A Guide to
The MovementLink Method
Written By Kyle Ligon - MovementLink.FIT Head Coach
In this guide I will lay out the MovementLink Method and our perspective on modern goal setting, exercise and workout specifics, nutrition, and many other lifestyle factors that will have a major impact on the results you’re after. But first, I want you to think back to who you were 10 years ago. Likely, there are many things about you that are very different today compared to back then. Even though we know we have changed a lot in our lives, we have a status quo bias that makes it very difficult to imagine our current lives changing very much. This bias not only holds people back as they stick to the status quo of their life even when there are better alternatives, but because it’s hard to imagine change, it’s also hard to imagine what future versions of us may possibly be interested in. What are your goals going to be 10 years from now? Not, what are your goals now that you hope to accomplish within 10 years, but 10 years from now, what new goals will you be making for yourself? Who knows, right? But, wouldn’t it be great if the efforts you put into your current goals, not only helped you accomplish and maintain them, but also scaled and transferred to any potential future goals you may develop? There are many methods that look great on social media and produce results, but most of the time those results are disappointingly short-lived. Imagine doing all the hard work to reach a weight loss goal, just to regain the weight because you chose a strategy with a difficult long-term adherence. After a weight loss intervention, up to 35% of weight lost is regained within 1 year and most of the original weight lost is regained within 5 years. (Weiss, E. C., Galuska, D. A., Kettel Khan, L., Gillespie, C., & Serdula, M. K. Weight Regain in U.S. Adults Who Experienced Substantial Weight Loss, 1999-2002. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 2007;33(1):34–40.)
The MovementLink Method takes an approach that produces the short-term results we are after and, in the process, lays a foundation on which you can build for the rest of your life. I want to emphasize this message as it’s a recurring theme in our method: We don’t actually know what our life, interests, and goals are going to be in the future, but we can choose to undertake our current goals in a way that maximizes future opportunities as well. One of many examples from the MovementLink Method is our priority on using functional exercises performed with full ranges of motion in our workouts. Not only do exercises that use full ranges of motion grow our muscles better than partial ranges of motion, but it also improves our mobility. Additionally, functional exercises, as opposed to isolation exercises that work one muscle group at a time, work multiple muscle groups together in functional sequences that train our body in the specific ways that mimic what our life and favorite activities are like outside of the gym. Can we get the aesthetic results we are after by doing more classic workouts that use isolation exercises? Absolutely. But, those results will be limited to the niche of that aesthetic goal. The MovementLink Method is packed with decisions that ensure amazing short-term success with pin-point goals like aesthetics, while opening up additional current and long-term opportunities. Surprising to most, aggressively attacking short-term goals does not have to be at odds with long-term success…quite the opposite!
People tend to think that the approaches that produce extreme fitness and the approaches that people would take just to be healthy and live wonderful lives would have some overlaps, but ultimately that one would need to make tons of different choices depending on their goals. The deeper and deeper we get into the world of elite athletics and the world of health and longevity for everyday people, the more our belief solidifies that we do not have to choose between the two. By taking a health-centered approach, short-term aesthetic and performance goals are supercharged while long-term joint and tissue health and overall health and wellness goals are also pushed forward in very significant ways. I have seen that, minus the potential use of performance enhancing drugs in elite athletic communities, the same lifestyle strategies that the best athletes in the world employ to prioritize recovery and which in turn produces maximal results from their workouts are actually the same strategies that many health experts recommend to everyday people simply looking to optimize health and longevity. For example, the health impacts of taking short walks after meals can be profound, but we also find this habit to be religiously implemented by world-class Strongman athletes and Tour De France cyclists to boost their recovery. This is the magic. Just because the MovementLink Method is health-centered, that does not mean that we are not going to get incredible short-term results. When our body is fueled properly, when vitamins, minerals, and hormones are available in the right levels, when inflammation and insulin levels are appropriate, when our heart is powerful and efficient, and as all markers that measure health improve, our body’s ability to respond and adapt to exercise improves, making results dramatic and fast. Even if all you cared about was short-term results, like the Strongman and Tour De France athletes do, the MovementLink Method delivers. Again, the beauty is that you don’t have to choose between the two.
The MovementLink Method is a framework for a healthy, active, growth-oriented lifestyle designed to produce what we cheesily call P.A.T.H. results:
Athletic, Functional Performance
Aesthetics (Body Composition)
Tissue and Joint Health
Overall Health and Wellness to Maximize Healthspan.
Through the MovementLink Method, I not only lost the 20+ pounds of excess body fat I used to carry with me, but I am the healthiest and fittest I have ever been. Over these years I have gone through phases where my interests have shifted to and from the sport of CrossFit, to business, to disc golf, to Spartan Races, to Rucking, to Marathons, to online bike races, to bikepacking, to pickleball. Besides showing that I’m somewhat of a nerd (haha), I hope this shows the foundation I have created has allowed me the freedom and flexibility to explore and enjoy anything I become interested in. Even in my phases where I am less into a specific fitness element and super into an aspect of my business, the foundation built through the MovementLink Method keeps me happy, energized, and always ready for whatever is going to come next.
