The muscles nobody thinks to train
"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)
The muscles that you probably train the least may be an overlooked piece of why certain skills feel stubbornly "stuck".
They're your eye muscles.
Everyone obsesses over glutes or rotator cuffs, but meanwhile the eyeballs may be doing the bare minimum over here.
Why (the geeky neurology)
Your brain trusts the visual system more than any other sense to make decisions about your environment* -- whether you're safe or in danger, and how to move through it.
Vision isn't just "seeing".
It's information.
And if the visual system isn't good at the job you're asking it to do, your brain gets a little....sketchy.
Example: handstand.
You want to look towards your wrists, which would be totally reasonable if we weren't all spending 9 hours a day staring slightly down at rectangles full of emails, and people confidently being wrong on social media.
Your eye muscles are suddenly expected to work in a range they barely visit -- looking up 🙄 (Perfect timing to tell you that I explain this more in depth in this post.)
When the visual system starts to get overloaded in any skill:
your gaze may get wobblier
processing might feels slower
balance gets weird
your brain is probably relying on more of your inner ear and body awareness because your eyes have basically clocked out.
A lot of movements -- like handstands, yoga transitions, living life -- ask your brain to:
detect tiny changes in body position
predict where you'll be in about 150 milliseconds
stabilise your gaze
coordinate your eyes, inner ear, and body against gravity
...all in a split second. Over and over again.
If the eyes aren't used to this task, then in our handstand example, it may show up as shoulders slumping, legs feeling heavy, or fingers feeling too slow to act as brakes.
It might not be becasue the muscles are tired.
It might be because your brain has said, "yeah...I'm not loving the data I'm getting here."
How (apply it to your life)
Literally just move your eyes. Intentionally.
That's it.
Look at things that are still. Look at things that move. Look close up, look far, far away.
Look in directions your eyes have completely forgotten exist.
Personally, I train my eyes whenever life hands me a few spare seconds:
🚽 On the toilet? Absolutely.
I stare at a spot that forces my eyes to move into a position they're not used to while I pretend I don't have emails 👀 🙄 🤪 😏
🏋️♀️ At the gym? Hell yeah
Without moving my head, I watch the weight in my right hand while I'm doing something like a dumbbell bench press, then finish the set watching the one in my left hand. Boom -- chest workout ✅ eye workout ✅ multitasking like a productivity influencer I never want to become.
📕 Reading a book? You betcha.
I'm geeky enough to deliberately hold the book to the right or left of me, swapping positions with each page turn.
Once you start paying attention to what your eyes are doing, it's easy to start seeing opportunities for vision training everywhere.
Will this magically fix your handstand? I can't possibly say.
But if your visual system is the bottleneck, it might just be the weird little thing that suddenly makes everything feel easier.
Adell 💋
*If you want to watch a cool video about how our brains will ignore what we hear if our eyes give it different information, watch this short video.
Want to go way deeper with me? 👀
• Join Handstand Club and Handstand Club Mini (next "mini" sessions coming up on 22 July, 9 Aug, & 22 Aug
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