We are living in crazy times. About 10 years ago, we were making our first purchases on Amazon, some of us were buying our first iPhones, Facebook was a baby, and Instagram didn't even exist. Today I make most of my material purchases on Amazon (and that stuff often arrives within 24 hours), I use an iPhone X, I check my FB at least 2-3 times/day and read at least a half dozen articles while there, and I try to make at least 2-3 Instagram posts in order to help grow the awareness of the SQUARE 1 System.

Life is physically easy (and promotes softness) for most of us. And because of that, a lot of us are becoming fatter, weaker, less mobile, and physically more fragile.

Yet, if you go on social media and start looking up exercise and movement type posts you will find many examples regarding the extreme edge of performance and aesthetics. We see more than a few examples of guys deadlifting 700, 800, and even some who can pull 900+ lbs! Impressive!! We see 80 year old ladies squatting 2x their own body weight. Yes!! We see parkour athletes nailing nearly super-human gymnastics skills 6 stories above the earth. All of this is very impressive, entertaining, and inspiring. This is all wonderful. I say keep going you awesome freaks of physical prowess!! You folks are the inspirational carrots dangling in front of the rest of us.

I don't have official stats on this but I'd bet a lot of money that most American adult males can't do more than 5-10 legit pushups and at least half can't perform a single chin-up. I'm also guessing that most American adult females can't perform 1 legit pushup and are feel various degrees of guilt or embarrassment that they aren't do any "cardio". Most people just straight up hate exercise and count the lettuce on their Big Mac as a vegetable serving. Most are also quite unhappy with their current physical status (or they ought to be). ~25-30% of Americans are considered totally inactive. ~40% of American adults are obese (not just plain old fat). Obese is defined as grossly fat!! That's a 17.6% increase in the past 10 years. These are scary numbers. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 71.8% of Americans over the age of 20 are considered overweight or obese. If you are sitting in a coffee shop right now and you are not obese or overweight, look to your right and look to your left. Odds are that the 2 people sitting nearest you are overweight. THIS IS REALLY BAD!!!!! 

So while the physical prowess freaks serve as amazing sources of inspiration for a lot of us, where can the overweight and obese masses start? Most of society seems to be making health decisions using the following question: "I don't want to die so what's the least I can do to not be such a total physical wreck that death is imminent." We're talking super low standards here folks.

I believe that we need to raise the standard and maybe it starts with asking yourself the following question: "What's the least that I need to do to not be a burden?" Is there a minimal standard that we can shoot for to halt and reverse where our society is headed physically? We're talking about the Pareto principle (80/20 rule - 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes; the law of the vital few) applied to health and wellness for the masses.

So what do we really NEED to do to not die?

Survival standards. How long can we go without...

1. Air: ~3 min with out oxygen. 
2. Water: ~3 days.
3. Sleep: ~3 days until you’re basically useless.
4. Movement: A few weeks to months. Watch what happens when a limb is immobilized in a cast (major atrophy).
5. Food: Months. Most of us could go without food for months, our bodies just feeding on its own fat & muscle stores, before we die.

Optimal standards. What would be ideal to become super lean, strong, mobile, and pain-free?

1. Air: live 1000 miles away from a major city.
2. Water: drink fresh water directly from the mountain spring in your back yard.
3. Sleep: go to the bed when the sun goes down and rise when the sun comes up.
4. Movement: move to the woods and built, heat, and maintain your own home and hunt, fish, and raise your own food supply.
5. Food: move to the woods and built, heat, and maintain your own home and hunt, fish, and raise your own food supply.

Obviously, an optimal plan as I laid it out, isn't a practical or enticing possibility for most of us. 

So what is a practical and realistic plan that would dramatically improve the health and wellness of a large % of us?

The Barebones Project (based on the law of the vital few)...

1. Air: Are you a smoker? Stop. Do you live next to a facility that incinerates old tires? Move. 
2. Water: Get between .4 - .8 ounces of water per day per pound of your body weight. If you weigh 200lbs, get 80-160 ounces/day.  
3. Sleep: Get at least 7 hours/night. 
4. Movement: Lift multiple sets of heavy-for-you loads 2/week. Focus on developing strength (most important fitness component) in the rudimentary patterns of “get up” and “go”. "GET UP" movements include squats, deadlifts, and romanian deadlifts. "GO" movements include sled push, sled pull, and carrying objects. 80/20 out of this! 80% of the exercises you select should closely resemble these rudimentary patterns.
5. Food: Pareto's law here too folks. Aim for 80%+ of your calories coming from real food (meat, eggs, veggies, fruit, nuts). Limit/avoid most grains as too much of it has been altered in a lab (not real food).

This plan provides a very practical, reasonable, and useful program that most could actually do (if they so choose). And while I'm no expert in air quality, water quality, sleep, or food/nutrition, this plan is pretty darned solid. My specific area of expertise happens to be in the area of neuromechanics. Neuromechanics is an area that attempts to combine the efforts of muscles, sensory organs, pattern generators in the brain, and the central nervous system itself to explain movement. So for the remainder of this blogpost, I will focus on using a barebones approach to movement.