This guide will walk you through The MovementLink Method, along with providing tons of deep-dive links that will allow you to explore in more detail any areas you may be interested in further.
Want to work with a coach? We love guiding people through the method and helping them customize their strategies to fit their unique life and individual goals. Contact us here for more information.
Exercise
Start with the End in Mind
To use a saying from the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, to create an effective exercise program, we must first “start with the end in mind.” While most jump straight to their goals, reaching your goals is not the end, so I wanted to look at the literal end of life.
To develop our methods, I started by taking a look at life at 80+ years old and then worked backwards to ensure that as I try to benefit my and my clients’ current lives maximally, that we also kept a perspective that prioritized creating an amazing life as we age. Incredibly, this thinking further reinforces our theme of not having to choose between short- and long-term results. Let’s start by looking at what would make an amazing life at 80+ years old: the ability to easily get on and off the ground over and over again, carry groceries up and down hills and stairs, walk 10+ miles in a day during a vacation, pick up a 40lb bag of dog food or something similar off the ground, participate in an active game or sport like skiing or pickleball, all while living pain-free. Don’t mistake uncommon for not possible. If you think some of these things are not possible at that age, I recommend spending some time on YouTube to explore some of the amazing things older people are capable of.
There are things that tend to diminish with age and dimmish with lack of training and the amount of diminished capabilities at 40, 50, 60, 70, 80+ years old, although it cannot be guaranteed, is highly in your control. My goal now is to build a bigger and bigger buffer against the aspects of my physiology and fitness that tend to deteriorate over time if not trained: Things like functional movement patterns, fast-twitch muscle fibers, muscle mass, muscle endurance, cardiovascular endurance, bone density, VO2 max, and mobility. Ironically, although these are all performance metrics that when improved provide an immediate boost to life, these are also the top metrics that predict how long someone will live. Let’s think about that for a second - not only will our expected lifespan increase as our functional performance metrics increase, but those additional years, because those people are more physically capable, have the potential to still be amazing years! Also, because those listed metrics are performance based, the MovementLink Method does not have to be a delayed gratification program like a retirement fund would be where we save our results for the future. By training to improve these performance metrics now, we can boost our current lives, while using methods that create a buffer against deterioration also to scale to our future lives. The key is that we do not want to blow out joints and stack up injuries as we hyper-focus on short-term results without consideration to later years.
The MovementLink Method’s Workout Blueprint has these Broad Areas of Focus that are crucial for maximizing opportunities in our short-term and long-term lives.
Note: Because I feel the immediate performance boosts from the below areas are obvious, I am only going to include the older age-specific performance benefits below.
Speed/Power/Agility - Develops and maintains fast-twitch muscle fibers required to catch yourself if you trip. If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to see an elderly person fall, the inability to move quickly is extremely apparent and ultimately what causes a fall when, in most scenarios, those with adequate fast-twitch muscle fibers would not have fallen.
Functional Strength - Life requires strength to get off the ground, stand up from the toilet, pick things up, and move through our everyday lives without assistance. Many people lose so much strength over time that standing up out of a chair is like doing a 1 rep max effort. Imagine the risks, annoyance,and limitations that would come along with that.
Strength Endurance - Being capable of doing something one time is crucial, but being able to sustain the effort is key for walking up stairs and carrying things.
VO2 Max / Anaerobic Thresholds - The overall ability to sustain a harder amount of effort is key to walking up stairs, carrying things, and playing sports while providing a buffer zone for a healthy heart in these activities.
Endurance - Heart health and the ability to continue moving over long time durations means to continue to be able to garden, perform yard work, and enjoy more active vacations.
Mobility, Balance, and Functional Movement Patterns (Skill) - Feel good, be pain free, and move efficiently.
Each of these areas require different types and amounts of weekly stimuli. As an example, below is how we lay out our classes at the MovementLink.FIT Gym. You can dive deeper and see how the gym’s classes are organized each week to ensure adequate stimuli and recovery of all of these areas together here.
Focus on Simply Showing Up 3-6 Days a Week
Heroic results come to those who are consistent. My wife, Alex Kiester, is a New York Times Bestselling Author (Sorry for the brag sesh!) and I have watched her go through the process of writing many novels. Her books are not written by waiting for days where she feels great to sit herself in front of her computer to write, but instead by consistently putting herself infront of her computer to write most days of the week, regardless of how she feels that day. Writing is extremely challenging work and some days end up going well and others not as well, but by showing up to her book consistently, she makes extreme progress over time. Getting results from exercise is extremely similar. Simpy get yourself to the gym consistently, regardless of how you feel that day. Trust me, those who show up, get the results. The #1 indicator predicting if someone is going to be successful with a workout program is simply their adherence to a program.
I hope that instead of this adding pressure to you, I hope this can help relieve some pressure. If you miss a few workouts here and there and have some days where you show up, but just can’t put in a high effort, as long as most weeks you exercise 3-6 days a week, you will achieve amazing things. It does not matter if you perfectly followed a program, what matters is that you consistently challenged yourself each week. Did you only workout once this week? No problem. Over the course of the next 10 years, if you are showing up 3-6 days a week on most weeks, you are going to be extraordinarily fit.
