Good Movement vs Bad Movement

Are certain movements unsafe to do? What makes a movement a good movement or a bad movement? To answer these questions let’s take the example of a person who injured their lower back bending to lift a heavy box at work. Let’s call this person Jim. Jim thinks back on the injury; it wasn’t a particularly heavy box but he thinks because he wasn’t concentrating and his back was flexed at the time he may have not lifted correctly. “You’re supposed to lift with your legs not your back” he says in hindsight. Therefore, he determines that his chosen movement to lift the box was a “bad movement”.

Jim allows his back to recover and returns to work, determined to ONLY lift correctly and ALWAYS have good posture. Which works, until one day it doesn’t. A momentary lapse in concentration and Jim lifts poorly again this time injuring himself even worse than before.

So why has this happened? And how can Jim stop it from continuing to happen when his job involves a lot of lifting? Let’s go back to the beginning and look at Jim’s problem with a different perspective.

Jim injured himself doing a specific movement, therefore that is a movement pattern that Jim is quite poor at performing. So instead of totally stopping that movement pattern (and continuing to get worse at performing it), perhaps Jim should strengthen himself to be able to perform it without injury. Lifting with a neutral spine and using your legs might be the preferred method of lifting a heavy object but it won’t always be possible, and when it isn’t your body should be resilient enough to manage without injury.

It’s never a good idea to be fearful of certain movements because ALL movements are good movements.

If you would like to know more about how movement can make you become more resilient book in to one of our Fu.Mo. Exercise Therapy sessions.