Movement as Freedom · The Practice

Getting fitter, stronger and more flexible are worthy goals. Done well, your physical training can leave you feeling more free and with more options than you previously had. Done badly, it can quietly narrow you to the things you train most regularly.

Movement is one of the fundamental forces that shapes us.

Every time we move, we give our body and nervous system information about what they need to be capable of. Our nervous system is constantly paying attention to what we do, and allocating limited resources to adapt to the demands we place upon ourselves, and letting go of abilities we no longer use.

Your movement choices day by day actively build what your body can do.

Use it, lose it, and explore it

We all understand the basic idea of use it or lose it.

If you stop using a particular physical capacity, your body gradually becomes less invested in maintaining it. Strength declines when we stop loading ourselves. Balance becomes less familiar when we stop challenging it. Certain ranges of movement become less accessible when we rarely visit them.

So if we spend most of our lives walking on flat surfaces, sitting in chairs, looking forward, reaching within a narrow range and performing the same familiar movements, our bodies become very good at that environment.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this. The body is doing exactly what it is designed to do: adapt to the demands we place upon it. The problem is that modern life asks surprisingly little of us physically. Even the recreational activities we love can narrow the range of movement we experience and maintain, which paradoxically limits us in those very activities.

So at Totum, we deliberately create opportunities to ask for more. We squat. We hang. We crawl. We balance. We rotate. We climb. We carry. We invert. We move slowly and quickly. We explore unfamiliar positions. We play with different ways of doing things.

Not because it is essential to be able to perform every movement well. But because we want to keep more possibilities available to us.

Freedom is having options

We think of freedom as having a large range of possible actions in any given situation, and the ability to adapt when something new is required.

Imagine two people.

Person A can walk, sit, stand, run a little and perform a few familiar exercises. They may be reasonably healthy, but their movement repertoire is relatively narrow, and their strength is only available within limited ranges of motion.

Person B can also do all of those things, but can additionally squat deeply, hang from a bar, get up from the floor in several different ways, crawl, balance, rotate, jump and land, move through unfamiliar positions and improvise when the situation changes.

The second person doesn’t simply have “better mobility.”

They have more options and the capacity to use them as needed. If you have more ways to get down to the floor, more ways to get back up, more ways to reach, carry, climb, balance, turn, accelerate and decelerate, you have a larger movement vocabulary. You have more solutions available when circumstances change and more options to move better in any activity you choose.

That is a form of physical freedom.

Mobility is only part of the story

This is why we think “mobility” can sometimes be too narrow a concept.

Imagine that you have enough physical range to squat deeply. That tells us something about your physical capacity.

But can you control that position?

Can you balance there?

Can you get into it without thinking?

Can you use it while carrying something?

Can you transition from a squat into another movement?

Can you find your way into it on an uneven surface?

Can you spontaneously use it when you need it?

These are questions of what the squat allows you to do.

Build, control, use

At Totum, we think about any movement as having three parts. Each needs developing for the movement to become something you can truly access, not just train. At any point, one may be the limiter, and knowing which one can change how you practise.

Build. Strength and mobility. What can your tissues tolerate and produce? Range, tolerance, force. This is the physical foundation. It is the slowest to develop, but when built well, it lasts with a little maintenance.

Control. Can you organise what you have built, and then do it well? This one can be thought to have two components.

Coordination is getting the movement to happen at all: your nervous system perceiving the position, sequencing the parts, holding the whole thing together while it keeps changing underneath you.

Refinement is getting it to happen without waste. The same movement, performed with less effort, and therefore with enough attention spare to do something else at the same time.

Use. Does this possibility actually exist in your repertoire of actions? Do you reach for it, outside the room where you practise it?

That last one is the most easily overlooked. You might technically be able to squat, but if you never squat, never trust the position and never think of it as an available solution, the movement has limited practical value.

When a movement has become genuinely available like that, we call it access.

Capacity is what is possible.
Access is what is available.

Our goal is not simply to accumulate capacities. It is to make more of them accessible.

Take these three parts and use them as both a guide and a practice. When you encounter a movement that is challenging, the questions can tell you which part may be missing. The “how to practice” helps you figure out where your practice is now and what comes next.