Staying Motivated
So, life is hard and stressful, so how can you stay motivated enough to be consistent? I recommend you remove the choice. Personally, I leave the planning and decision making to the strong, rested, motivated version of me. The stressed out, tired, unmotivated, comfort-seeking in-the-moment version of me doesn’t get to make decisions. That guy is a bummer and if I allowed him to run my life, I’d never do anything great. There’s a saying I like, “The brain follows the body.” I’ve found that this holds true to most everything in life, especially working out. Even if the in-the-moment version of me is resisting doing something, if I can just get myself to start, the act of continuing is so much easier than starting. For example, washing my dishes, for whatever reason, is the bane of my existence. Although it only takes minutes, it feels like it is going to ruin my life when I have to do them. But, what I’ve learned is that the hard part is not actually doing the dishes, it’s doing the first dish. Once I’ve started, doing my dishes is never nearly as bad as I work it up to be. Strong me makes rules that in-the-moment me simply follows through on. Strong me decided that I don’t like having dirty dishes everywhere all the time and that I want to wash my dishes immediately after I eat. Decision made. When the in-the-moment version of me gets the urge to “soak” the dishes, too bad. That version of me does not have the authority to change the plans, simply to follow-through. Let’s look at a worst-case scenario. In-the-moment me doesn’t want to do the dishes. Because of my rules, I do them anyway. Afterwards, the strong version of me decides that I don’t like that rule and I change it. Even in the worst case, the worst that happens is I did my dishes a few times when I didn’t want to. Best case, I have created a habit that helps me live my life in the way that the strong version of me wants myself to.
Exercise is the exact same. There are going to be many days where the in-the-moment version of you is going to want to seek comfort rather than sticking to the exercise plans made by the strong version of you. Simply get good at following through, regardless of how you feel. The worst case scenario is you may workout a few times when you don’t want to, which isn’t all that bad. Just like washing dishes, once you get yourself to the gym and start warming-up, your workout will feel much more manageable…especially when you workout with a group and a coach. So, once you’ve selected your workout program, get good on following through on getting yourself to the gym and great things will happen.
Back to motivation - The game is to use motivation to make your plans and willpower to follow-through. Those who are consistent are not consistently motivated in the moment, but instead extremely good at following through on their plans. Over time, through experimenting with this, you’ll learn that although it feels like you will need willpower throughout the whole workout and you just don’t have enough, if you use all your willpower to just get yourself to the workout, the rest will fall into place.
Workout For Intent, Intensity, and Technique (F.I.I.T)
Once you can consistently get yourself to your workouts, intensity is probably the single biggest factor that can supercharge aesthetics, performance, and overall health and wellness, but we don’t want to make the all-to-common mistake of going all-in on one single modality as it leads to lopsided results. Long, low-intensity exercise, specifically the hardest training you can do while keeping blood lactate levels under 2mmol (called Lactate Zone 2 training), has incredible benefits to our mitochondria and our ability to recycle the lactate produced in high amounts during high-intensity efforts into fuel. We have seen the long, slow Lactate Zone 2 training have astonishing improvements not just to our endurance, but to our shorter high-intensity efforts. Additionally, if our focus is on intensity, it is a detriment to skills, functional movement pattern development, and mobility - all things absolutely crucial for using the right muscles in the right way to 1) increase performance potential, 2) build a balanced aesthetic, and 3) promote long-term tissue and joint health. Although I love the core of most of CrossFit’s principles, in my opinion, even though most CrossFit affiliated gyms talk about improving technique, they put way too much emphasis on testing and taking scores which overemphasizes intensity at the detriment of technique. Imagine a football team that never practiced, never went to the weight room, never stretched or did body work, and, instead, only competed and played football games. To us, it’s pretty obvious they would not only be a terrible team, but would likely have more injuries than the other teams too.
Instead of competing all the time and taking scores in every workout, we strongly believe that most workouts should be for intent, intensity, and technique, hence another opportunity for a cheesy acronym - F.I.I.T.
Intent - Identify the purpose of the workout and of the exercises and make that the priority. Rarely should the purpose be to test your abilities and instead your purpose should be to improve your abilities. The way you would perform reps for building speed/power and strength is different than muscle growth and muscle endurance, and are both very different than if you were doing them to get the best score possible in a workout. You should workout and perform reps to optimize the stimuli, not the score. You must leave your ego at the door as sometimes maintaining the intent of the workout or the intent of the exercise when things get hard and you are very fatigued will be more challenging than simply focusing on intensity and getting the work done. We use full ranges of motion and functional movement patterns for our exercises which creates a foundation of quality movement and skill that transfers into other exercises and sports. We do not “game” our technique for scores.
Intensity & Technique - Also called threshold training, you should strike a balance between these. You should work at the highest intensity possible with really good technique. When technique is almost perfect, you need to dial up the intensity: First by increasing the speed of the exercise, then by increasing the weight or by selecting a harder variation. If technique starts to break down in a small way, you should hold intensity steady and work to improve that technique issue. When technique breaks down too much, you need to dial the intensity back down to a level in which you can improve your technique before dialing it back up. Threshold training is at odds with taking scores. As a coach, if I want someone to work on an aspect of their technique which may cause them to slow down and I am going to write their time and weights used on a whiteboard for everyone to compare, they are going to optimize for the immediacy of that day’s whiteboard every time.
