Why You Must Understand Exercise Kinesiology
Those of you that know about my blog, I have a wide range of topics such in health and fitness such as Optimal Training for hardgainers, and I also cover conditioning training, more importantly, I cover something that not many personal trainers touch upon and that is state training.
So throughout this article, I am going to give you several reasons you must understand exercise kinesiology. I know a lot of you are think...
"Adam, my goal isn't to become a personal trainer, so why should I care about this? All I want to do is workout."
I hear you, however, throughout the years, I've learned that understanding this topic, you can break down movement of the human body and why it relates to help you losing weight, or whatever your goals are in fitness.
What is Kinesiology?
Defined, kinesiology is the study of human movement. I will get to exercise kinesiology in a little bit. What I want you to understand is that this is what losing weight is all about.
You will lose weight when you know the study of human movement. In fact, I remember years ago running track, one of my coaches told me..
"Adam, do you know what most people don't know, and don't even care to learn about in physical fitness?"
I asked him, "what's that?"
"It's called exercise kinesiology. Everyone wants to be fit, but this right here is what most people do not understand."
My aim for this article is to get you to understand exercise kinesiology. Without understanding it, you will workout with no purpose, and you won't know why you do specific exercises.
What is Exercise Kinesiology?
It's literally the same exact definition. In fact, read this article here, you'll see that exercise science is on the list of kinesiology subfields. [R]
The whole point of knowing about human movement and understanding kinesiology is we must understand how the body moves.
That's one of the reason's you must understand exercise kinesiology. Without understanding how the body moves, you won't know why you are doing certain exercises to begin with.
Anatomical Position
There are four main anatomical positions that you must know about my friend.
I'll cover this briefly because this is what you least care about, I get it. So, let's get to it...
- Prone position
- Supine position
- Right lateral
- Left lateral
You can read this article here to understand each term. This is just the standard position. We all come back to this position, let's say for example, if you are laying down with palms up, that is prone position. An example of supine is you lay on your stomach.
Anatomical Movement Descriptors
Now let's get in to what you must know about exercise kinesiology.
These terms you will hear from all trainers that know what they are doing and have been renewing their certifications as they should.
- Anterior: towards the front of the body
- Posterior: towards the rear of the body
- Superior: above a reference point
- Inferior: below a reference point
- Medial: toward the midline of the body
- Lateral: away from the midline of the body
- Proximal: closer to a reference point
- Distal: further away from a reference point
- Bilateral: both sides
- Unilateral: one side
- Superficial: near the surface
- Deep: below the surface
- Cephalic: towards the head
- Caudal: towards the tail
- Prone: laying face down
- Supine: laying on your back, face up.
In a minute I'm going to go over Osteo-kinematics. However, I just want you to know what the anatomical movement descriptors are.
I want you to know these terms just so you understand these basic terms of kinesiology.
Planes of Motion
Sagittal plane movement, horizontal plane movement, and frontal (coronal) plane movement. This in my mind is top priority to remember. Because we all move in all three planes of motion when we workout.
This right here is the number one reason I want you to understand exercise kinesiology.
For example, the walking lunge in the picture above is sagittal plane movement. Another example is football shuffling laterally is the frontal plane. Lastly, the horizontal (transverse) plane you don't want to forget.
However, let's get more basic. The frontal planes basic movements are the following:
- Abduction
- Adduction
Abduction is movement away from midline of the body.
Adduction is movement toward the midline of the body.
Horizontal plane movement includes internal rotation and external rotation.
- External (lateral) rotation is outward turning of an anterior surface.
- Internal (medial) rotation is the inward turning of an anterior surface.
Remember how the body moves my friend. This is another important reason to understand human movement.
Why Exercise Kinesiology Matters
Exercise kinesiology is the study of human movement. And this is what I want you to takeaway from this entire article...
Without knowing how athletes move, or how to increase athletic performance, it's likely that you won't know why you move your body the way you do.
You don't even have to play a sport, just knowing this can give you awareness to how human movement works in exercise science.
So what's the purpose of this entire article my friend? The purpose is simply put, without knowing how human movement works, you won't know how to gain muscle as a hardgainer.
Yes, human movement applies to weight lifting. However, remember that weight lifting involves more biomechanics, which is an entirely different article.
Just understand that putting awareness on how the body moves gives you power in fitness. This should tell you that understanding exercise kinesiology can and will put more purpose in to your fitness journey.
The Takeaway: Exercise Kinesiology
You can tell by now that understanding how the body moves can and will improve exercise performance.
The reason it improves exercise performance is because just knowing how the body moves in all planes of motion gives you some insight in to how the body works out.
Without knowing how the body works out, it can often feel pointless to workout. The biggest takeaway that you should take is understanding exercise kinesiology can and will give you more purpose to working out.
When you don't have a purpose behind working out, you will not last in fitness. Let's face it, we all see this happen. People eat like shit over the holidays and then they start out the New Year's but as we know, New Year's are bullshit.
If you want to make New Year's Resolutions matter, you gotta put some fucking purpose in your fitness. Understanding this topic of working out will give you clarity as to why moving the body is so fucking important.
Get to the fucking gym my friends. No one can make that happen but YOU. Feel comfortable to comment below with any questions and concerns.