	A question to guide	How to practice
Build	Do I have the physical capacity?	Build range, tolerance, strength
Control · coordination	Can I organise it?	Repeat until it is reliable
Control · refinement	Can I do it well, with something to spare?	Reduce waste, become aware
Use	Do I actually use it?	Integrate, vary, play, live in it

The practical version of this is in The Practitioner’s Guide, section 7.

Repetition builds capacity. Variation builds possibility.

This is why we don’t only focus on repeating the same exercise.

Imagine practising a squat. You could simply perform:

Squat → stand → squat → stand.

That’s useful. Repetition allows you to develop strength, coordination and confidence.

But then we can start exploring.

Squat with the arms overhead.

Squat with the arms behind you.

Squat while reaching.

Squat and rotate.

Squat onto one leg.

Squat and transition into a crawl.

Squat while holding something.

Squat slowly.

Squat quickly.

Find a completely different way to get from standing to the floor.

Now the squat is no longer just an exercise. It becomes a movement possibility that can be expressed in different contexts. Your nervous system has to perceive, adapt, coordinate and solve. And this is one reason we value variation. I don’t want you to become really good at one version of movement while losing the ability to adapt outside it.

We want to develop capacity plus adaptability.

The body shapes the mind

Movement doesn’t stop at the neck. The brain is not separate from the body it controls.

Movement changes the sensory information arriving at the brain, challenges prediction and coordination, and exposes us to different physical and emotional states.

Think about the difference between moving through a familiar exercise and trying something you’ve never done before. The unfamiliar movement requires you to pay attention. You experiment, you fail, you adjust, you try again. Eventually you find a solution you didn’t have before.

That is not just physical practice. It is practice in exploration and adaptation.

This is one reason I value play and improvisation alongside strength and skill.

A movement that has one correct answer teaches you to reproduce a solution. A movement with many possible answers asks you to find solutions.

That distinction connects movement with curiosity, creativity, confidence and adaptability.

Movement gives us experiences of ourselves.

You try something difficult and discover that you can do it. You fall and discover that falling isn’t catastrophic. You become tired and need to find a way to regulate yourself. You encounter a movement you don’t understand and gradually figure it out. You find a position that once felt inaccessible and realise that it is now available.

These experiences can change the way we relate to challenge.

Instead of:

“I can’t do this.”

we begin to experience:

“I don’t know how to do this yet.”

The body becomes a place where we can repeatedly experience uncertainty followed by adaptation.

Over time, through attentive experience across a variety of situations, you write the user manual to your own body. It is written gradually through observation and action, one movement at a time. Nobody can write it for you, because the information only arrives through your own experience.

Move for life

A surgeon trained with me for a couple of years. He was very strong, regularly worked out, and wanted to handstand. When he arrived he could not raise his arms fully over his head. His shoulder blades and upper back barely moved, and his lats were tight enough that the position was simply not available to him in any form.

So he built it: mobility through the shoulders and upper back, strength through the full range as it opened, and time upside down with support so that his understanding of balance could develop while his mobility caught up. He was patient about it and enjoyed unravelling his limitations over time. Eventually he got the handstand.

But that was not the part that changed him most or excited him the most. Three or four months in he noticed his arms were less tired in surgery. He could operate for longer, he operated better, and he felt better afterwards. Longer operating sessions were never the goal. But it is what capacity does once you have it: it shows up in places you were not training for.

Movement is a practice of freedom

This is why Totum is built around movement as the practice of building physical freedom.

We want strength that gives you options, and mobility you can actually use. Coordination that adapts when the ground changes. Fitness that supports the rest of your life rather than competing with it. Awareness that helps you grow through health and injury. Skill, and alongside it the ability to improvise when the situation changes.

And we want movement to remain playful enough that you continue exploring rather than simply maintaining a routine.

The body is constantly changing in response to the life we give it. So movement is an opportunity to participate in that process deliberately.

Move in one way, and you develop the capacity for that way of moving. Move in many ways, and you give your body more reasons to maintain a broader range of possibilities. And when you explore unfamiliar ways of moving, you practise something even more valuable: the ability to adapt.

That is what freedom means to us. Not being able to do everything. But having more possible actions available, and the capacity to discover new ones when the world asks something different of you.

Next in this series: The Biology of Movement, why movement has such a profound effect on us.

If you would rather start with what this looks like in a class, read The Practitioner’s Guide.