MovementLink’s Exercise Resources:
Foundations Course - Beginner or Advanced, learn the MovementLink Method’s way of developing exercise technique in a way that not only transfers proficiency from one exercise in the gym to another, but transfer proficiency to the real world and all sports. Instead of learning technique for thousands of potential exercises, learn a simple approach that will show you how your posture and how a squat, a push-up, and a jump and land combine in infinite ways to create any movement pattern you may find yourself using. This course will show you how to not only build your foundation using these simple exercises, but show you how to build on top of that foundation to boost everything else up.
Exercise Guides - Exercise demo videos and tip videos helping you dial in your proficiencies for the exercises we use in our workout programs.
Movement Tests- Self-test your range-of-motion in different positions to learn what areas to work on.
Mobility Guides - Find something holding you back or just looking for routine maintenance to make sure your body is feeling great? Organized by body part, our Mobility Guides will help your journey.
Weekly Workout Day Types for PATH Results - Explore our weekly workout template that allows us to get the right amount of stimuli to make progress each week in all areas of fitness: speed, power, functional strength, strength endurance, VO2 Max, endurance, and mobility.
Workout Programming Big Picture - If you are a DIY exerciser or simply interested in how we organize and create the MovementLink Workout Program, this is an in-depth look at the macro and the mico of our program.
The Gym’s Workouts This Week - See exactly what we are up to in the gym this week.
Additional Online Workout Programs - Full garage gym, limited equipment, and bodyweight only workout programs.
Recovery is Everything
Surprising to most, your workouts are only part of the equation when calculating the results you’re going to get from your workouts. By integrating healthy habits, you’ll maximize your body’s ability to recover and adapt from workouts, which in turn, boosts the results you’ll get in a compounded way. Most people will put almost all of their efforts towards fitness goals into the amount of exercise they do. Many of the stages of most people’s fitness journeys involve the misconception that more working out will bring more results. The reality is that there is a range of stress from working out for which our bodies can effectively recover and adapt. Too little stress and our body won’t be challenged enough to elicit any changes. But, too much stress and our body will not have adequate resources to recover in time to continue training effectively on upcoming days. The MovementLink Method involves managing this effective range where workouts are above a Minimal Effective Volume (MEV) and below a Maximal Recoverable Volume (MRV). But, still, the results you will get from your workouts are highly dependent on your body’s ability to recover, which basically comes down to your health and your lifestyle. This is just another of the many reasons the MovementLink Method is so health-centered. Let’s look at what working out is actually doing:
Workouts actually make you less fit! Think of it this way - if you tested your fitness right after a warm-up vs right after a hard workout, your performance right after your hard workout would be way worse. Your workout has actually made you less fit...temporarily. Most people’s view of workouts is a little misconstrued as they think that a certain workout will produce a certain amount of results. They think that if they can just do the right workout, the results they want will come. But, the results a specific workout can elicit is highly variable, even for days after the fact, and boosting the results you can get from each workout is very much in your control. Personally, I think this is amazing and should excite most people as it’s the primary thing that is holding people back and something that most people haven’t tried yet. But instead, most people don’t like this reality because they want the answer to be as simple as work out and get results, regardless of how they live outside of the gym. Working out will get you results, but if working out alone could get you the results you’re after, then I would have made this article 100% about working out. This may be the most important realization you can have -
A workout does not produce results, it produces fatigue and a stress stimulus. Your body reacts to that stress stimulus, recovers from it, and depending on the amount of stimulus and the recovery process, hopefully adapts maximally from it.
This is why professional athletes spend so much time trying to enhance their recovery. They understand that when their recovery is boosted, not only are they getting more results out of their prior efforts, but they are more rested and ready for their next workouts. They can use this increase in recovery to either add more training or add more intensity to their training. Improving your ability to recover is like earning compounding interest on investments, where the interest you earn starts itself earning interest and on and on. This seemingly small difference in performance due to enhanced recovery, workout after workout, compounds into enormous results compared to what you would have accomplished with the exact same workouts, but without boosted recovery.
If you want to know how exactly we dial in how much work is optimal in our workouts, you can check out our Workout Programming Big Picture, specifically the Stimulus - Recovery - Adaptation (SRA) Curve section.
Here’s where I think it gets really cool…the methods that we would use to maximally boost recovery are also the methods we would use to optimize health. Again, we don’t have to choose between being bad asses right now or being healthy and fit in the future! And, if we think about it, it makes perfect sense: A healthy body that is fueled properly and is running efficiently has the highest ability to rebuild itself and adapt from stress stimuli. The healthier we are, the more that health compounds into more health and performance.
So, what are the specific things we can do to boost our recovery, which at the same time boosts our health, helps us lose body fat, gain muscle, keep our joints and tissues happy, balances our hormones, and helps us live a long and happy life?
Sleep - Balances hormones and enhances recovery and brain power.
