Using Touch to Improve Body Control
Adding information to our study of movement is essential to building an understanding of how we can move. Using touch is an excellent way to improve body control by providing an additional layer of understanding of what we feel.
Touch is an excellent tool to improve body control.
Our bodies are composed of layered muscles and connective tissues, many of which are involved in multiple types of movement. This structure is useful for providing diverse and powerful movement options, but it also makes it difficult to understand how everything is doing and refine our ability to move.
It is key we learn to study how any given body part currently functions and feels so that we can build more effective movement.
Adding touch to our fitness routines allows or bodies to incorporate provides increased movement information by both adding a specific pressure to somewhere we can see, which builds our understanding of how it feels to move that area, and incorporating our tactile senses to better understand the area’s construction and movement.
This added information helps us paint a better picture or our bodies, making it easier to build an understanding of our how our physical selves are functioning and where they might need additional training or care.
Refining our Basic Movements
Much of our movement comes naturally. If we drop something on the ground, we bend down to pick it up without hesitation (unless, of course, we’ve previously injured ourselves and/or struggle bending over).
While the gross applications of our muscles and connective tissue are readily available, it is difficult to notice and refine the details of movement. Using touch alongside our movements allows us to engage in a movement while having a separate body part feel how the movement is happening and provide a sensation to the moving part to help it more precisely identify how the movement feels.
Yes, having only a basic understating of movement is workable for everyday life. We don’t need to know how to walk perfectly to make it from our bed to the kitchen, or even to work. However, repetitive motions with incorrect body usage reinforce and perpetuate improper movement.
This can lead to wear, injury, and limits on our accessible ranges of motion. If we wish to use our bodies to their fullest, develop strength to power ourselves confidently through our regular lives, and prevent premature wear caused by improper movement, it is essential that we take time to study the details of how we move.
Using Touch Can Improve Body Awareness
Using touch as a tool to improve movement is a common-sense tactic that can greatly improve body awareness and control. Touch allows us to provide a specific sensation with a force and focus we can control, allowing us to poke and test our muscles to learn exactly where we feel them and how they connect to the rest of our bodies.
The goal of using touch as an assessment tool is to provide just enough contact to assess how a particular area is feeling, while letting our body build connections between what we are doing and where it connects to our system. While it will take more force to contact a deeper muscle than it will one that is more superficial, I find that the key is to use only as much force as necessary and not to be afraid of light contact.
Fitness media often favors the idea that we should always be adding more force and increasing power, but brutish tactics around our joints and sensitive areas are more likely to lead to damage and imbalances than they are to a refined understanding of how we move.
Incorporating Touch around our Moving Parts
All of our body is important. I don’t care if it’s the middle of your shin or your heart, it plays a crucial role in the structure of your being. For this particular application, however, I find that we may be well-served to focus the bulk of our training (at least at the start) on the areas of our body that experience and control major parts of our movement: mainly, joints.
Our joints allow us to take the forces and direct them across various angles and ranges of motion. To do this, our joints utilize layers of muscles and connective tissue crossing, binding, and reinforcing how we are able to move. It is only natural then that these complex junctions are more prone to improper usage, leading to compensation techniques that preserve our gross ability to move.
I like to regularly contact my joints, starting first with a light touch along the edges that focuses on where the bones meet. These areas are most likely to sustain impact, banging the bones toward each other at the cost of anything running between. I find that light, meticulous movements along these connecting areas — with increased force as needed — direct me to where might be receiving the brunt of these impacts and how that effects the rest of my body.
An Example: Using Touch to Understand Our Knees
My knees (like those of most people) heavily control my movement in everyday life. From walking, to running, biking, and jumping around, I do not make it easy on my knees. In order to continuously strengthen them and improve their movement, I conduct frequent touch assessments that feel for injuries and ensure everything is running smoothly. I start with feather-like touches around where my upper leg meets my lower leg, going around the circumference of my leg both at the end of my upper leg and also at the beginning of my lower leg (at the ends where they meet the kneecap in the front and toward the crease in the back). I move deliberately, but not rushed, taking time to notice how everything is feeling and spending additional time when my body calls for it (when your body requires additional attention, the signal could not be more clear).
As I move along, I pay attention to how each portion feels and what it tells me about the rest of my leg. For example, when I have been doing a lot of running or jump roping, I tend to notice tension on the medial (inside) portion of my knees. Using touch, I notice the tension often runs down to my big toe. This has become more noticeable as I have increased my foot control and toe splay training, helping me notice how training in tight shoes has restricted my leg and foot musculature.
After moving along my knee lightly, I sometimes notice some spots that require additional contact, often requesting prolonged assessment or more force to understand everything involved there. In these situations, I focus on understanding where the areas of concern connect and what recent activities or repetitive motions may have caused it to seek further inquiry. These tests have been great tools for recognizing areas of weakness in my body and places where I tend to lose control of my form more frequently.
How Long, When, and How Often?
The great part about using touch to assess movement is that it is free to do and can be done almost anytime. Your assessments can be tailored to address particular locations and time constraints, and can be done as many times as you desire (check out my section on Micro Assessments for more on this). So long as you are not doing extended and detailed assessments of compromising positions in inappropriate settings, there really are no limits for your use of touch to improve your learning.
Touch is something that is always available to most of us that can provide an entirely unique understanding to our muscle functioning. The more feedback we provide our muscles when they are moving or trying to do something new, the better prepared they are to improve and recognize weaknesses.
It is important to recognize that all of our body is connected. While I will not pretend that I can explain the nuances of how our bodily systems interact and function as a cohesive unit, I recognize we can grab and interact with the entirety of our physical beings with our own hands. Take the time and test it, and you will not be disappointed by how much you can learn.
-G
Efficiently ELITE
At the end of the day, this site is designed to serve as a resource. Like many good resources, Efficiently ELITE is always seeking outside input to refine its content and improve its ability to help people take more autonomy over their ability to move. Do you have any suggestions? Please contact me and let me know below!
