The MovementLink Method
Functional Performance + Body Composition + Tissue & Joint Health + Overall Health and Wellness
A Complete & Free Guide to Thrive
Written by Kyle Ligon - MovementLink.FIT Head Coach
Why is figuring out what actually works such a tough process?!?!
Our fitness, nutrition, and health industries are oversaturated with conflicting, click-bait information. This happens not just because of misaligned profit incentives, but because tons of the strategies that make their way to you actually do work…well kind of. Most methods that gain momentum are effective, but only when scrutinized against very specific, narrow-minded outcomes. Unfortunately, most methods fall apart when taking a holistic view within the context of how we actually live our lives. For example, if we are only reviewing a juice cleanses’ success on if you will lose weight while on one, then it is likely to look like it’s effective that perspective. But, if we take into account long-term fat loss, what type of weight is being lost (is it just fat or is it also muscles, bone, and mass from organs), and all the other factors that are important for our life, the results of juice cleanses fall well short of what we would define as successful.
“In theory, practice and theory are identical. In practice, they are different.”
The challenge of figuring out what will actually works for you, in the real world, is rooted in this issue that there are too many options with too little clarity the true scope of our goals. In our opinion, fat loss is just one of many things that we should be considering. This guide will help you rise above the noise and streamline your action plan, ensuring that the strategies you adopt not only are highly effective, but have the full context of the life you want to live at the top of your mind. The MovementLink Method will help you pull together strategies that work synergistically and when adopted consistently, compound on top of each other rather than stepping on each others’ toes.
The MovementLink Methods span all aspects of lifestyle, fitness, nutrition, sleep, daily activity, goal setting, mindsets, etc. Although the actual habits that will affect meaningful change are quicker and simpler to integrate then most assume, gaining the perspective required to implement them consistently, over the course of your life, takes longer. With so much to cover, we have chosen to break down the MovementLink method into 8 distinct stages, ordered to reflect what we feel like is the most effective and sustainable self-improvement journey that leverages what people already think they know. We start with building a quality exercise habit as our foundation, which allows you to be proactive in solidifying the biggest bang-for-your-buck strategies first, while then building the full perspective in parallel.
Because each person starts at a different point in their journey, each will progress through each stage at different paces. In addition to the tons Free MovementLink content linked along the way, each stage has a book club pick. Each book pick has had an outsized influence on our thinking and can add a ton of value to each stage of your journey. In addition to reading the associated MovementLink content, reading each book can be a great way to continue to push your perspective forward and time when you’re ready to move on and engage the next stage. When you have read all the material and the recommended book and have integrated the appropriate aspects of each stage, you have solidified the stage and it’s time to graduate to the next.
Before we jump into Stage 1, let’s get started with a little more context…
MovementLink Method - A Modern Exercise Philosophy
We believe that the solutions to the challenges we face in life will ultimately come from within ourselves and that although we should seek expert guidance, there is no magic pill or anyone out there that is going to do the vast majority of the work for us. The MovementLink Method is for those willing to accept the reality that if we want our life to improve, we must improve.
Ultimately, we have limited control over external circumstances, the exact outcomes from our efforts, and how others will view and treat us. But, by defining who we want ourselves to be, the life we want to have, and what types of things we want to be doing, we can define the types of things we need to be doing to give us the best chance of our desired outcomes. This allows us to shift our focus away from what is not completely in our control towards what is in our control. Ironically, shifting the focus away from the results and into putting the right amounts of quality effort into the processes that are most likely to produce the best results, not only will end up producing the best results, but will be accompanied by a better emotional experience. The journey is layed out with the end in mind, but the vast majority of the focus is on the traversing the path, not the end of the journey.
A major goal of The MovementLink Method is to make sure that as we help everyday people thrive in their lives, it comes with a perspective on self-improvement that aims to be universal and timeless. We realistically understand that at least some of the methods we have selected today will be obsolete at some point in the future. When new research, technology, equipment, supplements, medicine, etc. enter the market, the foundation of your journey should not be uprooted. Instead, your framework and understanding of your journey should account for these inevitabilities, so you can continue to upgrade and adapt the methods you choose to use along with the world around you. This perspective will not only add structure to your journey today, but will help integrate the most up-to-date strategies and weed out solutions that don’t holistically fit with the life you want to have in the future.
