Master the Fundamentals Until Good Movement Becomes Your Default
Most people never think about the way they move until something hurts.
That is one of the central ideas behind the MoveWise ethos: instead of waiting for pain to force you to pay attention to movement, start paying attention before something goes wrong.
The more often we consciously practice good movement, the less conscious effort it eventually requires. Breathing, bracing, using the hips, and moving through fundamental patterns may initially require a great deal of thought.
But with enough repetition, those patterns can become increasingly reflexive and nearly automatic.
The goal is not to never think about how you move.
The goal is to practice good movement so often that it requires less conscious effort.
Think → Practice → Repeat → Reinforce → Reflex
Early on, something as basic as breathing and bracing might require an entire internal checklist:
Breathe down. Expand. Brace. Create tension. Now move.
But after hundreds or thousands of repetitions, you should not have to consciously run through that entire checklist every time you pick something up, squat down, train, or react to something unexpected.
That strategy becomes more ingrained.
And when the fundamentals require less conscious attention, you have more mental bandwidth available for everything else happening around you.
Jordan’s Chest Pass: Why the Basics Still Matter
Michael Jordan won six NBA championships, yet the greatest basketball player of all time still started practice with one of the most basic movements in basketball: the chest pass.
I don’t know for certain why, but I would imagine part of the reason was to make the movement so ingrained that he barely had to think about it.
That leaves more mental space for the things that matter in the moment—reading the defense, anticipating movement, planning where he is going next, and staying several steps ahead of the defenders.
That same principle applies to the way we move.
Breathing, bracing, activating the glutes, squatting, hinging, pushing, and pulling are not flashy.
They are the movements underneath the movements.
They are our version of the chest pass.
You don’t stop practicing the fundamentals because you have become advanced.
The fundamentals are what allow you to become advanced.
Movement 101
1. Breathing & Bracing
Creating stability before producing force.
Before the body produces force, it needs a stable foundation.
Breathing and bracing teach someone how to create pressure and tension through the trunk so the rest of the body has something solid to move from.
At first, this requires conscious thought.
With enough practice, the goal is for that strategy to become increasingly automatic during lifting, exercise, daily movement, and unexpected situations.
If you have ever said, “I was just putting on my socks and I threw out my back,” or “I was getting a spoon out of the dishwasher and I threw out my back,” odds are the socks or spoon weren’t the actual problem. You may have been moving without an effective breathing and bracing strategy for thousands of repeated movement cycles before that painful moment occurred.
There are three simple ways to start evaluating whether you are breathing and bracing effectively.
First: Have you ever even heard the term “breathing and bracing”?
If not, there is a good chance you have never consciously practiced it.
Second: Pay attention to how you breathe.
Take a deep breath.
Which direction did your stomach move?
Did it expand outward, or did it pull inward toward your spine?
Now breathe again.
Did your chest and shoulders rise significantly toward your ears?
If your stomach pulls inward while your chest and shoulders rise upward, you may not be using an effective breathing strategy for creating trunk stability.
Third: Look at the position of your rib cage.
People who rely heavily on upper-chest breathing may also demonstrate what is commonly referred to as rib flare, where the lower ribs sit prominently forward rather than remaining better stacked over the pelvis.
When we breathe and brace effectively, the goal is to create expansion around the trunk while maintaining better control of the relationship between the rib cage and pelvis.
Breathing is something you do thousands of times every day.
That is exactly why it is worth learning how to do it well.
Evaluate your breathing and learn how to breathe and brace here.
2. Glute Activation
Learning to extend through the hips instead of compensating through the low back.
Your glutes are some of the primary muscles responsible for hip extension—the movement that helps you stand up from a chair, climb stairs, run, jump, squat, hinge, and lift.
But what happens when your glutes aren’t doing their share of the work?
Your body still has to find a way to complete the movement.
So it compensates.
One common compensation is creating more extension through the low back instead of the hips. Your body gets the movement accomplished, but it may be getting that movement from the wrong place over and over again.
Do that enough times and your low back may eventually start hurting—even though, from your perspective, “nothing happened.”
There was no fall.
No accident.
No single rep where something suddenly went wrong.
Instead, it may have been hundreds or thousands of small repetitions of the same compensation gradually adding up.
Here’s a simple way to see whether your glutes may be part of the problem.
Do you have low-back pain when transitioning from sitting to standing?
If so, try this:
Sit down normally. Before standing up, intentionally squeeze your glutes, keep that tension as you begin to rise, and then stand.
Now ask yourself:
Did that change your pain?
Was it less intense?
Did it feel easier to stand?
Did the pain diminish significantly or disappear?
If consciously engaging your glutes changes the way the movement feels, it is likely you would benefit from glute activation and hip-extension drills. It isn’t a diagnosis—low-back pain can have many causes—but it gives you something worth paying attention to.
You are learning to recognize how you are moving before repeatedly reinforcing a compensation.
Glute activation isn’t about doing activation drills forever. The drill is simply practice. The goal is to teach your body what using the hips and glutes feels like until that strategy begins carrying over into standing, squatting, hinging, walking, running, lifting, and everyday life.
You consciously practice the pattern now so eventually you don’t have to think so hard about it.
Watch the Glute Activation Drill
Why Practice This Before You Hurt?
Life does not always give you time to prepare.
You may have to catch something that falls.
Pick up a child awkwardly.
Move furniture.
Step off a curb unexpectedly.
React during a sport.
Lift something heavier than expected.
Or suddenly find yourself in a position you did not plan for.
There may not be time to stop and think through a five-point biomechanics checklist.
That is why we practice when the stakes are low.
The more often you consciously reinforce good movement now, the more likely those strategies are to be available when you actually need them.
But most importantly:
If you don’t work on your wellness, you’ll be forced to work on your illness.
The MoveWise Ethos
Don’t wait until pain makes you pay attention to movement.
Pay attention now.
Practice the boring things.
Practice breathing.
Practice bracing.
Practice using your hips.
Practice the fundamental movement patterns until they become part of the way you naturally move.
Because when life eventually asks more of your body than you expected, you are probably not going to suddenly create a brand-new movement strategy in that moment.
You are going to rely on what you have practiced.