#4 Barebones Movement.

•Bi- Monthly: Get SQUARE’d up occasionally (most of our clients do well with 3-6 yearly SQUARE 1 sessions. The SQUARE 1 System pinpoints blocked sensorimotor signals that drive our need to compensate with how we move. Compensation, left unchecked, can create all sorts of downstream problems - inflammation, pain, tissue degradation, weakness, poor posture... Receiving regular SQUARE 1 sessions is the best way to keep compensation and its' downstream aftermath in check. SQUARE 1 keeps you in the movement game.

•Monthly: Physically test yourself. For various reasons, it's important to test yourself. It gives us an objective measuring stick for how we are doing. It can show us when we are doing well and when we are doing poorly. It can be a motivation tool. Example ideas: How much weight can you trap bar deadlift for 3 reps, 5 reps, 10 reos? How far can you farmers carry half your body weight in each hand? How many chin ups can you do? If your progress has stalled, you'll find out and be able to make appropriate adjustments. Once you can perform them, I personally love chin-ups (or pull-ups) as a test because it is a nice combo test of strength and leanness. If I get weak, my chin-ups go down. If I get fatter, my chin-ups go down.

•Weekly: 2 days/week - strength focused routine on our 2 rudimentary patterns. 
Sample program #1:
Mondays and Fridays / Wednesday and Saturdays
*Trap bar deadlifts. 2-5 heavy sets (4-6 reps with your 6-8 reps load).
Rest 2:00-4:00 between sets.
*Farmers carries. 2-5 sets (30 seconds with your 35-40 sec load).
Rest 2:00-4:00 between sets.

Sample program #2:
Mondays and Fridays / Wednesdays and Saturdays
*Squats. 2-5 heavy sets (4-6 reps with your 6-8 reps load).
Rest 2:00-4:00 between sets.
*Sled push. 2-5 sets (20-40 yards with a load that you could only push 50 yards).
Rest 1:00-2:00 between sets.

Sample program #3:
Program #1 routine on day #1
Program #2 routine on day #2

•Daily (or more): Convert "passive stretching" to "active stretching". Use extreme ROM isometric contractions into every single joint position/action every day and more.

Passive stretching (where you use external or internal force to assist your joints to move beyond ranges of motion of which you can actively achieve without assistance) is sort of "junk food" for your brain. While there is a growing body of research that seems to be finding that passive stretching decreases muscular performance (lower power outputs) and increases injury risk, I have other reasons to "hate" on passive stretching.

At SQUARE 1, we use proprio-neuro response muscle testing to detect very subtle changes in our clients' nervous systems. It was an integral tool for developing SQUARE 1 and it is an integral tool for running the SQUARE 1 sessions. Over the years, I've tested the neuro responses to well over 1000 different stimuli. One very interesting finding is this... I have never found neuro-response muscle testing to detect passive stretching as a "safe" stimulus. Hence, "junk food" for the brain. Conversely, I have never found  neuro-response muscle testing to detect active stretching (using only your own strength and control of your agonist muscles to move into extreme ranges of motion) as an "unsafe" stimulus. Hence, "health food" for the brain.

As a recap for being physically healthier (less burdensome) using a Barebones approach...
1. Drink more water.
2. Get more sleep.
3. Eat real food.
4. Get strong by focusing on "GET UP" and "GO" movements.
5. Stop passive stretching. Start active stretching.
6. Find and hire yourself a SQUARE 1 pro and use them as your body mechanic.

YOU CAN DO THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Components of athleticism (agility, speed, reaction time, skill, etc.) are built upon the components of fitness (muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, body composition, etc.) which are built upon a foundation of movement. The components of movement are motor control (tissue signaling, joint actions), motor patterns, and motor learning. The outcomes of the movement system are fitness and athleticism components. In the following video, we lay out this big picture.

Now that you have a general lay of the land as it pertains to movement, fitness, and athleticism components and outcomes, let's get into the specifics regarding joint actions. Joint actions, not muscles as commonly believed, are the testable building blocks of motor patterns. Check out this next video.

Movement is complicated and the number of patterns that our body is capable of producing is extraordinary. But there are 2 basic human movement patterns that we all share. The movement expert knows and has an intimate understanding of these 2 common denominator patterns and their constituent joint action pieces. In this next video, that is precisely what we begin to break down. Please check it out!

"Corrective", stretching, foam-rolling, and "activation" drills and exercises are all hot. But are they consistently effective? Is there a better way? My experience, and that of so many others that I know in the industry, tells me that the status quo in the rehab, fitness, and performance industry is in need of a major overhaul when it comes to improving movement quality. Make sure you check out all 4 videos in this series. If you've never experienced SQUARE 1 first-hand, this series would be a great way to begin getting acquainted. Hope you enjoy these!

Hey everybody - please check out Dr. Peter Glidden's interview that he did with me last week. What a great opportunity to share a thorough examination of SQUARE 1. Hopefully this will be useful to those who need the help that our approach can provide.