Thoughts on slowing down movement

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 why fitness coaches advise their clients to do exercises slow and controlled and whether or not this is a good idea. I'm going to do this by discussing it initially through the lens of the saying "speed hides dysfunction", and then I'll elaborate from there. This warble might be a little bit more 'fitness nerd' than usual, but hopefully you find it of use!

Let's get into this warble.

Here's the scenario. You're at the gym and doing exercises under the guidance of a personal trainer. They advise you to do the exercises slowly and with control to ensure good technique. Is that good advice?

Our answer is 'yes, but only to a point'.

In the fitness industry there is a saying "speed hides dysfunction". What this means is that when we move fast, that speed often masks poor movement patterns. An example of this could be a squat.

When many people first come to do squats, they find it difficult to do so while keeping their knees in an optimal and stable position. If the movement is done slowly, this will be very easy to see. If the movement is done fast, not only might it be hard to see because the movement itself is quick, but this limitation might be masked as momentum and a little 'bounce' at the bottom of the squat can be used to overcome the lack of stability at the knee. The squat may actually look right, but the movement pattern used to achieve that good looking squat might be sub-optimal.

If you always perform the squat fast, there will never be any reason for your body to get better at stabilising your knee when squatting and the problem will persist. But slow things down and the problem will both become apparent, and your body will need to do work to overcome the instability. That will cause your body to adapt, and over the long term it will manifest itself as greater stability at the knee.

Everything I have written so far describes why, yes, it is a good thing to do exercises slow and controlled. However, my answer was "yes, but only to a point". Let's now talk about the second half of that answer.

The problem with doing exercises slow and controlled occurs if we ONLY do exercises slow and controlled. Moving around in the real world isn't always slow and controlled. Sometimes it's fast and chaotic (think about playing tiggy with a child) and sometimes it's somewhere in between. While moving slow and controlled is a skill, so is moving fast. You get better at what you practice, so ultimately if we need to be good at moving both slow and fast, we need to practice moving both slow and fast. Doing only slow or only fast is a problem. We need to practice both.

So far we've talked about doing exercises slow and controlled at the gym, and we've discussed how we really do need to practice both. I'm going to finish by showing how we can extend this principle to more than just the speed of our movements. We'll start with what we know and go from there.

- If you wish to move fast, you must also practice moving slowly. But you can't only practice moving slowly, because then you will never learn to move fast.

- If you wish to be able to lift heavy, you learn the foundations by practicing lifting light. But you can't only lift light, because then you will never learn to lift heavy.

- If you wish to be able to do skillful, complex movements, you must also practice their simple foundations. But if you only ever practice simplified movements, you will never learn their skillful, complex cousins.

- If you wish to string multiple movements together, you must also practice the movements in isolation. But if you only ever practice the movements in isolation, you will never learn to string them together.

Long story short, yes, it's good to slow movements and exercises down. We do this all the time. But for optimal fitness and for making our fitness useful out in the world it's also important practice going fast as well. In the very playful and creative world of 'natural movement' that we operate in this balance of fast and slow movement comes quite easily.


You might also like…

If you liked this post you might also like these other resources:

The one best exercise for… WAIT! The world is not that simple!

7 ways to get more movement at home

Jack Mullaly