Why open space and moveable obstacles are so important in a gym
Step into our gym and you'll notice something. An empty floor surrounded by moveable obstacles (and barely a weight in sight). Let's talk about why that's the case.
Before we start though, let's just clarify that this post isn't about why movement is important in our training. We're going to assume we've already convinced you of that. This post is about why, if you're training movement in a gym, open space and moveable obstacles is the way to go.
When it comes down to it there are two reasons why open space and moveable obstacles are so important in a gym teaching movement. The first is flexibility.
We have learnt from long experience that whenever you build a course for movement (whether that's ninja warrior, rock climbing or Jack's old pastime of biketrials) and no matter how large the course is, you always end up doing everything far quicker than you imagined. After that the course loses a lot of its appeal. If your course (i.e. the obstacles in your gym) are to remain interesting over the long term, you need to be able to easily move them so as to constantly vary the setup. Open space and moveable obstacles allows for this.
The second reason is that it allows you to tailor the level of difficulty to the individual. For you that means that you can set the right level of difficulty for yourself. For us it means getting it right for our clients.The research into flow states, optimal human performance and optimal learning is very clear, we perform and learn the best when we get the right balance between how much a task is challenging us and what our current abilities are. A gym with open space and moveable obstacles allows us to set just the right amount of challenge every time, and also to adjust it gradually over time.
And that's it. More equipment is great, but just make sure you keep the flexibility in your movement gym set up to allow you to rearrange obstacles regularly. It'll keep your training interesting and the challenge to skill ratio just right.
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