Me, Movement & MOVA
If you’re reading this on your phone or laptop then you’re probably sitting down (if you’re doing it whilst walking then please put the phone away and wait until you’re in a safer place); a position that we’ve all become far too comfortable with since childhood. Now I may be wrong, but I’m going to assume you spend most of your day in this position, or at least a similar one. On your way to work, sitting at your desk, eating lunch in the canteen, getting the bus home, even riding your bike to and from where ever it is you are going. If I’m wrong about you then you are the minority, which you should be happy about, and I apologise. For the rest of you though I’m also going to assume you have some sort of pain in your body. It may be lower back, it may be hips, for many of you it will be knee…and for the unlucky ones among you it’s all of those and more! This was me, (almost) exactly 2 years ago; Christmas day 2015 was the day I decided to change the way I trained and performed self care forever. I was in agony. The whole day. I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t enjoy the food, the whole day just sucked because my back felt like it was on fire every time I went to take a seat. I was meant to be a health and fitness professional and something was clearly very wrong, so I went about changing it.
I didn’t even sit down as much as the average person. I was an extremely active child growing up, I played a ton of sport all through school and university and then became a personal trainer where my job involved me being on my feet all day. However, I was still in pain, constantly. I never felt comfortable and whilst lifting weights was making me bigger and stronger my body never felt like it was quite functioning how it should be. That was until, after that fateful day, I decided to learn how to move. Movement was something I’d never really thought much about before, all I wanted to do was lift weights and get ripped but my body was begging for a change. So I hired myself an FRC trainer and from that day never looked back. For those of you that don’t know, FRC stands for Functional Range Conditioning and is a system designed to develop mobility, joint strength and body control. After just a few weeks of practicing this, religiously, my body felt brand new and I decided I had to get qualified to pass this message on to other people who I knew were feeling the same as my old self. So I did just that and over the next 2 years went on to take multiple movement courses to help compliment what I’d learned whilst training FRC. At the time of writing I’ve just finished the Level 1 Mentorship for the Institute of Motion, yet another course I couldn’t recommend more highly to anyone who wants to optimise their health through movement. I continue to practice movement every day and I can, hand on heart, honestly say I have never felt better. I wake up and live my life pain free, I’m never injured and I recover from more intense sessions like never before.
My movement, body awareness and body control was once my undoubted weakness but has now become my burning passion. We live in a world populated by people becoming plagued with extremely avoidable diseases, much of which is due to lack of movement and awareness of how to look after ourselves. We don’t use our bodies how they are supposed to be used and my goal is to spread this message and make a contribution in bringing human movement back into the lives of as many people as I can. That’s why I’ve started MOVA with my wonderful friend Katy and we hope we can inspire people to get up, move and not live their whole life like I lived my Christmas Day 2015.
