The beginner mindset, frequently called the White Belt mindset, is extremely powerful.  

So while the title of this blog post may be directed at “beginners”, the content is for everyone.  

I intend to share a 20,000-foot view of movement training.  

It’ll be packed with exercise and movement sequence videos, descriptions, pictures, links to valuable resources and ideas on why movement, a rarely talked about sub-category of fitness, might be exactly what you need.

And nothing expert-level here, just a few basics of movement training.  

I believe in integrating many different methods.  

Over the years, I’ve evolved from being a “traditional resistance training + high-intensity interval training” advocate, to:

a crawling, climbing, steady-state aerobic enduring, macebell wielding, kettlebell flow, rowing, running, skierg shredding, brachiating, flow sequence dabbling, active mobility training, gymnastics exploring movement enthusiast.  

The day I stepped outside the box of traditional resistance training, a whole world of exciting physical challenges began to appear. 

Locomotion and ground-based conditioning changed my entire outlook on what a workout can be.  

All fitness gains accomplished from my home gym.

I started combining the better elements of yoga, gymnastics, locomotion/crawling, strongman, natural movement methods, and bodyweight strength training.

Today, my daily workouts look NOTHING like the days of old, yet I couldn’t be happier with the way I move and the transfer it’s made into my daily living.  Training should enhance life in some capacity.  

My body feels stronger, resilient, better conditioned, and more capable than it ever has.  

Yesterday’s workout looked like this:  

1a) Hybrid Turkish Get Ups

2a) Box Elevated Dragon Squats

3a)  Parallette Bar L-Sits

4a)  Lizard Crawl Flow

All of these “GAINZ” were earned after competitive college athletics, a time when a lot of people would say, “That was my peak athletically and physically”.  Blah blah blah.  

You’re done with competitive sports, not dead.  Keep moving and moving often.  

The human body will either adapt and allow you to expand, or it will adapt to stagnation/lack of effort and constrict.  

Success leaves clues, and habits compounded are powerful.

James Clear’s book, “Atomic Habits” does an amazing job articulating the power of building good habits.  

Either way, our bodies are products of what we repeatedly do, good or bad. 

Weekly, I’ve experienced incremental improvements with strength, expanding movement capacity, joint range of motion control, and endurance.

And I love my workouts, they’re hybrid in how they mix a little bit of this and a little of that.

The movement rich training I’ve integrated into my workouts keeps sessions fresh without losing discipline, challenging and effective.  Most of all, it’s engaging.  Taxing for the body, but also for the mind.  A deadly combination. 

The lizard crawl (and variations) is now my favorite upper body exercise.  

Interestingly, I’ve lost absolutely NOTHING when it comes to basic lifts (squats, pressing, deadlifts, pulling core strength, and stability).

Hmmmm… 

Beginner Movement Patterns

The list below is not everything.  But does highlight some of the more notable movement patterns a beginner should begin to familiarize with.

•  Crawling
•  Reaching
•  Twisting
•  Balancing
•  Rolling
•  Climbing
•  Jumping
•  Transitions between movement (common and uncommon)
•  Movement Sequences
•  Improvised Movement

Beginner Movement Training

This blog post is all about the beginner.  The newbie to the movement training.  

The rolling, crawling, transitioning, exercises, and flowing sequences rarely written about in fitness magazines.  

Why don’t fitness magazines grab ahold of movement training methodology?

I have my own theories, but the infatuation with luring people in to read about the next great muscle building routine, fat loss and weight loss is addicting.  Pure aesthetic trickery.  

And there’s nothing wrong with using exercise for body transformation.  

It’s the fact that these magazines repetitively create new angles on the same old, worn out, tired topics.  Plus, judging by the exercise videos I’ve watched from some of the better known mainstream fitness magazines, the fitness editors might sport lean bodies, but they DO NOT MOVE WELL.  

Standing bicep curl technique?  Expert level.

Transitioning from a low crawl into a single leg squat variation back down into a 90/90 position?  Nope.  

Movement training encompasses a lot of the stuff that exists BEYOND lifting weights, sets/reps/rest, racing the clock, WODs, and treadmills.

Crawling.  We crawl as babies, but revisiting basic crawling patterns in adulthood is packed with benefits.   

Ground-based movement training is missing from the average person’s workout regimen, and it’s a key element.  

Free of equipment and fancy gadgets.  

Just your body moving around a space.

Squatting on uneven surfaces, with a staggered stance.  

Pressing up from the floor, stepping through, dropping back down into a Cossack squat, sliding the legs across, and mirroring this combo on the other side.   You could do this for 5 minutes straight.   

Rotation.  A lot of exercise and workouts lack rotational training.  Some workouts overly stress the importance of anti-rotation exercises, paying little attention to the fact that we must be able to produce rotation also.  

Injuries.  People often injury themselves (to varying degrees) when the stress exceeds the body’s tolerance to handle the stress.  

Progressively expanding movement by introducing manageable patterns, loading and positions can help mitigate injuries.

Pertaining to injury mitigation, active mobility training becomes essential.  Increasing range of motion and CONTROLLING (building strength and stability) in these newfound ranges.  

Supplementing resistance-based exercise and natural bodyweight movement with a progressive mobility-focused regimen is the gold standard in injury prevention.

With this recipe, you’re gaining strength, movement IQ, and establish a useable joint range of motion.

Movement Training For Life

On one hand, I believe in general physical conditioning versus attempting to mimic the exact movements of daily living.

On the other hand, conditioning the body for common everyday movements makes a ton of sense.

Exertion in daily life often doesn’t look like the average gym routine.

There are no symmetrically weighted barbells, chalked up kettlebells or dumbbells waiting to be lifted and move.

Real-world movement is less predictable.

