Thank you for checking out my first blog post! This will address the movement patterns we use as humans.
There is a total of 8 and they are as follows: Vertical Push, Vertical Pull, Horizontal push, Horizontal pull, Squat, Hinge, Unilateral (one side at a time) and transitional (jumps, carries, crawl). Some will include the “lunge” as a pattern.
- Vertical Push – variations include: landmine press, Military Press, Seated Shoulder press
- Vertical Pull – variations include: Pull ups, chins up, lat pull down
- Horizontal Push – variations include: Push ups, bench press, incline press
- Horizontal Pull – Variations include: seated row, dumb bell Row, Meadows Row
- Squat – Variations include: Goblet Squat, TRX Squat, Front Squat, Barbell Back Squat
- Hinge – Variations include: Hip Thrust, Deadlift, Romanian Deadliifts (RDLS)
- Unilateral – variations include: step ups, one arm row, one arm press, Single Leg Squat
- Transitional – included with transitional would be things as crawling, pushing sled, pulling sled, jumping and landing.
Hope this help anyone looking to understand how we move and which progressions should be used to help train your clients. Everyone starts somewhere and somewhere above in one of the variations is where you started at. Look to progress and regress your clients with those human movements.
One of the reasons I decided to write about this is because these movements are where you are going to get your results.
Theses movements are how you functionally train. Working out in the gym/home does not need to take a long time, my suggestion would be about an hour. There are people out there who think you need to spend all day at the gym to get your results with a bunch of different exercises.
I’m writing to help you – that’s not the case. If you pick any where from 6-9 exercises for your work out, that would be more that sufficient. People get lots when they have 15 plus exercises in their program.
Keep it simple and easy for yourself. You have 8 human movements, you just need 6-9 of them with a decent amount of reps and sets (usually about 3-5 sets) each depending on the persons goal. The creativity within that realm of 8 Human movements and 6-8 exercises is endless.
Have fun with it, be safe and train hard.