Sleep 8+ Hours a Night by Creating a Sleep Strategy, Pre-sleep Routine, and Understand how to Manage your Circadian Rhythm
Nutrition - The proper fuel, timed correctly, while reducing inflammation.
Consume all your daily calories in 2-3 meals all within a 6-8 hour Eating Window. For those looking to bias performance, you can expand your eating window up to 12 hours.
Consume 0.7g - 1g of protein per 1lb of ideal body weight each day.
Eat mostly real food: meat/fish/eggs, fruits and veggies, and nuts and seeds.
Cook With and Consume these Oils: Extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil…avoid the rest.
Extremely limit:
Processed Foods
Foods for which you are allergic or sensitive.
High-Sugar Foods, Added Sugar, and Sugar Substitutes
Alcohol - Did you know consuming just 1 alcoholic drink a week can increase your risk of cancer with statistical significance?
Time high carbohydrate meals well - Save any high carb meals for your first meal of your day and/or your first meal post-workout.
Update your diet and which supplements you take by talking with your doctor and analyzing biomarkers. Personally, I get my blood tested through InsideTracker
Understand that these are Myths:
You have to Count Calories or Macros to Lose or Maintain Weight - False.
To Lose Weight You’ll have to Feel Hungry All The Time - False.
Fats are Bad - False.
Carbohydrates are Bad - False.
Protein causes cancer - False
Meat is Bad - False
Eggs are Bad - False
We think your approach should evolve over time with you and the life you want to live and don’t think there’s one rigid solution that’s best for people. Even though we do not think the listed programs below are perfect, we think that if you are looking for something with more support than the information above, they can be a great start and have the benefit of having tons of resources and recipes to help you along your journey. Note: we are not associated with these companies and have our own unique approach to nutrition that is different from these when we are working with individuals and groups.
Daily, Non-Exercise Activity - Recovery/Health is boosted with blood flow and non-fatiguing muscle contractions which push waste fluid through your lymphatic system.
Break sedentary hours with movement - If you can get your heart rate up, even if it’s just for 5 seconds, you can increase blood flow and push lymphatic fluid in a way that can have a major impact on your health, recoverability, and results. You can also think of achieving this by accumulating 10,000 steps across your day. Where the 10k steps falls short however, is when it is accomplished in just a few giant chunks paired with a mostly sedentary day instead of breaking sedentary hours.
Take 10min Walks after meals - This is a threefer: 1) it improves blood flow and pushes lymphatic fluid, 2) it helps your body regulate blood sugar as it will help muscles take in glucose from your bloodstream lowering the amount of insulin your body needs to release to manage blood sugar levels, and 3) removes you from where you ate which can have a profound impact on curbing additional cravings and overeating.
Perform 10min of Mobility every day (morning if you workout in the PM and evening if you workout in the AM) - Your body needs some love and 10 minutes a day in addition to what we do in classes accumulates in a major way over time: 10 minutes x 7 days a week, 10 minutes warming up for each workout, and 5 minutes cooling down from each workout x 4+ days a week = 2+ hours of mobility work every week. This is easily enough time to improve recovery, develop full and functional ranges of motion across our whole body, and resolve nagging pains. You do not need multiple, heroic, hour-long yoga or mobility sessions…consistency always wins and a little bit here and there goes extremely far.
Understand the power of your breath. To some it may sound like woo-woo, but science has taken this out of woo-woo and shows that you can actually influence your physiology through different breathing patterns. Experiment with:
Exhaling twice as long as inhales or Box Breathing to calm down, enhance effectiveness of mobility work, and right after workouts to get out of fight or flight mode that comes from intense exercise and into rest/recovery mode. Note, the structure of our classes include mobility work in our cool-downs with a major reason being that mobility work and cool-downs can both benefit from the same breathing pattern.
Hyperventilating to rev up for intensity by taking 5-30 very big, quick inhales and exhales.
Double inhale(s) to dump carbon dioxide. Most people think that the only thing that matters is getting oxygen in, but getting carbon dioxide out is equally important.
Hyperventilating + breath holds to reset emotionally during the day. Lay down and perform 1-3 rounds of:
30 Hyperventilating Breaths
Exhale all of your air and hold your breath. For me, the first 10-15 seconds are the toughest, but then I settle in and over time I have been able to hold my breath like this for 3+ minutes.
When you can’t take it anymore, hold on just a little longer and then take a big breath in and hold that for as long as you can.
Recovery Gear - Yes, unfortunately for those of you who are fashion conscious, those compression tights and shirts you see some people wear actually can move the needle.
Compression tights/sleeves/socks actually work. You can wear them in workouts and/or while traveling or sitting at your computer to promote quality blood flow. I’m always reaching for my compression gear after I’ve really overreached on a workout like Murph, a really long run, or an event like a Spartan Race or a GORUCK challenge to get that extra little boost of recovery.
