from Peter Lakatos founder of Primal Move
Primal Move is an integrated movement system, where the
goal is to create better movement, based on the primal and primitive
movements we all once mastered as children. Do you remember when you had
no pain as you played, ran, played football, threw a rock or climbed a
tree? Do you remember when movement was joyful, fun and you felt the
‘flow’?
What we learn from Kids
As we were organizing the Primal Move techniques into a
logical order, we paid close attention to how kids begin to move. We use
the pre-locomotor and the locomotor stages when we talk about movement
typically.
The first challenge a baby must face is gravity. In the
first 9 months, the babies do not really have to deal with gravity in
the womb, and it can be a shocking experience. Leaving mom’s tummy means
the baby must work for every single movement, and must work hard.
Movement is important, developing a healthy body image is important, as
is exploring the environment.
The first movements are all about exploring gravity. They
lift their heads, and their legs and arms. Before the locomotion stage,
babies have a lot of thing to do: touching hands, legs, hands to mouth,
and even toes to mouth, extending and flexing the body. At this stage
the baby is improving its self-image, its awareness. Basically it is a
system check, learning where the body starts, where it ends, and what
type of movement it can do.
Starting in the supine position the baby has lot of things
to do – it must master a bunch of movements before she reaches the other
positions, like prone position or later being on fours.
Based on Beverly Stokes work – Amazing Babies Moving – she created stage categories, listed below:
1. Spinal movement patterns
2. Symmetrical movement patterns
3. Lateral movement patterns
4. Cross-lateral movement patterns
Spinal movement patterns
Examples: head to tail, extension, flexion lateral flexion
and rotation. In this pattern the baby separates the front and back part
of the body. Lifting all limbs and head to the air is a typical spinal
movement pattern. This is happening around the spinal axis, and a
voluntary axial roll might happen. Typical exercises in PM: sweep roll,
frog roll, supine and prone skydiver and any spinal axis side rolls.
Symmetrical movement patterns
Examples: both arms, or both legs together. This patterns
helps to separate the upper and lower extremities, and this is where we
see push and pull patterns. Being on elbows or push up position is a
typical symmetrical movement pattern.
Lateral movement pattern
Examples: same side leg and arm movements. Differentiates
and integrates both sides of the body for better lateral line alignment.
Reaching for objects on same side.
Cross-lateral movement patterns
Example: opposing leg and arm synchronized movement. This is the stage for creeping, crawling, and later on walking and running.
Everything we know about FMS (Functional Movement System)
and early child development says that we should start moving with our
clients in supine and prone position, and then move to the locomotor
stage. Remember, when FMS test shows problems, we first start clearing
up the hip and shoulder movements. If you don’t have good range of
motion and motor control to your limbs, you simply can’t master spinal
and symmetrical patterns. When these patterns are clear, the next
pattern we want to be acceptable is rotational stability. When we check
rotary stability, we actually use same side patterning. This does not
really check our creeping and crawling patterns, but checks a more
primitive pattern, the spinal one. Flexion and extension is what we are
looking for, and a lateral movement pattern. If you can’t do a 3, fine –
but you still might have issues with spinal axis rolling. So, for 3
points you must have the same side pattern, for 2 points you must show
your crawling pattern. Again, we check 2 different patterns is one test.
Wicked!
The next pattern we test is the push up. For
the push up you must present a fairly good symmetrical movement
pattern, and while we see many people who can show a fairly good push up
test, most of them fail at rotary stability. Again, it totally makes
sense – for rotary stability your inner core muscles should react
lighting fast, for the push up the outer ones.
Now our baby stands up, so the next pattern we are looking
for is the in-line lunge. Hurdle step shows how well you walk, run and
sprint. The last pattern is the squat. Experience shows clearing the
shoulder and ASLR (Active straight leg raise) pattern typically creates a
very reasonable squat. Aligning the hip and shoulder will already
create a lot of changes on the whole chain, and one change in the chain
can and will affect the whole.
What we can learn from the babies? Well, babies have to
fight for all progressions, if they cannot perform the next step of the
progression, they will fall back to the start position. If we are clever
parents, we shouldn’t try to make their progression easier – meaning to
help them to walk before they can perform half kneeling or even worse.
So, lesson number one is simply progression through body awareness,
improved body image and motor control – with joy and lot of playful
movement.
How can we apply this progression to our Primal Move
session? We start with supine and prone position techniques, and
progressing to the creeping, crawling variations as soon as possible.
Babies are very mobile, we are not – so the preparation is targeting the
joint system – especially the ankle, hip, T-spine – with mobility
exercises for ROM (Range of Motion) and proprioception. Right after that
our goal is to improve static and dynamic motor control. Right after
crawling, plank, push up and walking push up variations are the logical
choices, and while we keep our hands on the ground, we stand up.
Occasionally we can go through seated positions, but let’s not spend to
much time there. We don’t need to be better in a position that we are
already so good at. Progression from inverted position to back and
forward rolls are great progression goals, and the target is the
vestibular system. Later on we can go to tall standing position for a
few positions.
Primal Move session should be simple, but that does not
mean it should not be challenging.
Challenges form us for what we are
now, or what we will become.
