Feel like your workouts need a tune up? You’re not alone. Everyone benefits from changes in routine. In this article, you’ll learn our Wavemakers method of moving in your feel-good range to get your best results. I’ll share how simple changes in your approach to movement will get you moving better and being your best every day.
Move In Your Feel-Good Range
The joints and muscles are part of a whole-body system. When one part is not performing as it should, everything else must work harder. My approach to exercise targets the whole-body connecting all the parts so they work together as a team by learning to move in your feel-good range.
Moving in your feel-good range is a way to exercise in the results zone. Start by exploring your range of motion to find out how every direction, angle, and height of reach feels different. What do you find out? Is one side more flexible or stronger than the other? Perhaps one exercise feels natural while another feels awkward? Maybe balance is better on one leg.
Moving and questioning yourself and your body in this way will help you learn how to listen for what your body needs. Then you can use that information to stretch what needs stretching and strengthen what needs strengthening to get the whole body working together.
Feeling the Move Makes the Difference
Your body instinctively knows what it needs; it senses what it likes and doesn’t like with every movement. Are you paying attention? We are taught that specific exercises, performed at a particular intensity, for a set length of time, are the answer. These are the same principles athletes use to perform their best, physical therapists use to help people recover after surgery, and fitness trainers use to reach specific goals. But there is more to getting results than just following these guidelines.
The other part of the results equation is paying attention to the body’s response to each movement and learning how to effectively monitor, measure, and modify the move for the result you want. Feeling the move makes the difference.
Water Is the Ultimate Training Tool
Because workouts in a pool involve buoyancy, you’ll be able to move through a bigger range of motion – which FEELS REALLY GOOD. Maybe you’ve felt the joy of moving in water before, but what if results could be even better? What if you could start to feel changes take place? Stronger knees, improved balance, suddenly you’re not getting as tired walking up the stairs.
Imagine your body functioning like never before, you’ll have strength and power like never before; your range of movement will mean grocery shopping is a different experience, time with the grandkids is more fun, and your golf game is better than ever.
The water offers a unique place to stretch and strengthen the whole body while also targeting specific muscles and joints. The feel of water touching every cell of the skin provides a sensory signal to your muscles with every movement. Moving front, back, right, left, or circling around the body against resistance provides a heightened level of awareness as the water pushes back. Feeling the move makes the difference.
Keep Practicing
Capturing all these different feelings helps you to learn about your strong points; it also shows your areas of weakness. For example, if you’re feeling pain in your knees, it means the move needs an adjustment; a gentle feel-good stretch in the shoulder is your muscles saying YES this is the mobility I need; an increase in your breathing effort – now that’s the way to improve heart health.
When it comes to finding your feel-good range, every day and every exercise is different. As your coach, I’m here to help you learn what to listen for with instructional cues that encourage exploring movement and explaining how it might feel. My 6-7 Formula helps guide you in improving your best range of motion by ensuring that you are always moving in all natural directions. It provides you with the understanding that you can improve ease of movement with changes such as slowing down, making the move smaller, changing the angle, and adjusting the foot position.
And the results?
Improved Body Awareness Leads to Better Results
With practice, your internal sensors acquire an improved sensitivity, and awareness of what to do becomes easier to feel. The water is a great place to learn this, providing you with physical support and feedback. What you practice in your workouts is instinctively stored; you have now taught the body how to move naturally, how to coordinate all body parts, and how to engage every muscle to work together to move better. When you move into your daily activities—grocery shopping, golfing, biking, or simply doing dishes—your vault of foundational moves will already be there for you.
Moving in your feel-good range is so much more than just a fun way to exercise; it’s a personal navigation system for your exercise program for life. Soon you’re no longer guessing, “am I doing this exercise right?” Instead, you’ll find yourself embracing our exercise mantra: move in your feel-good range to get your best results.
The time to make your future brighter is now and Wavemakers is your exercise program for life. Will you join us?