All self-improvement roads lead to the interconnectedness our mind with our physical bodies. Improving and maintaining our physical health not only increases our energy levels, improves our immune system, and expands the physical options we have in our life, but it also improves productivity, brain function, and the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and addiction. Additionally, adopting, integrating, and sustaining healthy habits is without much substance if we are also not simultaneously prioritizing mental growth. Neither the mind or the body can thrive without the other.
For millions of years, our bodies have evolved while exposed to a range of physical, environmental, and mental stimuli and stressors and, in response, our bodies now use these as triggers to activate and deactivate genetic pathways, release hormones, and motivate us in ways that promoted survival, recovery, and adaptation for the vast majority of our existence. Throughout our journey, these abilities we have developed have allowed us to endure diverse climates, environments, and situations. We have developed brains capable of innovations that give us more control over how we experience these things, but these innovations have come with an ironic catch - the more technology we develop, the less our body understands the world in which we live. Consciously we can understand our reality, but our bodily processes react to our world like cavemen who got unfrozen in the future.
Technology advancements have created a large mismatch between the amounts and types of stimuli and stressors in our modern lifestyles and what our brains and bodies are evolutionarily used to (Supernormal Stimuli). Our body evolved to use a wide variety of different, stimuli and stressors that organically occurred in our pre-technology lives as triggers, not just for knowing what to adapt to, but to set in motion normal bodily processes. For example, before light bulbs, high amounts of blue light exposure only came from the sun. Our body developed many end-of-the-day processes that get triggered as the amount of blue light decreases, like when the sun sets. These days however, because of light bulbs, we can continue to be exposed to high amounts of blue light long after sunset. Some strategies that have worked for us for practically all of our existence are being foiled.
As technology rapidly advances and integrates more seamlessly into our lives, it raises a critical question: what stimuli and stressors are currently essential for us to thrive in the life we want to live? As we inevitably embrace technology that changes our lifestyle faster than our bodies and minds can evolve, it is imperative that we additionally implement supplemental strategies into our lifestyle designed to fill that gap. For example, a formal exercise program, at its core, is just a supplement for the physical activity that is no longer organically occuring in our lives.
Because self-improvement is a lifelong pursuit, we embrace the reality that, especially with technology, the world is going to change around us. Things we believe are true today may be proven wrong in the future. Strategies that work today, may become obsolete or ineffective in the future. How we perceive ourselves and who we want ourselves to be should evolve over time. We must stay open-minded and relentlessly question and upgrade our thinking to ensure our body is getting the stimuli needed to thrive.
The MovementLink Method:
Define who we want to be. The more time we spend acting like that person, the more we become that person and the more we thrive.
Based on the most current information, define what we believe are the optimal stimuli and efforts required to support being that person.
Identify which of these stimuli and efforts are under-occuring, optimally-occuring, and over-occuring organically in our lifestyle.
Strategize, plan, and commit to habits and processes that optimize our exposure to what is needed to grow into the person we want to be and live the life we want to live.
Review results, processes, and upgrade our lifestyle.
We want you the get results as fast as possible - this is how you do it:
Stage 1 - Cross-Train 4-6 Days a Week
Exercise is probably the single most significant thing you can do to improve your health, but what counts as exercise? What if you are only doing yoga? What if you are only running 3 times a week? Not all exercise is created equal, so step 1 is making sure that your exercise program actually delivers everything you need to thrive.
Ultimately, there are many exercise programs that could fit the MovementLink Method. The key is that your weekly exercise habits across your lifespan provide adequate exposure to all aspects of fitness. This must be prioritized before you specialize in any interests. For example, running a marathon, cycling, playing pickleball, and developing yoga poses may be an interest of yours, but we would not prioritize any of these, until after we are getting adequate exposure to all aspects of fitness.
The great news is that the amount of time it takes to get adequate weekly exposure to each fitness area is minimal, leaving a ton of time for your interests, hobbies, and living life.
For examples of holistic cross-training, check out:
Stage 1 Book Club
The Comfort Crisis - Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self - Michael Easter
Stage 2 - Adopt These Habits that Provide the Biggest Bang for your Buck
We’ll dig deeper into the importance of lifestyle in later stages, but for now, there are a few things that are not only incredibly effective at supporting your workouts, but are reasonably easy to start implementing right away:
Eat 0.7-1g of Protein per pound of body weight that you want to weigh each day.
Extremely limit Added Sugars and Alcohol
Prioritize 8+ hours of Sleep each night.
Break sedentary hours with movement, aka Workout Snacks.