Wear Barefoot Shoes. They don’t have to be the toe finger shoes, but they should be flat on the bottom, have no heel to toe differential, and have a wide toe box. They will train you to use your body like it was intended as opposed to how traditional shoes resemble wearing a cast on your feet, weakening them, causing upstream issues. If you feel like you “need” arch support, super cushioning, or anything like that, that is a sign that you really just need to work on strengthening your feel. The irony is that the people who resist the most are the ones who need them the most. Take it slow, but start a transition plan.
This is the wrong section, but while we are on gear, what about exercise gear like weight belts, weightlifting shoes, running shoes, knee sleeves, wrist wraps, etc.? The MovementLink Method prescribes specificity of training. The reason these things are popular is that people wear them in their respective sports and that has carried over into gym culture. I do not do anything in the real world that uses this equipment and because I want my training to have maximal transfer to the life I want to live, I train without this junk. I want my core to be able to brace properly in the real world. I want my feet to act like feet, especially if I find myself on a beach or playing sand volleyball. If I am having joint pain, I want to find and fix the root cause.
Heat Exposure - We recommend appropriate doses of heat stress to elevate heat-shock proteins, increase growth hormone, increase catecholamines (hormones correlated with happiness), improve our immune system, cardiovascular endurance, and muscle mass, all while promoting fat loss. Heat exposure actually has a net cooling effect, so if we are participating in heat exposure, we like to do it in the evening, so our core body temperature will drop, which is needed for sleep.
Cold Exposure - We recommend appropriate doses of cold stress to also, ironically, release heat-shock proteins, help recover our central nervous system, build our mitochondria, increase catecholamines (hormones correlated with happiness), while also promoting fat loss. Cold exposure has a net heating effect on our core body temperature which is great for the AM. Cold exposure does have a slight impact on reducing the effects of strength and muscle building training, so we want to be strategic about when, relative to our workout types, we accumulate our cold exposure.
Next Step - Be Honest About Your Goals
When asked about goals, most people starting out will say things along the lines of:
Lose Weight - What we should really mean is losing body fat. Regardless of if we are male or female, the amount of muscle mass we have is one of the main predictors of longevity and quality of life. There are many strategies that will help people lose weight, but unfortunately most of the strategies will have people lose both body fat and muscle. There are many reasons the MovementLink Method’s workout framework includes strength and muscle building workouts with one of those reasons being that they are vital to maintaining muscle when trying to lose body fat.
Tone - When people say “toning”, I think they mean that they want to get stronger and lose weight, but they don’t want to get bulky. Again, we need to consider that we do not want to lose weight without regard to what we are losing, but instead we want to target losing body fat. Additionally, here’s a little known training fact: The way to gain strength without putting on a lot of muscle is to do a lot of small-rep sets, lifting very heavy weights (always limiting how much you’re lifting by what your technique can handle). This is very evident in the teenage divisions of Olympic-style weightlifting and powerlifting where most athletes are rail thin and still stronger than 99% of adults. Gaining muscle mass and gaining strength are usually correlated and have cross-over benefits, but are not the same thing. If you want to tone, contrary to what most people think, you would actually bias your workouts towards strength as opposed to the classic “toning” workouts that include muscle building strategies of lighter weights for a lot of reps.
Gain Muscle - Some do want to gain muscle and the unspoken desire here is to also drop body fat, so that the muscle shows better. For them, strength training is still important, but the more muscle they want to put on, the more they should bias their training towards muscle building which is best achieved through moderate weights (relatively lighter than the weights we would use in strength training) and by performing sets with high repetitions.
Improve Cardio - When most people say this I think it is because they think cardio is the best way to lose body fat and if their cardio is improving it will mean they are losing more body fat. There are a couple of issues here: 1) Cardio being the best way to lose body fat is a myth and 2) I have worked with a ton of people who have developed absolutely incredible cardio and still have high amounts of excess body fat. Like we discussed in detail above, exercise is just one piece of the puzzle and by only targeting your exercise I can promise your performance will improve dramatically from where you started, but a holistic approach is always needed.
Gain Strength - We hear this one as another one with a correlation effect - people correlate gaining strength with gaining muscle. Like we talked about, they are typically correlated, but if your real goal is to build muscle, then we would actually bias our training towards muscle building exercises and not strength exercises. Again, just to re-emphasis, we would still do strength exercises, just would be biased towards muscle building. So, we really need to know do you want to gain strength or do you want to gain muscle, or both? All three may have slightly different strategies that all fit within the MovementLink Method’s workout template. Unfortunately, sometimes, after people have been working out for a few years and not getting the body fat results they were originally after due to their unwillingness to target lifestyle factors, they give up and put all of their focus on developing strength because a higher body fat does not negatively impact most strength exercises. This is why, in our benchmark week, all of our strength tests are done relative to body weight, so that we don’t fall for this trap of giving up on our fat loss goals.
Improve Health - Like all of these goals, there are hidden meanings and although I do believe that people want to be healthier, I think it’s second to thinking that if they are healthier, they will have lost weight. The good news here is that they are correct, so even if their real motivation is hidden, this is a great one!
