Working in Movement

The typical gym or health club is full of people performing endurance or resistance-based exercises. And often you'll find a fitness trainer along side the sweating hordes, instructing them in energetic classes or urging them on in personal training sessions. These trainers mostly focus on building strength, endurance and (sometimes) flexibility. Body awareness is rarely, if ever, mentioned.

Now at least one professional trainer is touting the benefits of awareness in the gym. In The Feldenkrais Method: New Frontiers in Body Awareness, James Wilson recounts his introduction to the Feldenkrais Method and the benefits he sees for applying it to training routines.

So what can you do in the gym today that will help you make a better connection with your body? Two things come to mind that will probably make a huge difference for most exercisers, especially men. While women can also use body awareness lessons, they tend to naturally be a little more in tune with their bodies and their abilities, making men the most susceptible to zombie routines in gyms around the world. By cutting back on the weight being used and not training to failure, you can allow yourself to truly concentrate, and observe how your body is actually performing the exercise; what muscles are being used, what muscles are contracting isometrically to help stabilize the body. Unless you are a competitive powerlifter or Olympic-style weightlifter, you are not being judged on how much weight you can throw around in the gym, and training to failure is a bad idea for several reasons that go beyond the scope of this article. So do not think that doing this will set your training back in the slightest. Quite the opposite, doing this will lead to better gains and a more enjoyable gym experience down the road. Remember that you should strive to work smarter, not harder. That is the essence of better body intelligence.

David Gorman, proprietor of LearningMethods, gives his take on awareness and fitness in On Fitness.