This is a question that I have been wrestling with for most of my life. I have always been physically active from my childhood; playing tag, twister, climbing trees, getting into wrestling matches with my buddies, having relay races around the block, to full neighbor rounds of capture the flag, throwing snowballs at a designated target, etc. Moving from childhood toward early teens I slowly made the shift to organized sports such as baseball, basketball, football, track & field, and hockey. Thinking back, conditioning for these team sport endeavors were sports specific in that emphasis was placed upon skills pertinent to the sport as well as their related strategies. Throughout my adolescent period, I was intrigued on how I could improve my performance and overall conditioning. There was not much access to training methodologies. Anything I learned was via gym teachers and coaches’ philosophies and perspectives regarding conditioning methodologies. Fast forward to today one has unlimited access to virtually every human performance enhancing methodology. It is daunting to decipher from the comprehensive menu of human performance enhancing programs. One thing is apparent, there is no one size fits all approach. Each coach/teacher has their story and philosophy. They each have their own merit and respective place in the big picture of improved human performance and graceful aging.

Over the past 20-30 years in the “trenches” as a health care professional I have seen the fallout from a lack of understanding and awareness of what good body use looks and feels like. The common outcomes to this subconscious deficiency are the assortment of painful and dysfunctional musculoskeletal conditions, i.e., lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, foot/ankle pain, wrist/hand pain to name a few. If I were to condense the information coming out of the neuroscience and movement awareness fields into one thought or idea relative to getting the most out of your body, it would be this:

Challenge your body to move into unknown territory without harm

The idea here is to subject your body to an unfamiliar set of stimuli. You want to create a mismatch between the input to the brain and the output from the brain. The brain maps out all your experiences relative to input and output. It creates maps of both inputs and the relative outputs. In your brain, the inputs relate to everything that your body senses. Think of your five physical senses, i.e., hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling. These are referred to as forms of sensory stimuli or information. Depending on the contexts of these sensory stimuli will determine the brain’s appropriate responses or outputs. The outputs are referred to as motor responses; these are your body’s movement responses relative to the environment you are in. Your body is highly adaptable to the things it is subjected to. It doesn’t filter potentially harmful from useful stimulation; it adapts without censorship.

Let’s use the example of driving in your car. For many of you, sitting in your car looks practically identical today as compared to every other day you have sat in it. Your rearview mirror is set in the same position; your body position has you leaning to the right while resting your right forearm on the center console and your left hand resting at the 12 o’clock position on the steering wheel. Once you get out of your car and return to your home office from running a few errands you get comfortable at your workstation. Guess what your body position looks like? While sitting at your desk you tend to lean to the right towards your “mouse” hand with your head looking slightly to the left at your monitor. After spending hours several working at your desk while maintaining this “skewed” position you call it a day. After dinner with your family, you decide to catch up with your favorite Netflix series while sitting on your comfy couch. Guess what your body position looks like? You sit in the very same spot you always do, to the right end of the couch where you rest your right forearm as you lean your body to the right maintaining your comfortable position. I think you’re getting the big picture. The more you repeat a given body posture and/or movement the more comfortable your experience of it is. In this example, the common denominator within each of the respective environments was sitting with a body lean to the right and the head tilted to the left. This is the paradox with the sense of comfort. The tendency many of us have is to default to a body posture or movement habit that has familiarity. The more familiar, the more comfortable; and thus, the more likely it becomes our go to body posture and movement habit.

Knowing your body begins with awareness

To get the most of out of the body one must first become relatively more aware of how it is being used during activities of daily living. Notice what postures and movements feel comfortable; and challenge them by modifying them. Learn how to modify your movement habits as they occur here. Change body positions, change how your body relates to its given environment, i.e., your chair, your car seat, your desk at work, the gym, etc.

Here is a simple exercise to illustrate this point:

When sitting in virtually any chair establish a balanced relationship between your pelvis, spine, and head. How do you know you’ve established this relationship? Your shoulders should be stacked directly above your pelvis/hip joints with you head stacked directly over your torso.

If you are having a difficult time sensing this structurally neutral balanced relationship, then try the following exercise. This exercise will help to generate greater awareness of the different sections of your upright/ weight bearing torso.

• Start by standing upright with your feet shoulder width a part. Beginning with your head. Rotate your head from the base of the skull in (horizontal) clockwise and counterclockwise circles; followed by (vertical) forward and backwards circles (5x/each direction). The goal is to isolate this motion at this level.

• Next, move down to your navel. Execute the same movements as above but shift your focus to the navel region. Perform horizontal circles in clockwise, counterclockwise directions (5x/each); then vertical circles forward and backward directions (5x/each).

• Next, move further down to your tailbone. Execute the same movements as above but shift your focus to the tailbone region. Perform horizontal circles in clockwise, counterclockwise directions (5x/ each); then vertical circles forward and backward directions (5x/each).

Try to follow these exercises on a consistent basis. I strongly recommend that you carve out a ten-minute block of time to make this a daily practice. The body responds very well to consistent and small incremental challenges. In the beginning, building consistency is the priority. Don’t worry about executing these movements perfectly. You will first notice some body awareness blind spots which will fade over time as your awareness increases.

Have fun with this. The goal here is to notice more within your body and use that information to generate greater real-time mobility where and when it is necessary.