With these general goals, most people will spend little to no time actually goal setting and lean on 2 or 3 of the above “goals” in their mind. I think a large part of this is a fear of failure. If they don’t clearly define their goals, they don’t have to risk failure. But, it’s vital to really dig to the deepest levels of your goals, so that you can be sure that your efforts can be maximally efficient at getting the actual results you’re after. As you can see from above, almost all the listed goals come with extremely common misconceptions about the goal and how to achieve it and only through conversations and research about your real goals will you be able to get on the most effective path. Hopefully, the above will help your journey and, in addition, there are always coaches who can help you develop your plans.
Modern Goal Setting
The MovementLink Method involves a modern approach to goal setting and can fast-track you onto a highly productive path. Conversely, a more traditional goal setting approach does not ask the questions that would help you figure out beforehand whether or not their stated goals are even something that will actually benefit your life. A traditional approach assumes that the goal(s) you’ve chosen are actually things that would be good for your life and jumps straight to choosing and committing to strategies that will push you towards those desired outcomes. The missing steps however are determining 1) if the goals you chose are actually going to be meaningful to your life and 2) how the strategies you commit to will impact other areas of your life. A simple, but very common example is the thousands of people who set the goal of running a marathon. A marathon is a huge achievement and our society has put it up on a pedestal reflecting someone’s fitness. I think people understand that running a marathon is a difficult feat, but I also think people underestimate not just how challenging the marathon itself is, but how challenging and rough training for a marathon can be both mentally and on your body. As you get to know me and the MovementLink Method, you will know that I highly recommend taking on and embracing challenges, but I recommend being challenged in a way that pushes the life you want to live forward and not in random directions. Like the “Improve Cardio” goal listed above, I think most peoples’ want to run a marathon goals sprout out of a deeper desire to lose weight. They think cardio is the best way to do this and so they choose harder and harder cardio activities assuming as cardio improves, so too will their weight. The training time, the overuse injuries, and the confined fitness results a marathoner will achieve vs someone who cross-trains with additional lifestyle considerations makes a goal of a marathon lead some people down a path that not only doesn’t produce the actual results they are after, but negatively impacts many aspects of their life. I think that there are plenty of people who’s marathon goals are perfectly healthy, so my point here is not about trying to make you think a goal of running a marathon is inherently bad, but instead to show how the lack of consideration our goals that happens with traditional goal setting can be inefficient in leading us towards the actual life we want to live.
A modern approach to goal setting takes a holistic view of every area of your life to ensure that efforts you’re putting into one goal are not at odds with other parts of your life. When all of our efforts work together and point in the same direction, not only is the snowballing effect extreme, but motivation and purpose are bolstered. When life gets hard, instead of choosing to follow through with new, healthy habits, people tend to slip back towards seeking the ease of not exercising and the immediate comfort they find in fast foods, desserts, alcohol, weed, and other distractions. Most people unwittingly find themselves in a positive feedback loop where their comfort seeking behaviors actually lead to more feelings of depression and stress and as they continue to seek comfort and easy wins, the issues compound. Almost every habit that boosts health and happiness will require some in-the-moment effort that can start to feel like it’s just too much when we already feel at our limits.
Let’s say that through traditional methods of goal setting you have your goal of running a marathon and you end up in a super stressful period at work. How resilient is your marathon goal going to be? You’ve got to keep your marathon training up, but why? Because if you don’t, you won’t be able to run the marathon. But, why do you care? Hopefully, you can see that if you don’t have extremely powerful reasons for needing to run the marathon, your training consistency is now at risk.
“He who has a why, can bear almost any how.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
Instead, if we have a clear understanding on why our healthy habits are in place, then we will actually choose to keep them on top of our priority list when life gets hard. We’ll learn that it is actually the effort we put into these energy- and happiness-boosting habits that will help us succeed in-spite of how challenging life can feel sometimes. By bolstering your understanding of why you are choosing to implement certain habits in your life, you build a base on which you can lean on to mitigate how deep you fall and accelerate how fast you recover. Again, a marathon may end up on your goal list through our approach to goal setting and, if it does, your reasons will be solid and resilient.
For years I worked out in a way that produced goals within my narrow focus of improving my body composition and improving in the sport of CrossFit. But because the methods I chose only considered those two things, my social life, my career, exploring new interests, and my tissue and joint health actually got worse. I was getting the results I had defined for my body composition and within the sport of CrossFit, yet, because of how I was approaching those results, I was diminishing my enjoyment of life. It wasn’t until I was years down the road, struggling, that I was able to finally recognize it and change course. Our method of goal setting is designed to help you avoid those hard years and get on the right track sooner.
To deepen our understanding of our goals, the MovementLink Method uses a Being, Doing, Having approach. By taking the time to define who you want to be, what types of things you want to be doing, and what types of things you want to have in your life, you can begin to organize your efforts and behaviors to all point in the same direction…towards your dream life. When you understand the person you want to be and the life you want to live, adherence to your plan can bear any challenges. When all of your efforts point in the same direction, the snowball effect is incredible.
Build Your Perspective
There are many forces that work against most people, but the good news is, when you understand these, you can actually have them work for you! Forces to be aware of:
societal norms,
societal myths and misconceptions,
supernormal stimuli and evolutionary mismatches,
how we naturally resist change,
how we naturally seek comfort, even when it’s not best for us, and
how humans are incredibly bad at predicting how something in the future will feel.