Perform 10min of Mobility every day (morning if you workout in the PM and evening if you workout in the AM)
Cross-train 4-6 days a week, do these things, and your stage 2 results will be profound.
Stage 2 Book Club
Atomic Habits - An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones - James Clear
Stage 3 - Boost Your Workouts
There is are minimal and maximal amounts of working out that our body can effectively recover and adapt from, so, if you are already cross-training 4-6 days a week, boosting your workouts does not come from adding workouts, but instead getting more from what you are already doing by adding more intent, intensity, and technique development into your workouts.
This is usually the step where people start to get off course, by trying to push through plateaus by adding more working out.
Don’t add more, simply participate in your program in a more effective way. When working out, do it For Intent, Intensity, and Technique (FIIT) which balances 1) the intended purpose and stimuli of the workout and exercises, 2) while pushing yourself at the most challenging intensity your technique can handle, 3) while constantly trying to improve your techniques in a way that transfers into the life you want to live.
Build your technique, resolve nagging pains -
What Exercises Should be Included in Your Workout Program - Should You Perform Heavy Barbell Snatches?
Stage 3 Book Club
Stage 4 - Stay on Track by Tracking the Right Things
It’s about here when people can get sidetracked by tracking the wrong things. Don’t get distracted! Stay focused on prioritize the non-negotiable goals and everything will fall into place.
Track, 1-3 times a year, the things that directly matter:
functional performance,
body composition via DEXA scan or similar,
functional mobility, and
health via blood work.
Put more focus on tracking your strategies and efforts rather than only focusing on results. We’ll go much deeper into these areas later, but here are the broad categories:
Exercise - How many days a week did you exercise and what types of exercise stimuli were you exposed to?
Sleep - How well did you sleep and how well did you follow your pre-sleep routine?
Nutrition - How well did you follow your nutrition plan?
Non-exercise Activity - Did you perform 10 minutes of mobility and did break sedentary hours each day?
Stage 4 Book Club
Stage 5 - Learn What a Healthy Lifestyle Look Like
With your exercise habits in place and focused correctly, we accept that exercise alone is not enough and now need to build our perspective on what a healthy lifestyle looks like. Hopefully, in this stage you will choose to adopt some things we cover, but stage 5 is more about about learning than it is about integrate everything you learn.
If you are going to read one article in this series, it’s this one: The Specifics of Healthy Lifestyle
Stage 5 Book Club
Outlive - The Science & Art of Longevity - Peter Attia, MD with Bill Gifford
Stage 6 - Define the Life You Want to Live
When paired with cross-training, the lifestyle strategies and habits you choose to integrate will ultimately determine the results you get. Even though ideally this stage would actually be stage 1, most people are not ready for it until now…it’s time to do it right. So what are your goals, actually? Before you just skip past this assuming you have a decent understanding of your goals, especially if you said your goals are to lose weight, improve your cardio, strength, and flexibility, then let’s really spend some quality time here. The more dedicated effort here, the more you’ll solidify your commitment to a healthy lifestyle.
Once we see that our fitness goals are highly related to general life goals, we can actually start getting benefits that compound across all areas of our life.
Stage 6 Book Club
Stage 7 - Implement Your Strategies
With our goals defined, hopefully we have a boosted sense of how taking our functional performance, body composition, tissue and joint health, and overall health and wellness will expand our life. Knowing that everything listed in The Specifics of Healthy Lifestyle from Stage 5 will move the needle, it’s time to start experimenting. Choose strategies, build your plan, and commit to giving it a try.
Our mindset can be an extreme boost or a hindrance…let’s make sure it’s a boost:
Stage 7 Book Club
Stage 8 - Review, Adapt, Re-Commit
Now you’re rolling. Remember, like we learned in Stage 4, stay focused on what matters. The things we may track daily or weekly are only things that are in our full control, our efforts. Every now and then, typically 3-6 months works well, come up for air and get a sense of if your efforts are leading you in a direction you like. If not, make adjustments to your plan, and follow-through.
Stage 8 Book Club
Grit - The Power of Passion and Perseverance - Angela Duckworth
A Final Note:
If you have worked through each of the 8 stages above, you have no doubt made extraordinary progress and I am dying to hear about it. The more of us who are proactive with our personal growth, the easier it is for the next person and the next. We are a growing team I am grateful you are part of it with me. We are never finished trying to improve, but I hope you feel extremely proud of your journey so far and I’d love to hear stories about your journey!
Wishing you the best!
-Kyle Ligon
Contact me here