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Benefits of Free Form Movement
Free form movement can be defined as the full, unrestricted range of
motion of every muscle group in the body. Free form means the body can
move naturally through space with grace, speed, agility, flexibility
and power. In our modern world, it is easy to forget that the
human body is designed to move over rough, uneven terrain and carry
weighted, unbalanced items. Walking on concrete with stiff shoes and
sitting in chairs all day will cause problems within the body. For
example, walking on perfectly even ground with high heels or dress
shows can cause significant calf tightness, which can lead to knee, hip
and back pain. In addition, tightness in the calves will change the
way you walk and can cause significant impairment of natural movement,
such as bending down to pick something up. As the body tries to move
naturally, this inflexibility may lead to injury, postural problems and
chronic pain. When people go to the gym, they can exaggerate
these problems with isolated exercises on machines at the gym that
further restrict the body's movement patterns. In effect, isolated
exercises can cause further impairment of natural movement, because you
are not fixing any of the problems. Rather, you may actually be making
your problems worse by trying exercises that the body cannot do yet
(leads to injury) or reinforcing bad posture. For example, most
people have rounded shoulders from sitting at a desk and/or driving a
car. This can cause neck pain, as well as pain in the back, knees, and
hips. The source of this problem is tightness in the chest and
weakness in the back. Repeatedly standing or sitting with rounded
shoulders will pull the joints out of alignment, and cause a
significant loss of full range of motion. It will be next to
impossible to move freely and naturally with this kind of postural
distortion, tightness and weakness. But, you will see almost everyone
at the gym doing bench press and tons of chest exercises, because the
think that will make them look good. What it is actually doing is
causing MORE tightness in their chest and further rounding their
shoulders. And that does NOT look good. When you focus on pulling
those shoulders back into alignment with proper back and shoulder
exercises, the chest actually looks bigger as you stand up straight. A
second point must be made about stretching... Human beings are
chronically tight, and most people who exercise almost never take
enough time to stretch and return the body to its balanced state. Why
are we chronically tight? The answer lay in poor exercise habits,
harboring huge amounts of stress and much too little free form full
range motions in our daily lives. No other animal has to constantly
stretch its muscles to get flexible to move safely Imagine a cheetah
needing to stretch out before it begins to chase down its prey at
seventy miles per hour! Incorporating an exercise routine into
your schedule that utilizes free form movement is one of the best ways
to combat chronic pain, postural and muscular imbalances, and a tight,
immobile body. When an individual learns how to incorporate free form
movement into their exercise routine, the body begins to return to its
natural flexible state. In this state, far smaller amounts of
stretching are required to keep the body in balance. Like the cheetah,
the body remains in an agile strong state, ready for action at a
moment's notice.
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