Bamboo Legs: grow legs that bend but don't break

Building a lower body that is physically prepared for movement, now and for the long term, is a major focus at Totum. As generalist movers, we want legs that are super strong but not stiff. Legs that can bend but do not break. Legs like bamboo: sturdy, yet still able to sway in the wind.

We want our legs to be a solid, grounded connection to the earth, and finely tuned shock absorbers that adapt instantly and deftly to changing conditions. We want supple feet and strong ankles that conform to the ground below. Knees that fully bend, with strength and flexibility in the supporting muscles. Strong, mobile hips that move freely. And balance, lightness, and coordination with the rest of the body.

These things are all possible with the right approach and the right mindset.

A whole-body solution

The ability to adapt and solve real-life movement situations, with an array of possible solutions to choose from, is the definition of a movement generalist. No single part gets overused. All parts work together. Many options are available for any situation, and there is an ability to adapt around injury or imposed limitation. This is the power of diversity in action.

There is immense strength in diversity. It is evident everywhere, from ecological systems to social communities to the individual body: from our diet, to our microbiome, to our movement nutrition. Just as our bodies would not perform optimally forever on a diet of only broccoli (despite its high nutritional value), there is no single exercise that gives you healthy shoulders or more flexible, adaptable ankles.

We are nature’s greatest movement generalists, and as such our body craves a huge diversity of movement, regularly, to feel good. When you mostly move in certain ways, you become limited and stiff in others. This is a common issue in professional athletes. Moving the same way repeatedly is an injury waiting to happen. If your spine only bends in two places, and you use those two bends to solve every situation you face, your options are minimal, and eventually those two joints give out: back pain, a bulging disc, or worse.

Diversity, diversity, diversity.

The legs

When it comes to the lower body and growing bamboo legs that are strong and adaptable, each part serves a function. When each part performs as well as it can on its own, the whole works better together. This is why at Totum we train individual parts of the body to function at their best, and we integrate through whole-body movement, skills, tasks, play, and improvisation.

The improvisation and play in our practice, where we get to experiment and test possible solutions to a large variety of situations, is a hugely potent learning ground. Working with a partner, we play with our available options, integrate different movements, and discover new possibilities, consciously and subconsciously. Play, or tinkering, is the evolutionary solution to discovering and rewiring movement options in a low-stakes environment, ready for when the stakes are higher. Without play, the body does not know these options even exist. Just as we can train strength, we can train fluidity, balance, and adaptability.

To build bamboo legs we train individual parts and skills to build capacity, and then play to integrate, test, learn, have fun, and develop our improvisational range and the strength in all the hard-to-reach nooks and crannies.

The parts

Our bodies are incredible. While modern anatomy books have helpfully placed names on individual parts, in truth there is far more continuity and connection than those names suggest. Muscle transitions to ligament and tendon and back again. Flows of muscle tissue, not individual muscles, work intimately together to move our structure. Connective tissue binds everything together to hold us up. That said, we can appreciate the role each area plays, and we can look to improve its function to affect the whole.

Below I highlight some areas of the lower body we focus on in training, and how improvement in one area connects to improvements in others. Not to draw discrete, absolute causes and effects, but to illustrate why a generalist approach, integrating the whole while restoring each part to optimal function, is essential.

Feet

Our feet connect us to the ground and are involved in every aspect of standing, which makes them among the most important parts of achieving bamboo legs. At Totum we train barefoot. Over time this builds arch support, intrinsic strength, flexibility, and balance. Does your foot ever cramp during a handstand? Things are connected.

The big toe

A lack of flexibility in the big toe has a huge impact on the rest of the body. We use the big toe to absorb force and create power with every stride in walking, jumping, and running. If your big toe is inflexible, you compensate somewhere else, thousands of times a day. A tight big toe shortens the calves with each stride, leading to tight calves, a painful achilles, and altered gait. It can increase the time the heel is off the ground with each step, which reduces hip extension, which tightens the hip flexors that pull on your lower back. Every time you bring your torso upright while walking, running, or jumping, stress lands on the lower back, leading eventually to pain and injury. Fix your big toe.

Ankles

Our ankles are like the swivelling levellers on the legs of furniture. As you walk they should adjust and adapt to the surface, giving you a stable, reasonably level base to organise the rest of your structure on. We use the feet and ankles to balance. When the ankles do not move, the next joint up the chain has to help out. The knees are next, and asking them to do the ankles’ job is not fair: it contributes to knee pain, degeneration, and injury. Get your feet out of restrictive foot coffins (shoes) and get your ankles strong and flexible, ASAP. We work on ankles, one way or another, every day.

Tibialis

This muscle dorsiflexes the foot and is a key decelerator for walking, running, and hiking. When the tibialis is weak, the knee has to work harder, wearing out cartilage and making movement uncomfortable. Get a strong tibialis, feel good, and protect your knees.

Knees

We want knees that fully bend, with a patella tendon that tracks nicely. Our squats, split squats, and single-leg work build capacity. Our low-gait locomotion work builds resilience, adaptability, and conditioning for the knees beautifully. Do not push through knee pain; always modify to train smart.

Quads and hamstrings

The big ones in terms of size. We want quads and hamstrings that are flexible, elastic, strong, and balanced: balanced in relation to each other, and balanced left to right. Single-leg work is critical here. Imbalances between sides create stresses that lead to inefficiency and injury. These are big muscles, and tightness in them pulls on the knees and the pelvis and lower back, causing postural issues and low mobility. We often have tight quads from physical activity combined with long periods of sitting. Tight quads with weak hamstrings is an ACL injury waiting to happen. We focus on the vastus medialis oblique (VMO) via step-ups, split squats, and sissy squats to support the knee and build proper squat mechanics through a full range of motion. Search out your imbalances and eliminate them through single-leg work. Enjoy feeling balanced, strong, and connected in your lower body, in locomotion and in every sport and activity you love.

Hip flexors

These get tight and weak. We need them long and strong. Tight hip flexors pull on the lower back and cause pain. Proper hip extension is needed for good walking, running, and hiking mechanics. Tight hip flexors also prevent full spinal extension (back bending), an important spinal function we want to practise, and a fun part of soft acrobatics and locomotion.

Adductors

The adductors are a group of five muscles on the inside of the legs that stabilise the hips and draw the legs toward the centre of the body. If they are tight, they can cause knee, hip, and back pain (surprise, surprise). If one side is tighter than the other, it makes it hard to keep the pelvis level and disrupts normal walking mechanics.

Hips: internal and external rotation

Hips that internally and externally rotate can move in whatever direction you need them to. Hip rotation is hip freedom. When the hips are mobile and strong, we feel strong and free.

Do not over- or under-isolate

If we think of the body as a long list of individual parts that each need to be stretched and strengthened, it can feel overwhelming, and we risk focusing too narrowly and becoming detached from our body. We may even start to chase aesthetics over function. On the other hand, never seeking out weaknesses or imbalances leaves limitations in some areas that have flow-on effects on the whole.

We have body parts, but we are not simply a collection of them.

We have an organic, organised body that lets us explore, and sometimes even solve, life’s puzzles: physical, mental, emotional, social, and more. Our physical preparation should reflect this. At Totum we use an organised yet organic approach to restore our joints and muscles, then layer and integrate impressive strength and skills on top, with the overall goal of moving exceptionally well.

Growing bamboo legs is an important piece of the puzzle.

Come train with us.