Move Your Body

I love movement. I love moving, I love practicing movement. I love learning about movement. I love helping others move. I love inspiring others to move. I love teaching others about movement. I love being a forever student to movement. I love playing with movement.

Whether you are a beginner or a veteran to movement I was thinking about movement today and a few thoughts came to mind. 

Movement should

- Bring joy
- Prevent injury
- Make us better (increase performance, help us feel better)
- Keep us playing
- Give us freedom

 

Movement is a fundamental part of life and it should be a foundational habit of our lives. I mean we were made to move. We are bipedal beings, we have two legs meant for walking, we have arms for climbing. We have joints that are made for mobility. Our muscles are made to shorten and lengthen. This is the way God formed us and designed us. We aren’t made to just sit around. I mean Gosh, god even calls us to GO. We should move our bodies in some form daily. Movement also makes us feel better physically, mentally, and emotionally. God also says that Physical training is of some value. 

Moving should also bring us joy. I think of movement as something I get to do. I think of movement as something that I look forward to and I enjoy. Especially if we look at movement as having a purpose and a greater why behind our movement.

When it comes to movement in our lives I offer up a few suggestions to develop yours:

• Enjoy your movement. 
• Find a movement that you love, that lights you up! Exercise can seem like a chore if it is something you don’t enjoy, so I implore you to find something that you enjoy and look forward to. 
• There is no wrong way to move! 
• There is no wrong way to exercise. It all depends on you, what you enjoy, what your wants, needs, goals, values, priorities are. 
• I personally love CrossFit because for me it is a sport that challenges me. I also love CrossFit for the community and the competition. I like to look at goals and challenges dead in the eye and attack them. Yes, sometimes they might scare me but they also make me grow when I accomplish something I didn’t think I could do. CrossFit gets me out of my comfort zone, challenges me, and also pushes me. I go to compete against myself, to see what I am capable of but don’t get me wrong, because CrossFit has a leaderboard and all workouts have some type of scoring or metric involved, it motivates me to do well. I have recently been running more and started using Strava. I admittedly enjoy the challenge on Strava to run faster than previous times or even run faster in a segment in my neighborhood than someone else who ran it. A sense of competition motivates me and keeps me going. A sense of challenge motivates me and keeps me going. If we have no goals, we aren’t aiming for anything so 
• Reduce your risk of injury. 
• While there is no wrong way to move, something important is safety! Keep your body in safe positions, optimal positions, and prevent injury. Whatever movement you choose to partake in, keep your health longevity in mind. As a coach, I want you to be able to move your body in a way that you enjoy for the rest of your life. Not only do I train for performance, but I also train for health, and that means for the long term. If we want to be healthy for the rest of our lives, we need to take careful care of our bodies now, which means our movement should not only increase our performance but also reduce our risk for injury. That will mean balancing training with regeneration and other methods of recovery. That will mean that we first take care of existing injuries and also address mobility issues, stability issues, and asymmetries. 
• Practice and Play
• While I love movement and I have been moving for quite a few years, I am not perfect. I will forever be a student of movement. Not all of my movements are perfect but I am practicing, I am trying and I am enjoying it. Sometimes I like to think of it as playing. I like to play with movement. Sometimes I will just pick a few exercises and experiment with the workout to see how it goes and make adjustments as I go. Don’t let perfectionism hold you back or fear of failure keep you standing still. Practice and play. Practicing is better than no movement at all. 
• Goals
• Without a goal, we cannot score. Goals are important because without worthy goals we can get depressed. We are not put on this earth to be a bump on a log so when we aren’t pursuing or going after a goal life loses its luster. Identify some goals and get after them. Even during Shelter In Place, it is good to have goals to keep us going. Lately, for me, that has been running. It is my goal to work on my speed and endurance. I have been testing my mile paces in my weight vest. I have been testing my speed for 2-mile runs. Give yourself a goal of running a mile in X time and see how you stack up. Set a goal to see how fast you can run two miles and see how to stack up. Get Strava and perhaps try to get yourself a PR for a loop in your neighborhood. Get Strava and try to be QOM on a segment. Maye just set a goal to your feet on the ground for 2 miles no matter how slow or fast, or to move for just 20 mins, regardless of distance or pace. 
• Utilize fitness for freedom
• Movement is something we get to do that affords us the opportunity and ability to go out and do what we want when we want to do it. If you want to go for a hike with friends, play soccer with your kids, by regularly moving and exercising it gives you the freedom and fitness to be able to do what you want when you want to do it without limitations. If we aren't healthy or fit, sometimes our lives are limited to what we can do. We want you to have big lives, to thrive across all areas, to feel and function well in all aspects of your lives. 

We want you to be healthy across all areas of your life and physical health is one of them. We take care of our physical health by moving our bodies daily in ways that help us feel and function better. When we take care of ourselves and honor the bodies God has given us it brings him glory!

-Charissa

Charissa is a Performance Coach, Certified Nutrition Coach, Certified Fitness Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer, and holds a B.S. in Kinesiology. She also holds an M.A. in Higher Education Administration. She is a follower of Jesus, passionate about faith, fitness, nutrition, a lifestyle of total health, meditating, learning and growing!