Everything in my mind as far as fitness is concerned breaks down to movement. If you are a power lifter, you perform movement. If you are a dancer, you perform movement. Also, if you are a yogi, you perform movement. You name the fitness craze, chances are it involves you moving your body in a particular way with their own style of choreographed movements. Movement is Life.

Choreography typically applies to dance, but in my mind it could also apply to power lifting. For instance when learning how to safely deadlift a barbell, the correct form needs to be learned and in my brain that translates as a type of choreographed movement that is learned over time with practice.

If you spot a group of young children together, they are usually constantly moving. They play with movement all the time. That sense of play as we become adults tends to become less, especially with age. I question why we accept this as adults, injuries aside of course. Our society loves structure, our brains love structure, but they also love creativity. As we become adults we accept that we must always have goals and rarely do we do something for just the enjoyment especially with movement like we did as kids.

Do I think we should just mess around with movement when lifting a heavy barbell? No, because that could be dangerous especially if the barbell is heavy for us. But when we are practicing body weight only exercises, why not? I remember in my yoga teacher training being told to fold over only with a flat back. However I have since adjusted my opinion that it does not matter if your back is flat or rounded. They both stretch our bodies in different ways. Why not since we are not lifting any heavy weights other than our own self as traditionally taught in yoga, play with adjusting a pose? It is amazing how one little shift can totally change where you feel a stretch. Why not introduce play and creativity into your yoga practice or any other body weight movement practice? Who cares if you never achieve a particular yoga pose? After over 20 years of practicing yoga I can say there are so many poses I have never obtained and honestly I may never, but to me that is not what my practice is about.

With dance, form is important but so is how it looks. The performance is everything. However if you are practicing dance why not play without thought of what it looks like? If you never post it on Instagram who cares?

Sometimes it is good to unplug our beliefs, our goal centered lives and just do something for the sheer joy of it. Kids do that all the time. We could learn a lot from them. Imagine how good your body would feel if you moved with joy, rather than thinking I need to get this many more repetitions in.