The Training Stimulus

This is a mistake I’ve made a lot in the past, and I see it in many programs out there.

In an attempt to push our limits or feel like we’ve worked hard, we do a lot in a single session, but then we’re sore for days and aren’t ready to repeat a movement until maybe next week.

When it comes to developing movement qualities, like mobility, stability and motor control, skill is the primary consideration.

If you were playing darts, you wouldn’t throw so many darts that you couldn’t hold up your arm anymore and think that that was the best way to get good.

You would throw a good amount of darts, focusing on the quality and accuracy of each throw, then look to do that as many times as possible in weeks, months, and years.

Just because we are working on gym-based movements, the nervous system doesn’t suddenly work in a different way.

By focusing on quality reps and frequency, movement patterns improve much faster than taking a train-to-failure approach.

This is taken from the programming part of our recent workshop, where we run through how to prescribe movement mechanics to get the best results for our clients.

Waitlist for the next workshop is open now: link in bio.

This makes the complex simple.

At The Training Stimulus we have a tool: the Spectrum of Specificity

It makes life very easy once we’ve done an assessment.

If we know what their body needs, and what they’re training for, exercise selection becomes a doddle.

We get the stimulus their body needs, then make it relevant to their training goal, ensuring that it actually works.

It can be that simple.

What movement patterns do you find hardest to change? Comment below and I’d love to brainstorm with you

These are the ones that get me.

Nich is a qualified Osteo, but he had this nagging feeling when someone was in front of him: he knew something was wrong, but he didn’t have the tools to pinpoint what, and do something about it.

A few weeks into the mentorship, he had one of these cases and thought: why not? He tried out his freshly learned assessment skills, identified some work ons.

3 correctives and two weeks later: pain-free squatting. Boom.

I find professionals like Nich are always great people with the best intentions, just with incomplete toolboxes.

There’s no framework to systematically assess and correct movement in the standard qualifications.

Giving these “Eureka” moments through the mentorship, and the confidence to tackle these tricky clients is what it’s all about for me.

Unlocking the feeling that you have the ability to decode what’s going on in someone’s body, and how to connect the right exercises to fix it.

If this resonates with you, and you’re ready for your Eureka moment, drop me a DM and we’ll see how movement mechanics might help you and your clients.

Nich Arnold 🇬🇧
Osteopath

This is my favourite hinge drill.

It blocks one of the most common compensation patterns.

Many people won’t shift their hips back in space, leaning into quads and loading lower back instead of the glutes.

This drill takes that option away.

The body has no option but to learn a better hinge pattern, and your glutes will tell you it’s working, trust me.

Check out the full explainer in our Skool community, DM Skool for access.

Not many people spot these.

There are a lot of sneaky side lunges out there, that on first glance look great, but when we look closer, show some hidden compensations.

Escaping the frontal plane with a step forward, or toe turned out.

Leaning away or hiking the pelvis to avoid the adductor length that we want to train.

Subtle details like this are the clues that help us unpick our clients’ movement strategies, which are often the thing causing pain or holding back performance.

Are there any weird compensation patterns you’d like to decode? I’d love to help in the comments below

Possibly the highest arches I’ve seen.

Here I’m pulling out all the pronation cues, which are all valid, but still didn’t nail it for Mike.

Check previous reel for what we went with for him and actually saw those feet flatten.

The point of this reel is: tools in the toolbox are great, but we need to recognise when they’re not the best fit for the job.

It’s very rare that these won’t get someone’s foot pronating, and with enough time I’m sure we could have got them going for Mike too.

BUT, just like you could undo a screw with a spanner if you really wanted to, pulling out the right screwdriver is the fastest approach.

So as professionals, we not only want lots of tools available, but also the discernment to know which one to pull out when.

This compensation pattern is very often missed.

It’s a great example of when we need to zoom out to understand why the body is doing what it’s doing.

When we understand that the medial hip on one side pairs with the lateral hip on the other side, a lot of things start to make sense.

As we go through our assessment protocol, we can find these hidden compensations where one side is providing a missing movement quality for the other.

So next time somebody has a one-sided issue, make sure you double-check the uninjured side to see if it might be silently causing it.

Waitlist for the next workshop is open now, link in bio.