Playing With Movement: How to Explore the Many Dimensions of Physical Health and Performance

Playing with Movement is about solving “movement problems,” such as how to complete your first marathon, recover from back pain, put on more muscle, or improve agility on the soccer field. Play means moving in a way that is fun, exploratory, variable, and personally meaningful. Kids, animals, and most successful athletes develop skill and fitness through play, not “working out.” But the mainstream approach to sport training and physical therapy is all work no play. It is focused on movements that are boring, repetitive, planned, stressful, and intrinsically meaningless. This stems from a reductive mindset that views the body as a machine to be “fixed,” instead of an organic system that can evolve, grow, and learn.

The arguments in this book are not based in romantic feel-good reasoning, but substantial evidence drawn from diverse fields of study, including the sciences of play, complex systems, pain, motor control, exercise physiology, and psychology. They show that the best pathway to movement health is found not by tracking huge amounts of data or following algorithms, but through curious exploration of the physical world. If you want to take control of your movement health in a way that is fun, meaningful, and empowering, and learn some fascinating science on the way, this book is for you.

• A Guide to Better Movement: The Science and Practice of Moving With More Skill and Less Pain
• The Becoming Bulletproof Project: Discovering the Hero Within
• The Quick and the Dead: Total Training for the Advanced Minimalist
• Yoga Biomechanics: Stretching Redefined
• Grind Style Calisthenics: A Holistic Program For Building Muscle and Strength With Calisthenics
• Movement for Actors (Second Edition)
• The Practice of Natural Movement: Reclaim Power, Health, and Freedom
• Your Body, Your Yoga: Learn Alignment Cues That Are Skillful, Safe, and Best Suited To You
• Yoga Mind, Body & Spirit: A Return to Wholeness
• Fascia Training: A Whole-System Approach