We were made to move...what happened?

We were made to move.  We were made to crawl, climb, jump, sprint, throw, swing, and punch.  We were made to push, pull, squat, hip hinge, and more.  We were born with all of the mobility one could have, but we had to EARN every ounce of stability we obtained. 

What happened?  Our movement patterns are "hard wired" into our nervous system, but we lose them somewhere along the line.  If I ask an 80 year old female to perform a full squat for me, I literally get laughed at and have "Are you serious?" following.  If I go to a 3rd world county and ask the same aged female to squat, I'd get a 3 on Gray Cook's FMS Squat Test.  Why? What happened?

Chairs, computers, cell phones, iPads, iPods, TV's, etc. have taken us from a society of movement to a society of slouchers and chest breathers.  We literally suffer from movement pattern atrophy.  We have lost our ability to squat and hip hinge so we suffer from low back injuries.  We sit for hours on end and our thoracic spine becomes over kyphotic and lacks CRITICAL movement and we have compensatory movement in the neck and lower back.  This leads to disc herniations and degeneration in both the neck and the lower back.  Poor thoracic spine mobility also leads to shoulder pathology.  And if you have surgery (neck, low back, shoulder, elbow, hip, knee, etc.) and you do not address joint restrictions/ joint stability problems away form the surgery site and faulty movement patterns, it is only a matter of time before it happens again.  I know, I've had 3 low back surgeries. 

So what do we do?  How do we keep ourselves away from the issues that comes with our "sedenterism"?

You have to take action BEFORE you are in pain!  Pain is the last to show and the first to go.  What I mean is that the dysfunction was there before the pain started and most often once the pain is gone the person still has dysfunctional mechanics somewhere in the locomotor system that if not addressed will cause pain again, maybe not at the original pain site, but somewhere else up or down the kinetic chain.  All too often patients discontinue care because they are out of pain and are "fixed".  They are stuck in the medical model of pain management and the western lifestyle that wants results fast and cheap. 

In order to take action on our poor movement habits we have to wake up and realize that the answer is not to sit in a chair and drive to work, sit in a chair at work, sit in a chair and drive to the gym, and when we get to the gym sit in another chair to "workout".  We need to quit facilitating poor posture (chest flys, bicep curls, leg extensions, leg press, sit-ups, etc) and break the unnecessary tone we create throughout the day by doing exercises that are advantageous to the movements that we were born with.  Don't get sucked into todays norm... Don't get sucked into todays society of slouchers!