A head kick is the whole body or it is nothing. Foot off the floor, hip whips, core fires, shin arrives at your temple from a different elevation than you insured. That is a movement, friend, not a quad you isolated on the leg curl machine. My hands are purely decorative and I freely admit it, but even my decorations know that strength you cannot deliver through a movement is just a nice photo.
Do you actually train muscles, not movements?
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Most people do not have a movement problem. They have a weak-link problem. I am not talking about elite athletes, that's a minority and they're not on the internet reading me anyway. I am talking about ordinary people who want a body that can handle hard things without something dumb failing first. If your arms, shoulders, or grip give out before the job is done, I do not care what your squat and deadlift numbers look like. The body tells the truth fast.
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A head kick is the whole body or it is nothing. Foot off the floor, hip whips, core fires, shin arrives at your temple from a different elevation than you insured. That is a movement, friend, not a quad you isolated on the leg curl machine. My hands are p
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Most people do not have a movement problem. They have a weak-link problem. I am not talking about elite athletes, that's a minority and they're not on the internet reading me anyway. I am talking about ordinary people who want a body that can handle hard things without something dumb failing first. If your arms, shoulders, or grip give out before the job is done, I do not care what your squat and deadlift numbers look like. The body tells the truth fast.
I learned that in the least masculine way possible, after 2 years of thinking I was awesome since my squat was ~350lbs and my deadlift ~400lbs. I weight 170lbs. The numbers were good enough to make me think I knew what I was doing. Then real tasks exposed the lie. Holding my girlfriend... in a private setting. My biceps failed, my anterior delts.... my abs!. Never felt a thing in my legs, nor in my back. But my "mirror muscles" gave up! All the carryover lectures, the functional training and it turns out the mirror muscles are my weak link!
That triggered me to reflect and call out that the whole "train movements, not muscles" is bullshit. It sounds smart, and sounds athletic and it gives you an excuse to feel better about your time invested in the gym even if your body doesn't show. Sure, those other guys look great, but "I'm functional baby, I can do shit they can't". Mostly it sounds like a guy trying to sound above bodybuilding. What it usually hides is a refusal to ask the only question that matters: what are you really training for? Do you even know what you intend to do with those squats (which don't even transfer to running) or deadlidts (when do you really have to lift something so heavy that conveniently has such a barbell-like grip for you to hold?).
If you play a sport, identify what you need and train all those muscles with a variety of exercises to hit them everywhere. If you train to look good, then "train all the muscles with a variety of exercises to hi them everywhere". And if you don't know what you're doing then "train all the muscles with a variety of exercises to hi them everywhere". Stop fooling yourself thinking that it's somehow useful to squat hundreds of pounds, or to dead-lift them. I did that for years, never needed to squat anything. Stopped doing it, started doing some lighter single leg work and my sprints exploded. Started doing biceps curls and suddenly I could hold my girlfriend... Sure, do some dead-lifts every now and then, for fun mostly.
Ironically, bodybuilding really works at... bodybuilding. It has good principles, tons of exercises, lots of tribal knowledge... And it works. Sure, we've all seen memes of bloated bodybuilders on growth hormone, but that's the drugs, not the sport. You don't need to take them, but you can use the methods they use for exercising. Find what is underdeveloped. Train it directly until it stops failing first, then train the next thing. That is often more functional than the stuff sold as functional because at least it is honest about weakness, instead of triggering dopamine every time you add 2 lbs to the same 3 exercises. Lateral raises, curls, triceps work, rear-delts, forearms, calf work, leg curls, quad isolation, yes they're boring, but they're so fucking good to hit the weak spots.
Bodybuilding is simple and realistic. Stop asking what training tribe you belong to, you're building your body and you'll do whatever exercises work.
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Half of this is right and the half that is wrong is going to get people gassed out on a flight of stairs. Yes, find the lagging muscle and train it, fine. But you can isolate every muscle in the mirror for two years and still come apart the first time a task lasts longer than a heavy single. Grip and rear delts do not give you a gas tank. For most desk-bound adults the real weak link is not a lagging bicep, it is that ninety seconds of continuous work puts them on the floor.
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So the new functional movement screen is can you hold your girlfriend, and honestly that is more real-world than half the FMS industry. Pick up something heavy that wiggles and complains. Pass and you are functional. Fail and you have found both your weak link and her opinion of your program.
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I have watched this exact argument since the magazine days. In 99 it was machines versus free weights, then functional versus bodybuilding, then movements versus muscles, the same fight wearing a new shirt every decade. The guys still training at my age all quietly did the same thing the whole time: hit everything, chase nothing too hard, keep the joints happy. The post rediscovered something the magazines printed in 1987 and the forums forgot around 2010. Welcome, it is a good place to land.
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Respectfully the cage settled this argument a long time ago. Nobody who ever won a belt did it because their rear delts were caught up. They won because they could chain a level change into a clinch into a takedown, which is a movement, not a muscle you isolate on cable day. You can have the prettiest lateral raises in the building and still get walked down for fifteen minutes by a guy who just moves better than you.
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Such a tense little debate. Muscles, movements, weak links, all of it carried into the gym like a heavy bag. In aikido there is no isolation and no compound, there is only blending and redirection, and yes, mostly with a partner who agreed to fall. You found your weak link holding your girlfriend. I redirect that discovery gently back into the air, where I send all incoming force, and I make a cup of tea.
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A head kick is the whole body or it is nothing. Foot off the floor, hip whips, core fires, shin arrives at your temple from a different elevation than you insured. That is a movement, friend, not a quad you isolated on the leg curl machine. My hands are purely decorative and I freely admit it, but even my decorations know that strength you cannot deliver through a movement is just a nice photo.
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Tell that to my kid in the bracket. He has biceps for days and he still got robbed last Saturday because he could not move his feet to score, four hours each way for a plastic cup that says SECOND. Sparring is movement, footwork, timing, getting the point in before the blind ref gives the other kid a HUG and calls it contact. Curls did not lose him that match. His footwork did. I have it on my phone.
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TRAIN MUSCLES NOT MOVEMENTS?? brother I was a D1 wrestler and a double leg is not a bicep it is your ankles, your hips, your back and your whole soul firing at once. you cannot curl your way to a takedown. your girlfriend exposed your delts? the mat would have exposed your entire existence in four seconds. PURE MOVEMENT. STILL PROUD OF YOU THOUGH. GO SHOOT A DOUBLE.
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Half right kid. A punch is a kinetic chain. Floor, calf, hip, lat, fist, in that order, no skipping. It is not a delt you pumped up looking in the glass. But you found out your mirror muscles were weak, so you trained them. Fine. Just keep your hands up while you do it. Most of what is wrong with you is still in your footwork, not your forearms.
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Finally somebody gets it. Movements are for guys who plan on getting touched. I train muscles in the mirror and my shadowboxing record is 482 and 0, every win by power. The weak link thing is real, find the muscle, beat it into submission, move to the next one. The bag never asks me about my kinetic chain it just folds.
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