We fall into and out of weird positions, often require on-the-go improvised corrections, rebalancing, and constant transitions in and out of body positions.  On top of that, toss unique environments with uneven surfaces and odd-shaped objects.

This is not to say barbells, kettlebells and dumbbells are bad.  There are FANTASTIC tools to leverage.  But at some point, you’re no longer in the gym, you’re no longer pistoning a barbell up and down for robotic reps.

And how about that gym perfect, flat-backed, technically sound bodyweight squat?

Squatting in my life looks like something else entirely.  A hybrid combination of movements and transitions.

Maybe you’ve got to navigate moving from the floor to standing without the use of your arms.

Every day, real-world movement is full of imperfections.   

Interestingly, years of pounding on movement patterns didn’t make me a more efficient mover in the real world.  I mean, to some extent it did, but I started to encounter a lot of different scenarios where I felt weak, uncoordinated, and immobile.

We cannot train for every quirky experience in life, but I strongly believe supplementing resistance and cardio training with movement rich tasks, challenges, and ground-based conditioning would help a lot of people increase their

I find myself squatting out of mechanical alignment, twisting, bending, reaching, rolling, lifting, and moving objects with a technique that most gym fanatics would consider unacceptable.

Picking up heavy, awkward shaped, slippery sh*t from the garage requires a creative approach, which is rarely addressed in a structured workout.

Fully flexing the lumbar spine while assuming a modified lunge stance, driving off the forefoot while my feet slide inside of my Crocs.

This is life.

Sometimes I’m moving by fusing 2-3 of those patterns at one time.

When it’s time to perform in life, it’s time to perform.  Sometimes we get to step up to a heavy object, get situated and lift similar to our gym lifts.  Most times, this is not the case.

Much of movement in daily life is reaction-based, rarely planned, and happens quickly.  There’s no time to externally rotate the hands, pull the shoulder blades down and back, tuck the rib cage, etc.

Real-life movement is unpredictable, deviating from “flat neutral spines”, perfect posture, and ideal foot placement.

It’s life.

The human body is a movement machine.

Ground-based movement drills improve a person’s movement capacity and address a lot of these in-between life moments that a barbell squat or deadlift simply doesn’t.  

Improving your ability to interact with the ground, using nothing but bodyweight will help you as a mover, and probably make your traditional lifts that much better. 

And to be completely honest, engaging in movement-based training is as fun as it is challenging.

One great benefit of practicing movement based drills is how quickly a person builds confidence in unique and unfamiliar body positions.

We knowingly (and unknowingly) avoid activities we know our body isn’t suited for.  After a few months of movement training, this starts to shift.  You begin to look at daily tasks differently.  Situations you used to avoid become worthy challenges you’ll meet head-on with a new-found confidence in your abilities.

Twisting and rotational movements are absent from most workouts.

Walk into a big box membership-based gym and you’ll witness 95% of the members slaving away on fixed range of motion cardio machines, ab machines, or and crowding the bench press area..

I’d shred my chest and core by ramping up the volume of lizard crawl versus laying lifeless on a bench while pressing the weight up and down… ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.

Rotation is a basic human movement action and training it consistently can provide some noticeable benefit with regard to performance and postural integrity.  It’s quite common to have people comment on their spine feeling “locked up” or “stiff”.

Insufficient mobility at the mid-back region can cause excessive motion at the lower back, as the lower back tries to pick up the slack to make everyday movements possible.

Rotational drills are great for training mid-back mobility while opening up the hip flexors and activating the powerful glute muscles.  The stretch from the hip to the shoulder is incredible.  

Injecting multi-planar and multi-joint exercises into a workout regimen can (and will)_ bridge the gap that many traditional compound lifts simply do not address.  

More examples… 

Training movement patterns in isolation is best for learning mechanics and giving the body an opportunity to adapt.  

The range of motion of each exercise can be modified to suit what you can comfortably handle at this moment and will improve with time and consistent practice.  

The human body is a brilliant adaptation machine.   

Most of my early ground-based movement flow practice involved spending focused time on 1 or maybe 2 movements in isolation.  I like to work new exercises with a “do less but do it better” type approach.    

As my movement efficiency improved, I began to string together 2, 3 even 4 exercises in a row, flowing and transitioning between each for reps or time.     

Every exercise has progressions leading up to mastery.  I cannot stress this enough.  Movements can be progressed for YEARS.  

Interested in getting a cardio conditioning effect from the workout?  Great.  Increase the tempo of each exercise or add time to the work set.  Flowing around a room for 8-10 minutes will elevate your heart rate as much as traditional cardio.  With the added benefit of training more movement patterns and improvisation to increase the brain’s processing speed.  

Crawling is great for loading the upper extremities, core, and sequencing.  Extremely slow tempo crawling remains one of the most eye-opening physical challenges for people.   

10-15 minutes of ground-based movement training will leave you exhausted, particularly if you’re new to it and inefficient.  

Are you going to be sore all over from this?  Yes.  Expect soreness in the days that follow.  

Newbies to ground-based movement training should consider implementing such training after the warm-up, but before resistance training in the day’s workout.  

Movement 20XX

Movement 20XX is a program I’ve become a huge fan of across the last year.

Eero Westerberg and I have a lot of similar ideas and approaches to building physical freedom, exploring different avenues of exercise and how to integrate those methods into a pre-existing regimen.

Movement 20XX is loaded with exercise progressions, bodyweight strength training, moving into ground-based movement, and sequences.  

Sequences are a series of pre-planned movements fused together.  Like a movement sentence.

Everything in Movement20XX can be adjusted for beginners/novice movers or progressed to challenge the elite mover.  

Movement training will improve all other areas of fitness.

Watch for more posts sharing exercises, combinations, and flow!

Cheers,

Kyle