Here’s the typical mistaken approach that most people make:
Even though most people want to change something about themselves and, if asked to compare themselves today from who they were 10 years ago, they would admit to major changes, but now they are going to resist changes to their lifestyle with all their might. Our healthcare system, social media, and marketing in the nutrition and fitness industries have created an American habit of searching for solutions in magic pills and quick fixes. Unfortunately, these do not exist…if they did, I’d sell them. According to the CDC, 86% of chronic disease is due to environmental and behavioral factors and only 14% is due to genetics, meaning much more of our health is in our control than we sometimes give credit to. People imagine that making the lifestyle changes discussed in this article will turn lives into a boring, dull, restricted existence. With this view and with the opinion of exercise alone being enough, their chance of success towards their goals is unfortunately slim. The reality is that exercise is probably the single most effective thing someone can add to improve their health and body composition, but, just like medicine, it is far from being powerful enough to make up for unhealthy lifestyle habits. This belief in a magic pill, exercise-only health approach is what leads people to attempt to travel a journey which produces a 95% failure rate.
To sum it up the typical journey, people start exercising. Holding their current lifestyle the same and by adding in exercise, very positive changes happen and they start getting some tangible results. But, because of the impact their lifestyle choices are having on their health and fitness, their potential results are extremely limited. As they bump up against their inevitable plateau caused by their lifestyle, because they have adopted the perspective of workouts get results instead of the MovementLink perspective of workouts creating a stimulus for adaptations which can be compounded by a healthy lifestyle, as their results slow, they attempt to push on by going harder and harder in the gym. As coaches, we can identify this as we see people add extra cardio, add extra core exercises, etc. But, this now creates a scenario where the increase in workout stimulus without the lifestyle support leads to deeper and deeper deficits in recovery. This is where nagging pains start to build up, people start to feel burn out, and quitting is highly likely. People don’t typically decide to quit. Life interrupts their workout routine and because their motivation has waned, they just don’t get back in the groove again. Only 5% of people who take this route end up eventually accepting the fact that to achieve and sustain the results they are after, they’ll need to live a healthy lifestyle which involves more than simply exercising. 95% quit or continue on, but never get the results they were originally after and only 5% get the results they are after by upgrading their perspective described in the next section.
Here’s the MovementLink Method and what you should do to avoid the years it takes to travel the typical fitness journey:
In addition to creating a consistent exercise habit that develops all around fitness, dip your toes into one or two things from each of the categories from above: sleep, nutrition, and non-exercise activity. Each thing you experiment with will move the needle. Develop the skill of following through on your strategies by just showing up to your habits, ingraining them into your life in a way that creates extreme results through consistent exposure over long periods of time. Through this, you’ll generate incredible progress, and fast, all while laying a foundation on which you can continue to build. Because you’ll start by only integrating parts of the MovementLink Method, there will still be a lot of potential on the table for which you can revisit if your progress stalls. By then, you’ll have experience with just how powerful these things can be and how strong and capable you really are. You’ll realize that life with them is nothing like you imagined it being before you embarked on the journey, and instead of life being terrible, boring, and restrictive (like you may be imagining it now), life is actually great, easy, and it’ll lead you to being the happiest you’ve ever been. Your strategies for sleep, nutrition, non-exercise activity along with your exercise program will put your progress years and years ahead of most people holding onto all of their unhealthy habits that they think they “can’t live without.” Not only that, your results will be dramatic and fast with the additional benefit of setting up as many good years in your lifespan as possible. You’ll continue living your life in a state of reflection, improvement, and therefore personal growth and really engage in the awesomeness of life.
The toughest part of the journey for most is just getting started. Most people get scared off from even trying based on fear. They are scared of failure and scared of what they imagine it's going to be like. Failure is not a permanent state, but a moment from which we can learn. It can be scary to think about making a change that disrupts the status quo of your current day-to-day life, but no change has to be forever. If you get down the road and don’t like it, going back is easy. Remember,
It is your current lifestyle that has led you to where you are today. If you want something to change, then things need to change.
Adding an exercise habit will do incredible things for your life. But, exercise alone is not enough to reach the goals you likely have in your mind right now.
Lifestyle changes are challenging to implement, but when done correctly, they become habit and you’ll hold on to your new, healthy lifestyle just as tightly as you are holding on to your current lifestyle now. Embrace it as an experiment and simply commit to experimenting with one or two things from each of the above areas for a reasonable amount of time. At the very least you will learn something useful you can lean on for the rest of your life. If you ultimately keep the habit or decide to ditch it, the experience will benefit you forever.
The MovementLink Method Checklist
Define the Life You Want to Live
Who do you want to be?
What things do you want to be doing in your life?
What things do you want to have?
Create Strategies and Habits that Push You in the Direction of the Life You Want to Live
Have an Exercise Plan
Have a Nutrition Plan
Have a Sleep Plan
Have a Non-exercise Activity Plan
Focus Primarily on the Process of Following Through with Your Plans.
Develop Ways to Test Your Progress Every Now and Then
Revisit 1-9, Make Updates, and Repeat