I want to talk to you about why you need to move at speeds that are uncomfortable to you. We’re going to talk about movement complexity today. One of the things that’s showing up in the movement research and has for years is that most people, based on their brain, based on how it functions, have a preferred speed of movement.
So if I ask Seven different people to do the same exercise. And I were to film them, uh, and all I’ve done is say, Hey, I want you to make a circle with your arm. Some of them will be fairly close, but if I didn’t have them keep going or I have them repeat it multiple times, there’s a kind of a set speed that people will gravitate to.
Right? It’s the one that they can typically control most easily. And that’s awesome, but it is of limited use. Because if we want to challenge your brain to get better, stronger, and healthier, we want to challenge your body, we have to ask it to do something different. We are a brain based education company, and so our focus is always on what’s the long term ramification of every single repetition that we do.
Is it going to promote growth? Is it going to promote plasticity? Is it going to challenge the brain to change, to do something different? Because if so, that’s probably a keeper. If not, it just means I’m spending time on something that I’m probably already pretty good at. That is a recipe for remaining relatively
you know, mediocre for most of us. So what we try to get people to do in our R Phase certification, which is our level one coaching course, is we talk a lot about speed control, right? Kind of throttle control. You’re driving a car, you have an accelerator, you’re having a break. A break, you have a break. So if you’re driving along, obviously it would be insane to spend your entire life driving only 25 miles an hour.
On the freeway, 25. Side street, 25. Parking lot, 25. In each instance, something could go wrong, but that’s how most people move. We kind of demand of our coaches that they become very, very focused on speed variations in their training. As an example, we teach in that course that there are four primary movement speeds that we want you to explore
as a movement person, right? So if you’re going to be doing something as simple as, let’s say, an elbow circle or a shoulder circle, we’re going to have you work that at four different speeds over the course of a one or two month training cycle. The first speed is called super slow, and I name things very, very clearly.
So super slow means super slow for a shoulder circle. That means I’m going to set my timer for a minute. 60 to 90 seconds. And in 60 to 90 seconds, I’m going to try to complete one full shoulder circle. It feels like a freaking eternity when you’re doing it because it’s so slow. But what people will typically find is as they are moving at that speed, There will be certain ranges of motion as they’re trying to create a nice circle where there will be a jump or they will start to get shaky.
So super slow movements will often show you where you currently lack coordination, control, and, uh, joint mobility, range of motion in that given area. So we like to use that as an explore, exploration of movement. an exploration of your own body. We also like to use it as a concentration drill. It takes extreme levels of executive function, which is how we focus attention.
That’s part of our frontal lobe, and it’s something that we all need probably more of. It’s a great executive function drill because it’s requiring you to do something different than you want to do. The second speed is what we call standard speed. Standard speed is from five to 15 seconds, depending on the size of the joint in the body area.
So I may spend, uh, five seconds. to 15 seconds on a shoulder circle. I may spend a little bit longer than that, you know, if I’m doing something for my lumbar spine or thoracic spine. That’s standard speed. We call it standard for a reason because that’s still slower than most people want to move. Our third speed is called coordinated.
For coordinated speed, when we’re teaching a course, we just go, coordinating the speed is a speed that you already like, right? Uh, so if you’re biasing your training, which one are you going to spend the most time at? If no one tells you to do something different, you’re going to do coordinated speed. So we’re going to kind of typically bias you away from that one.
And then we go to our fourth one, which is what we call sport speed, which is in essence doing something as fast as you can so that we’re working on some explosive movement with control. So those are your general four options. I would recommend that if you think through your mobility routine, whatever it is, I do elbow circles, I do shoulder circles, I do head and neck motions.
I do some spinal motions, work through all of your motor control exercises at these four different speeds. You don’t have to do all four in every workout. You don’t have to do all four every month. But over time, write it down and remind yourself that if you want to change your brain, you want to offer it novel and complex tasks.
And one of the easiest ones to manipulate is speed. It’s free. Requires no equipment. Requires nothing. Other than you, your body, and a little bit of concentration and desire to do something better for yourself. All right. So, uh, work on that brake, work on that accelerator a little bit. Uh, it will pay off hugely in the end in terms of increasing brain activity and hopefully brain health and better movement control.
If you are new to Z, we are a brain-based education company. You’ve heard me talk about the brain a lot, probably in this, , blog itself. So if this is of interest to you, make sure to subscribe to the channel and check out our free resources.
