Are You Ready?

by Teo Ledesma

In the world of fitness there are thousands of movements to perform. Some movements ask for little effort, where others ask for much greater effort. We are the prescribers of these movements; we prescribe movements that should lead to our client’s goals and stay in range of their abilities.

Now, what do we do when we have a client that wants to do a movement his body just isn’t ready for? Do we have him stretch, pull muscles and ligaments? Do we smash him until he is able?

Or. . .

Do we allow him to develop the movement through proper exercise prescription and body development to then allow him to perform the movement to the best of his ability?

I hope the answer is simple for you. If not, let me paint the picture a bit clearer.
An athlete came up to me and asked what he had to do to perform the snatch like his fellow classmates (these are advanced and well trained athletes who have little to no movement restrictions for the snatch, also this new athlete has been with me less than one week). I told him that his body did not seem ready for such movement.

He looked at me with the saddest face, after which I took him to his own world and explained. I told him, “Imagine your freshman year in school, think about the list of classes you took to prepare you for your sophomore year, then the list of classes you took to prepare you for junior year, and finally the classes you took to prepare you for your senior year of school. If you were fortunate to have good guidance those classes should have flowed nicely together and allowed you to sit in class with confidence and have all the prerequisites needed to perform in those classes. Now imagine if your freshman year of school the administrator didn’t know what he/she was doing and he/she put you in a senior course. A course made for the baddest most experienced students in school and that course demanded that you know the material from your freshman, sophomore and junior classes.”

How do you think you would do in that senior course?

How do you think you will do in that snatch without the prerequisites now?

I believe we can achieve complex movement with a simple understanding of what the progressions are asking the body to do, and knowing the progressions are just stepping stones to one day earning that bachelor degree.

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