I’m often asked for the best exercise to help a certain pain or perceived weakness. Even-though measuring exercise with pain is like measuring cm with a metre stick. The common opinion that I will change how I move with the way I exercise is limited by the amount of time it takes to change, the fitness or lack of it the person has at the time of inquiry and their pattern of muscle and joint use. If the way one moves is the problem then moving more or less with exercise is not going to alter the pattern unless 6 hours a day are committed to it for 3-9 months. For most people that commitment is not possible. The idea of exercises before an adjustment in a musculo-skeletal care plan just doesn’t make sense, to me, because even when we fire our muscles differently we still use the same engram (pattern) to fire up muscles and joints into body motion.

A faster movement of muscles and joints uses the same pattern as a slower movement just in a shorter burst. Thus moving more can re-enforce a movement fault pattern perpetuating symptoms like aches, stiffness and/or pain.

(Carter MC and Shapiro DC Control of Sequential Movements Evidence for Generalised Motor Programs. Journal of Neurophysiology 1984 52 (5) 787-96).