good at anything. You simply have the movement patterns to create feedback loops.


• Movement Fitness: This is your


capacity to express energy for basic locomo- tion or manipulation. Movement fitness is non-specific with capacity and basic physical resources.


• Movement Skill: Your complexity or


ability to do your thing. Some of us special- ize. Skill is when you point your physical capacity at a specific task, activity, goal or game and demonstrate technical and tacti- cal ability in an efficient and effective way.


What is your best movement food? As you move up through movement,


from health to skill, or as we evaluate you down through movement, we deconstruct the minimum effective dose of health, function, fitness and skill to determine where you should be working. What’s the minimum effective dose? We often learn that what we assumed was wrong with us is not really our weakest link. Your body is extremely sensitive to the movements that you choose to do, and the ones that you choose not to do.


Sounds like diet, right? I hope you are inspired to break down


the level of movements by throwing your assumptions out the window and looking at a clean measuring stick for the four different categories of movement. Are you consuming food or supplements at each of these levels? At the top level, enjoy that what you want to do the most, whether it be cycling, rock climbing, hiking, or playing a competitive sport. If you do it right, your skill load will give you an appreciative level of fitness. That fitness will bestow a certain level of function, and that maintained function will help you maintain your health. It works backwards. At the very top rung of movement, find


those things that make you smile and put you in a flow state. Does it mean that you will not have supplementary work to do? You will likely have supplementary work to do, but that’s a temporary obstacle to get you into balance and harmony for the long haul in life. If you have used a supplement for years


instead of weeks or months, it is time to start asking questions. Many people have embraced functional movement technology and continued to do supplements. However, my team would have pulled you off of that corrective a long time ago and readjusted your entire scope of health, function, fit- ness or skill/competition. I would not just add a particular supplement because you have a bad movement pattern. Once I show that the movement pattern could improve


with correctives, the first thing I would say is, “Ok, how can you do that without this corrective?” By doing more of X and doing significantly less of Y, and never doing Z again, because it is simply not a food that you need or that agrees with you. Please do not simply trust me…test me. Start with a simple look at organism and environment; because where you need work may not be where you are working. We use our tests that way at Functional


Movement Systems. Not to promote one methodology over another, but to help you find medicine in your movement, and move- ment in your medicine.


Gray Cook is practicing physical therapist, an or- thopaedic certified special- ist, and a certified strength and conditioning specialist. He is the founder of Func- tional Movement Systems, a company that promotes the concept of movement


pattern screening and assessment. His work and ideas are at the forefront of fitness, conditioning, injury prevention and rehabilita- tion. You’ll find him lecturing on these topics several weekends each month, worldwide. Gray received his graduate physical therapy education at the University of Miami School of Medicine with a research focus on orthopaedics and sports rehabilitation.


JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 canfitpro 27


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