As a Rolfing practitioner (a form of manual therapy), I sometimes feel like the cardiac surgeon who wishes she could instead become a nutritionist and then travel back in time to see her patients twenty years earlier – before they needed the bypass surgery. Although in my case, having a practice where I work mainly with people who are dealing with chronic pain, I wish I could go back in time to teach my clients smart movement interventions to help them avoid suffering down the road. (Though, clearly, I do teach movement interventions with them. All hope is not lost.) It’s staggering just how much of our chronic pain stems from poor movement patterning.

First, some depressing statistics:

• In the United States alone, musculoskeletal conditions such as back pain, arthritis, and osteoporosis are reported more than any other health condition (far outpacing cancer, diabetes, and heart disease).
• The total number of painkillers prescribed in 2010 in the United States was big enough that they statistically could have been written for 80% of the population, including children.
• The demand for total joint replacement is expected to rise so sharply in the next 25 years (a 673% increase for knee replacements and a 174% increase for hip replacements), that experts anticipate there will not be enough orthopedic surgeons to perform the surgeries.

We’re a mess. So the question has to be why, and the simple answer is that we live in a time and a place where we no longer need to use our bodies in order to make sure we are fed, clothed, and sheltered. Instead we live in a time and a place where we earn money to buy what we need, work primarily in static positions (hey look! I’m doing it right now!), and segregate our movement only to the small portion of time we may spend exercising. This lack of natural human movement is causing a plague of chronic pain and physical dysfunction, as well as contributing hugely to the disease processes of contemporary culture. In short: it’s a big problem.

Since movement is a passion of mine, I was delighted to get the fantastic resource Exploring Functional Movement, which is a three-disc set (or download) created in partnership between Erwan Le Corre and Gray Cook. Erwan Le Corre, founder of MovNat, is one of the main people who I believe is a visionary leading the charge back to natural human movement. Gray Cook, founder of Functional Movement Systems and author of Movement, is one of the main people who is taking fitness out of the realm of beating one’s body into submission, and instead is using it to restore mechanically sound movement patterns via screening and correctives. So seeing that they did this project together was basically a chocolate-meets-peanut-butter moment for me.

Let’s take a look at what it the series covers. Each of the three discs takes a slightly different approach:

Disc One

In Disc One, Cook and Le Corre work together as Le Corre takes Cook through some of the MovNat movements. Le Corre points out that humans have a hierarchy of movement skills: locomotive, manipulative, and combative. And he says that in MovNat they always start with locomotive because we need to be able to stand up, run, walk, climb, and perform other basic movements before we progress.

Le Corre and Cook begin their locomotive warm ups on the ground rolling and transferring weight in a number of planes. They do this by rolling onto their side and shifting weight sideways for example, or by crawling on their backs to move backwards, or rolling backwards completely (my new favorite movement from this is rolling backwards on one shoulder until you wind up lying flat in a prone position – it’s an amazing spinal mobilization). They then progress to kneeling, lunging, and transferring weight in more gradually upright positions.

I made the humbling mistake of only watching this first section of Disc One a day before I re-watched it and actually went through the movements. As I watched it initially I found it really interesting, but assumed that I wouldn’t find anything in these movements that would prove challenging or expose a blind spot in my movement abilities. Ba-ha-ha-ha! Not so! While some of the movements came easily, others surprised me with fresh challenges and illuminated discrepancies side-to-side. If you get these DVDs, do be sure not to treat it like watching television. Clear some space and go through the movements. You’re sure to find some surprising insights into your movement patterns.

In the second part of Disc One, Le Corre and Cook progress to some manipulative skills, by using first a stick, and then a log balanced on one shoulder while squatting (and eventually Le Corre kicks it up a notch by walking and running with the balanced log). As Le Corre says, “Manipulating objects does not rely on brute force. We look at postural integrity and good efficient movement patterning… Manipulating objects can be very helpful for feedback.”

Helpful, indeed. It is clear that this balanced log is the best squatting teacher anyone could hope for. As soon as you lose spinal integrity, whoops! – there goes the log falling forward or backward. Cook summed it up well when he said, “You’re setting up movement opportunities that intensify sensory awareness so much.” So instead of using things like gym weight machines, which profoundly shut down sensory awareness, these movements add a profound mental component. You have to be totally engaged in what you are doing.

Disc Two

Disc Two is an opportunity to watch a thorough coaching session by Le Corre as he takes two people who hadn’t met him before through several of the movements from Disc One, as well as plenty of new ones. You get the benefit of both watching other people go through MovNat and hearing Cook’s commentary on how the movements function as screens and simultaneously as correctives. For example, when Le Corre is having the two students rock back and forth onto their spine with knees bent and no help from their extremities, Cook points out how this movement demonstrates limits of thoracic flexibility. He also explains how, when they are rolling this way, the grass becomes like nature’s foam roller (my words) and gives them some tissue mobilization.

