Making progress in your fitness journey

NOTE - This post was originally written for our 'weekly warble' segment in a few Facebook groups for the community local to our gym.


Welcome to the weekly warble here at Ideanthro Movement!

In this week's warble I'm going to talk about "progress". Specifically, we're going to talk about making progress in our fitness journey.

The reason that I'm inspired to talk about progress this week is the little video that you'll see attached to this post. In that video you'll see a client of ours (FYI, he's also my dad!) working on a little balance sequence. It's not perfect, but he is doing well. Most importantly, he's definitely making progress.

Before I created Ideanthro Movement I spent quite some time working in a more traditional fitness setting. In that setting it was pretty common to hear people say things like, "I'm interested in joining the gym, but I can't currently do what everyone else is doing, I think that I'll get a little bit fitter by myself and then join."

While it is definitely possible to become very fit by training by yourself, it hides a very important point. A quality coach should be able to take you from whatever your current level of fitness is, and help you develop so that you're able to do all the things that everyone else is doing. Arguably a coach's most important skill is to be able to look at where you are now and to map out the path to get you to where you want to be.

Fast forward to today and to Ideanthro Movement, and the same thing happens. Many of you, I'm sure, have looked at all the interesting skills that we practice and games that we play here at Ideanthro Movement and thought "that looks fun, but I'm not sure if I can do it."

That's totally understandable.

Just know this, it's our specialty and passion to help people of all abilities make progress in their movement. To make this point, I'll give you an example of how I would progress an absolute beginner towards the balance sequence that you can see in the video attached to this post.

The first thing to notice when progressing towards this balance sequence is that it's really comprised of two parts. (A) The standing part, and (B) the part where you place your hand on the ground. These are best developed separately.

To develop the standing component we would first practice standing and walking on a very wide beam. I'd stand nearby so you could use me as a support if need be. If you did need me for support, we'd gradually help you to learn to balance without that support. Next, we'd gradually practice on narrower and narrower beams. In the process of doing this, I would give you some tips that make balance easier. For example, balancing with 'soft knees' is generally a better option than having completely straight legs. Finally, we'd work on lowering ourselves down using something called a balance split squat.

To develop the part where the hand is on the ground, we would separately, but in the same session to the standing balance, also work on something called a tripod transition. A tripod transition is a movement where we start in a crawling position, and rotate to balance on one hand and the opposite foot, like in the video, except without the balance beam. Tripod transitions can be tricky, so we'd build up through holding positions on all fours, then on only 3 limbs, then 2 limbs and so on. Once yo had the hand of the tripod transition on the ground, we'd start giving it a go on a wide balance beam.

I could go on and on explaining how to develop this skill, but the point that I'm getting at here is that even the most complex movement skills can be broken down into simple steps that anyone can practice and make progress on, and by being consistent with that progress, you will learn the full skill no matter what you're starting point is.

And that's it for this week's warble. No matter what style of fitness training you're interested in, don't worry about whether or not you can do everything yet. Instead, a really good question to ask yourself is, can this coach help me to learn all the skills I need. Because if they can, that's a very good place to start.


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Jack Mullaly