STRENGTH & MOVEMENT: A Winning Recipe
Why Strength and Movement are key elements of the AIM Method..
At AIM, we do not conform to the typical fitness industry regimes and we are passionate about education. We set meaningful intentions. We teach our TRIBE the WHY before showing them strategic steps to reach these intentions. We use conventional ways to train but apply unconventional ways to teach, empower, practice and move. We do this through the AIM METHOD which has strength and movement as the foundation of our training methods.
So what do strength and movement mean to AIM and why it is such a vital part of our method?… Read on 😊
Strength
Strength is and always will be an integral part of our method for a number of reasons:
Performance: Your size, speed, power, and endurance are all dictated by your strength, and more importantly your ability to perform everyday tasks.
Health: An improvement to health increases the function of your immune system, boosts your metabolism while lowering blood pressure, risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, stress, anxiety and so much more.
Body composition: – We all want to look good naked! How about prolonging aging or illness associated with ageing? Do you want to have a good quality of life in your golden years?! Building, maintaining, and sustaining muscle mass while keeping healthy levels of body fat is the key!
We are upfront about strength – our objective is not to be the strongest or the biggest. We do not claim or train to break records. Here at AIM, it is more important to be able to transfer or express the strength gains in a variety of ways rather than just saying I can lift X amount of weight.
This does not mean we do not challenge ourselves or lift heavy!! We use a number of creative bodyweight weight and strength work drills – imagine pulling or pushing yourself on gymnastic rings, doing handstands, levers, etc. We do not simply use a barbell (hands down the best strengthening tool for the lower body) to slap more weights on to see how much we can lift or to show how strong our clients may be. At AIM, we focus on how well we can move under or with an external load.
“We believe you have to implement strength when movement is the focus and you have to implement movement when strength is the focus – they are equally a priority for us”
Movement
Due to modern technology, environment, stress, and poor habits we have limited ourselves in being able to express ourselves through movement. It is a common occurrence for people to walk around very restricted or in pain. Doing simple tasks like hanging, squatting, or touching your toes are difficult and painful. Basic abilities like coordination, reaction, and balance are being diminished due to a lack of complex and skilled movements. People are so out of tune with themselves that something as instinctual as breathing is restricted causing a whole host of issues. We observe many in the community who are not happy with their quality of life right now – imagine what it would be like in 5,10, 20, 40 years’ time?!
For us, movement practice means drawing from different disciplines to build awareness and control over ourselves through pursuing attributes like Strength, Mobility, Rhythm, Coordination, Physical intelligence – to be able to learn, interact and play in diverse ways to move, organise and express ourselves and so much more!!
We often use elements from yoga, gymnastics, dance, weightlifting, martial arts, hand balancing, Pilates, climbing, typical strength and conditioning, parkour, acrobatics, and many more.
We are always working on elements like preparing the body, learning and refining techniques, playing with tempos/loads/breathwork, constantly improving mobility, and working on our weaknesses/imbalances all with longevity in mind. All of these elements then help us be strong but more importantly keep us injury-free while making it easy to transfer these gains and skills to other areas of our practice or activities of daily living.
Take away
People often ask us which is better or more important – strength or movement? Our answer is BOTH!!! Strength and movement are complimentary and come in various forms.
We believe you have to implement strength when movement is the focus and you have to implement movement when strength is the focus – they are equally a priority for us 😊
In summary, we use strength and movement together – with the intent of being aware, in control of our bodies, bulletproof our joints, create freedom, strengthen tissues and movement patterns so we can use these attributes to explore and express ourselves. This is important to us because ultimately, we want to challenge ourselves and have tons of FUN doing it while making sure we injury free and performing well as we age.
It’s all about quality of life through quality of movement.
Vik.
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