failed this lad like it has so many others and it would've left him in a chair for life

That's enough for me to be a little bit sceptical

All the stuff I do, including using the ball, started because it made movement easier. My movement was so clunky, so disorganised, so painful, that I needed to find ways to reset

The ball was one of the first breakthroughs I had, it was weird but as I learned how to use it and how it tied into where my CoM (my weight) was as I moved, the tension I felt constantly started to drop and for the first time in a long time I started to feel rhythmic and coordinated in my movements

That's why I use it, there's a bunch of cool bits going on underneath, like the cross body motion getting both sides of the brain talking, opening the door to creating new pathways, but mostly I use it because it feels good and helps people to learn new patterns

When my back was really bad my glutes, especially the medial, were like rocks and I'd constantly be sticking a massage ball into them - I literally took the plaster off the wall

But, no matter how many times I massaged them, or my legs and no matter how much I stretched or mobilised, they'd still lock up. So I started exploring other movements, other ranges, other ways of loading them and that's when I realised what I'd done

I'd completely neglected internal rotation. For years I'd been sticking my feet out to help my squat and deadlifts but overtime this had jammed up my medial glutes, ITB, outer quad and hamstring. I'd been compressing all that tissue, loading it relentlessly, neglecting huge chunks of its movement potential, then wondering why it was tight

This is a common pattern I see, a lack of internal rotation and an inability to use the glute beyond up and down and it creates issues up and down the chain, including the back

That's why we're turning our feet in half way through the vid and winding our hip/glute into the position, we're unlocking that neglected pathway

Putting a bit of give in the system, if you want to move well you need to learn to let go and let it flow

Something that I don't hear talked about often is the anxiety that comes with accessing parts of your body that have been closed off by pain, injury or disease, and how, reintegrating those tissues and the proprioceptive information that comes with it can leave us feeling dysregulated, even anxious

The body will fight you as you try to load them, the NS will throw distractions at you and do what it can to stop you loading what hasn't been loaded - it can be overwhelming

That's why we have to be aggressive but delicate in neuro rehab, we need to push, we need to progressively overload, but we also have to respect that the nervous system and subconscious have done their best to keep us safe and we can't force those doors open, we need to teach them that it's safe to let go

The body has an amazing capacity to heal, but it needs input, stimulus - it needs to be reminded what to do

This is true for all of us, if we want to improve how we move and heal old injuries, or just improve how we look, we have to give the body the right inputs

If your back has been sore for years there's a good chance that you're moving in a way that is feeding that negative loop, constantly picking the scab

Just as if your elbow keeps flaring up, you're probably moving in a way that's creating an overload, this could be down to shoulder mechanics, your thoracic, maybe even your hips

My point?

If this lad can come back from cancer and restore how he moves, you probably have more power over your situation than you realise

Late last year I was at a crossroads, I knew I was done with the gym and I knew that most of what I'd been doing to be 'healthy' was actually hurting me and draining my bandwidth

I'd also been putting people back together for years who were also doing all the things you were supposed to, but no matter which fitness cult they came from I noticed the same correlation,

More gym = more pain, worse movement and worse physical preparedness (outside of the gym)

So I removed myself from that environment and went back to how it all started when I was a lost teenager, a small space, a broken body and an identity crisis, aka the movement shed

I honestly can't believe how far it's come in the last year and how me, clumsily moving around in a gas mask, desperately trying to fix myself and find answers to the complex problems that have found me, has turned into an international movement, it's wild

I knew it was time to expand the experiment and while I was gutted to let the shed go, it was time to build a new lab for ordinary broken people to become extraordinary

It's gonna be fun building this space

Another simple enough drill that's deceptively hard and builds rhythm, timing, coordination, hip mobility, rate coding and gets the Nervous System used to moving quickly, which, requires letting go of tension

I went through a rough few years with pain/injury and stress, and, despite doing everything the fitness gurus and biohackers tell you, my body shut down

My NS was fried too and I couldn't even handle a cup of coffee anymore, noise, lights, open spaces too many people, even my kids playing became overwhelming

I'd wake up multiple times per night with a pounding chest and rapid heartbeat, ended up in A&E multiple times....I was a mess

But if you saw me in the gym you'd think I was fit, strong and healthy, I was anything but

I tried the cold, the breathwork, the meditation, the fasting, the supplements but honestly a bit of sugar and having fun with movement transformed me, my NS and my relationship with movement

I'm off TRT, my RHR is 49, I've kept my muscle and now my hormones are leveling out I'm leaning out too, all with zero gym, zero lifting, zero running (other than sprints) zero tracking and if you follow my stories you know I love food

The only structured training I do is some pull ups and press ups AM and PM (roughly 60seconds of work)

Less is more and good Movement will fix more than your aches and pains

I always felt tense in movement, clumsy, awkward, and I sucked at everything until I found martial arts (karate) but even then I still never had that 'pop' that I'd see in others

It was the same when I did MMA, I trained relentlessly, usually twice a day, but I still didn't feel that 'pop' so I started lifting, sprinting and plyos and tbh thinking back this was when I felt my best in terms of athleticism, but, I got a bit addicted to the lifting thinking this was the answer, eventually forgetting why I started training in the first place

Several years later I'd gained 20kg, shifted many, many kgs and injured most parts of my body - even walking hurt

So I started experimenting, ticked all the gym boxes, even many of the performance boxes, I could run for long distances and lift heavy on the same day and finish the session with big jumps and weighted Nordics, but I still didn't feel 'poppy'

That's when I left it all behind and started making my whole personality about a basketball and weird drills😂

And, while some of what I do may seem odd, at 40 I've finally started to feel that pop I've been chasing and my confidence in movement is growing every day so IMMA keep going

Feel free to join me

I'm going to add a video to my subscriber section today talking about the little things I do alongside my drills to keep me strong and fit, zero gym and minimal time required, I'm a busy dad of 3 with multiple plates to spin so I'm all about minimal investment for maximal returns