Watching Le Corre and Cook take two people through movement progressions will steep you in their philosophy of quality first. Once quality has been attained, you do not increase volume or intensity, but complexity. As Cook put it, MovNat sets up a circumstance where you just plain “can’t do more than you can do correctly.”

Disc Three

Disc Three basically functions as an encyclopedia of all of the MovNat movements that were covered, with Le Corre demonstrating each. This disc looks at each movement independently and deconstructs their relevance. The MovNat exercises are broken down by type: rolling, crawling, creeping, transitions, and biped. For those of you who utilize the Functional Movement Screen with your clients, this disc also lists the relevant FMS tests that correspond each movement, thereby correlating them directly to the screen.

If I’m pressed to come up with some down side of this educational resource, really all I can come up with is that it was filmed in Virginia in the summertime. The sheer lush, green, sunny, humming insects, summery-ness of the whole thing was a torment as I watched it in the heart of one of New England’s coldest winters. Okay, I kid – I have nothing negative to say.

In the words of Le Corre, “What most of us need… is a good healthy dose, if possible a daily dose, of natural human movement to thrive.” For anyone who has an interest natural movement, or who wants to learn how to prevent or treat pain, dysfunction, or injury, Exploring Functional Movement is an invaluable resource.

“Exploring Functional Movement” is available for $49.95 at FunctionalMovement.com.

The post Review: “Exploring Functional Movement” Featuring Gray Cook and Erwan Le Corre appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I love trying new workout DVDs. I have my own workouts that I like to do on a regular basis, but every now and then it’s nice to mix things up a bit. I like to think that I have a somewhat adventurous personality and that this extends even into the realm of fitness DVDs. So I was excited when I received Linda LaRue’s Core Transformer workouts in the mail to review.

Nevertheless, I’m also a skeptic, particularly of workouts that claim to target the core. It’s not that I don’t believe in the core muscles; it’s just such an ambiguous term at this point. I’m also slightly allergic to peppy instructors, which is why I loved the serious, no-nonsense tone of Andrea DuCane’s Kettlebell Goddess. Nevertheless, in my experience, a lot of workouts that make glitzy claims and feature smiley instructors actually turn out to be pretty good if I give them a chance.

This was definitely the case with the Core Transformer DVDs. I knew right away when I saw the smoking (literally) abs on the front cover that I would have aesthetic issues. The back cover claims the workout is “the perfect combination of standing total-body ab work and core mat work that blends functional training with yoga and Pilates inspired moves – all intensified by using the constant resistance, 3-dimensional CORE TRANSFORMER tubing method.” “Wow, that’s a mouthful,” I thought to myself skeptically. Would this DVD prove to be yet another “functional” flop?

Thirty minutes later, I knew the answer. Linda LaRue’s workout is challenging and a lot of fun. The workout is unique in that it combines traditional moves with the resistance tubing, or Core Transformer. The tubing is similar to standard resistance bands except that you can attach the midsection to your shoes and hold the ends in your hands. I felt like a less graceful version of Spiderman at first and got some laughs from my family members, but once I got used to it I really liked using the tubing. It allows you to easily increase the intensity of normal bodyweight moves but with even more resistance. For example, you can make a simple move like a squat much more challenging by simply taking a wider stance, which adds more resistance and difficulty. The exercises are all scalable, with variations for more or less experienced users.

The “total-body” workout claims were also accurate. I felt it just as much in my shoulders and butt as I did in my “core” muscles. The name “Core Transformer” might automatically bring crunches and other traditional abdominal exercises to mind, but Linda’s program is much more dynamic. There wasn’t a single floor exercise in the 1,000 Calorie Burn DVD 20 minute workout, but there were plenty of exercises to strengthen the whole body, like the clock squats with optional plyometrics.

I would recommend this series for people who are on the lookout for workouts to do at home. The 1,000 Calorie Burn DVD is great because it has 20, 30, and 60 minute workout options. For a fast, high-intensity workout, the Fat Burn Fusion DVD is perfect. The resistance tubing is also compact, which would make the Core Transformer a good option for a travel workout.

I would also recommend the Core Transformer workouts to women who have had recent pregnancies and need a strengthening workout that doesn’t isolate the abdominal muscles like standard crunches. I had a c-section last year with some nasty complications, and it has taken me a long time to recover and rebuild my strength. For a long time, my doctor recommended that I not do isolation exercises to avoid re-opening my incision, which kept coming open for some reason. The Core Transformer workout would have been a good option then, since it’s very scalable and works other muscle groups without putting too much pressure on the abdominal muscles.

Overall, I would say the Core Transformer series exceeded my expectations. I don’t know if it really burns 1,000 calories and I doubt that it “smokes off” belly fat (that sounds unpleasant anyway). But it is a fun challenge that I would recommend to others.

The Core Transformer kit is available for $34.95 at CoreTransformer.com.

The post Product Review: The Core Transformer appeared first on Breaking Muscle.