Development of your physical abilities is governed by the
Development of your physical abilities is governed by the ‘Rule of specificity.’ This means that when you train, you only develop strength in the isolated groups of muscles that you are training…you don’t develop muscular growth anywhere else. Pretty obvious right? So this leads me to ask the question, why are people happy to train with such few movements. The average gym goer might do up to 10 different exercises during their session, and if they do the classic ‘back and biceps, chest and triceps, and leg day, they may be hitting a max of 30 different exercises. Why? Because those 30 exercises may make you ‘look’ aesthetically pleasing, but can you actually move? I’m not saying don’t lift weights, but ask yourself how many muscles remain weak and address this problem? How many areas remain vulnerable to injury?
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This exercise demonstrates this point, I wonder how many of you can do this? Be honest with yourself, try and perform it with the control demonstrated in the video.
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I’m sure some of you will be thinking why would I want to be able to do this. This exercise is great for prevention of golfers elbow, a really common condition in weightlifting. I also think that we are incredibly weak in our wrists compared to our ancestors. We rarely put our hands on the ground, something our ancestors would have done frequently. To protect your wrists whilst training you may try and keep them in a neutral position, this results in the joint becoming weak.
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Being in touch with our ancestry, just like with the paleo diet, can help avoid certain health related issues throughout life. Ground based movements make up an integral part of our physical health and it’s something I rarely see being done in gyms today. Consider that the structure of your body has a reciprocal effect on your underlying physiology. I.e if you don’t move your body, your body’s internal processes, such as digestion and breathing are affected. Being in touch with ancestral movement patterns can help us improve the health of our internal systems, just like it’s done for 4 million years(and longer). Start training your wrists today, even if you don’t want to crawl, your grip strength will improve!
