How big is your movement vocabulary?

"Brainy What-Why-How"

Your weekly nibble of science-backed goodness to help you move better and feel unstoppable.

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What (the TL:DR)

Your ability to move well through life--efficiently, with confidence and coordination-- is largely thanks to the little tiny movements that combine to make your overall movement.

For example:

Propping a heavy shopping bag on your knee while balancing on the other foot and leaning forward to open your car.

There's a LOT of different little movements going on at once to make this happen: in almost every joint!

And throughout everyday life, we are dependent on our nervous system piecing together micro-movements to form one big movement so we can get through our day.

Why (the geeky neurology)

Think of speaking a language: it requires mastery of hundreds* of different sounds to form various words...

What happens when someone learns a new language as an adult? They probably have an accent!

Because even though they can make the overall WORD, the little sounds that make up the words may not be quite the same as a native speaker.

So the same can go for our movement: we often lack some of the micro-movements needed to make a macro-movement, but we get by anyway -- with an "accent". This is known as compensatory movement.

Like a sexy foreign accent, it's not always a bad thing.

But when we struggle to do a movement like a yoga asana, e.g. revolved half moon**, it's often because some of those micro-movements are missing from our movement vocabulary.

How (apply it to your life)

How to improve expand movement vocabulary?

Explore! Like I demonstrate in this 26 second video, you can make tiny changes to your postures and transitions and get a totally different result!

Give it a try with me in today's new class on Move With Adell: Gentle Rotate Inwards Flow for Legs and Spine

Here's what a couple of people have said about this flow:

"This was a ooey gooey class of perfection. Thank you thank you thank you!" - Sabrina

"This has just the right dose I needed for this day. Following your weekly schedule I have everything I need in a balanced way." - Heidi

Thank you for reading! Get in touch if you have any questions!

And please share with a friend or colleague who might find this valuable.

Happy micro-movements,

Adell xoxo

- Hundreds of sounds, but thousands if you include phonological rules and suprasegmental features.

- *Revolved half moon is our movement focus this month on Move With Adell!