Fitness / The seven movements
Seven movements to master.
Functional movements are the ones that get us through the day: picking up heavy boxes, pushing a couch across the living room, walking to the store, twisting to move something heavy across the body. None of it feels like exercise, and all of it can be practised. Practising lowers the odds of getting hurt doing it for real.
We all know someone who hurt their back lifting something “they shouldn’t have.” That isn’t quite true. If the body can perform a movement, there is a proper way to do it, and biomechanists prove it daily. If I had to choose a handful of movements to do for the rest of my life, these are the seven, and why.
01 / 07
Locomotion
In life: Walking to the store. The stairs. The dog. The airport.
This is the simple one. We walk, run, jog, ride, crawl and skip our way through life, and we don’t think of any of it as exercise. Without locomotion we need someone or something else to move us, and people are becoming less capable of it every year, almost always for self-inflicted reasons.
Walking alone can regulate bodyweight without training like an athlete, though there are plenty of other reasons to lift. A tracker makes the count honest: how much you actually move, how you actually sleep, where the time goes. The common target of 10,000 steps a day is one of the cheapest prescriptions in health. It all starts with a healthy heart.
Read the full piece: The Forgotten Movement: Why I Still Obsess Over Walking →
02 / 07
Squat
In life: Every chair. Every time you get up off the floor.
We squat all day without noticing. Every time you sit down and stand back up, that’s a squat. A strong squat makes walking easier, strengthens the hips and glutes, and protects the SI joint as you age. Loaded squats also build bone density, which is the defence against osteopenia and osteoporosis, especially for women.
One of the biggest fears people have as they get older is falling and not being able to get back up. A hip fracture after 65 is a serious event: a large share of people die within a year of one, and many never get their strength back. The prevention starts decades earlier, with legs strong enough to catch you.
Read the full piece: Sit, Stand, Repeat: Why the Squat Is Non-Negotiable →
03 / 07
Lunge
In life: Stairs. Picking something up off the floor. Stepping under a branch.
A lunge is dropping a knee in the middle of a step, usually to pick something up or get low. It builds legs that are strong independently of each other, which is what stairs, balance, and picking up heavy things without wrecking your back all depend on.
Try one with each leg. Is one side easier? Did you need to grab something, or push off with your arms, to get back up? Those are signs to do this every day, even if only to stay mobile for life. For the aesthetics crowd: lunges build glutes and quads like little else.
Read the full piece: One Leg at a Time: Why Lunges Matter More Than You Think →
04 / 07
Deadlift
In life: One end of the couch. The heavy box. A sleeping kid.
We deadlift things all the time: one end of the couch, the heavy box, the bag of concrete. The whole lift comes down to a straight back and a hinge from the hips. It is a whole-body movement that challenges you physically and mentally, and done properly it fights low back pain, bone loss, unregulated blood sugar, and the rest of what comes from sitting still.
You don’t need a barbell. A milk crate full of rocks mirrors how you should pick up heavy things in real life better than a bar does.
Read the full piece: You’re Already Deadlifting. Just Do It Right. →
05 / 07
Push
In life: A box onto a high shelf. Furniture across the room. Getting up off the ground.
Pushing is any movement that moves something away from you: the box overhead, the couch across the room, a lineman through the man across from him. The more you push straight away, the more it is chest; the more overhead, the more it is shoulders. Both need to stay strong, and the bench press is only one way to get there.
The test: lie face down and push your body off the floor in one rigid piece. If that’s easy, good, keep going. If you can’t do one, push-ups are where to start.
Read the full piece: The Push-Up Test: How Strong Are You, Really? →
06 / 07
Pull
In life: Climbing. Hauling a hose. Paddling. Lifting yourself out of a chair.
Think of our ancestors climbing trees: a blend of patterns, but the emphasis is pulling. As people age they lean on their pulling muscles for even the simplest things, like standing up out of a chair. Neglect pulling and the list of what you can do gets shorter: water skiing, rock climbing, paddling, tug-of-war, moving the garage around, playing with the dogs.
Pull-ups are the fix, and they are hard. The most I could manage when I started was one and a half, and I was embarrassed that I couldn’t lift my own bodyweight. Stick with them, do them religiously, and they become a staple.
Read the full piece: Why Your Pulling Strength Disappears First, and How to Get It Back →
07 / 07
Rotate
In life: The seatbelt. The golf swing. Groceries in one hand.
Reaching for a seatbelt is rotation. So is tennis, golf, baseball, volleyball, and most of what happens on a field. Rotation is mainly a core job: the abdominals and spinal stabilisers twisting the torso around the hips, with the hips, legs and shoulders adding torque. Every rotation needs its opposite, so the body stays balanced.
Then there is anti-rotation: the same muscles, used to stop the body from turning. The bird dog teaches it faster than any explanation.
Read the full piece: The Core Move Everyone Skips: Rotation and Anti-Rotation →
Then the numbers
Once you move well, measure.
Heart-rate zones, RPE, reps in reserve and a 1–10 RM table, all on the same engine as the app, all honest about how far to trust them.
Open the tools