Click on NOTE CATEGORIES to browse by topic, read through the entire archives, or type a topic in the search box.Biomechanist Katy Bowman and biologist Jeannette Loram dig deeper into the concept of movement as nutrition in Katy’s new book “My Perfect Movement Plan: The Move Your DNA All Day Workbook”. They discuss how the book will help you understand your current movement diet and show you how to create a more balanced movement diet going forward. They introduce tools from the book such as the S.L.O.T.H time budget model, as well as explore how to make the plan align with the reasons you want to move well and the movement that you find purposeful and meaningful.
OVERVIEW
(time codes are approximate)
00:09:00 - The SLOTH MODEL (Jump to section)
00:12:05 - The Model in Action (Jump to section)
00:18:15 - Finding your WHY (Jump to section)
00:29:00 - The Body as a Constellation (Jump to section)
00:33:00 - Let’s Apply It and Find Out More (Jump to section)
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Your Perfect Movement Plan Book
Episode #155 - What is A "Momement Diet"
Nutritious Movement on Instagram
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
(Theme music)
Welcome to the Move Your DNA podcast where movement science meets your everyday life. I'm Katy Bowman, biomechanist, author, and planner! Every body is welcome here. Let's get started!
(music fade)
Ok, today we are talking about building YOUR your perfect movement plan in honor of my upcoming book, My Perfect Movement Plan: The Move Your DNA All Day Workbook. I am joined by my friend and colleague Dr. Jeannette Loram, biologist, all the way from the UK, and if you haven't listened to Episode 155, all about a so-called movement diet/movement nutrition, go back and listen to that first because much of what we are going to discuss today leans on what we teased out in the last show. So go back and listen to that first!
KATY: Jeannette, welcome to Move Your DNA.
JEANNETTE: Hello! Thanks for having me back!
KATY: You are always welcome here!
JEANNETTE: Thank you. Thank you! So, Katy, you've been busy, again.
KATY: Yeah, you can't slow me down.
JEANNETTE: Not only have you birthed a new book but you've been also helping birth some other things into this world.
KATY: Yes.
JEANNETTE: With how many puppies?
KATY: We have 8. Well, we have 7 puppies with 1 late show-er for a total of 8. So our ... yeah. It's a lot. It's 40... I think I slept 5 hours in 48...
JEANNETTE: Right. Oh.
KATY: ...midwifing these lovely dogs.
JEANNETTE: So now you can add that to your very long CV. Midwife. Midwife to the canine world.
KATY: Well and that was - it was tough. Just a shout-out to all the midwives and birthing professionals. Because it's not a linear process. I mean on some level it is, but there's a lot of flow and waiting. I had forgotten what it was like to birth. I mean, which I think is part of it.
JEANNETTE: Yeah it's essential.
KATY: It's essential that. But it's amazing to really ... you know you're in it for this person that you love, this dog. But also, for me, who is really watching natural processes and who loves biology, it was really, really amazing. She created an elaborate den. She dug an elaborate den under our deck which we did not realize she was doing.
JEANNETTE: Wow.
KATY: And when she came into that time, she was like, "I gotta get to the den." And we're like, "no, please check out this wonderful whelping station we've created in the closet." And she's like, "Yes, and also the den." "I need to get to the den." And it was such a point of stress for her.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And so we thought, well, we can maybe let her be... I didn't feel super comfortable just because I wanted to ... this was her first and only litter. And so I just wanted to have a little bit more hands-on and obviously manage it. So my husband removed a couple of the boards. And that's when we lifted it and discovered how elaborate the den was. It was 2 connecting dens. It was amazing.
JEANNETTE: Wow. That's fascinating.
KATY: It was fascinating. And what we decided to do was to put a phone under the deck to watch her. It was during the day so it was light. And then Facetime me on my computer here so she could be where she wanted to be in a way that we could observe her.
JEANNETTE: Wow.
KATY: So and she was instantly calmer and just much more like she was "ok, now I'm in this thing that I've done. So it was amazing to not have her distracted with our noise or whatever (we've got kids).
JEANNETTE: So she did this on herself, by herself, and you just watched and kept an eye?
KATY: Not the whole thing. No, she just wanted, I think, to really do a lot of that stage 1...
JEANNETTE: Right. Ok.
KATY: ...early stage one labor. I think she just felt comfortable. She felt safe. It was all instinctual. Which makes me, I started to think, what's the difference between instinct and knowledge? I tend to have that philosophical brain just to be like, everything along the process was instinct for her and it looks almost identical to human birth. Except you don't push out as many multiples.
JEANNETTE: Thank goodness!
KATY: Thank God! Yes. And so I had similar information coming to me in books, you know. And at what point did it move from the instinctual - if it has indeed moved to it. That was what was on my mind: I can't believe that this whole process for her is stored in her body and for me, maybe it is stored somewhere in my body.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: But it's stored in books, at least. So then I'm like, are books just our brain - a collective brain out there? And I don't know.
JEANNETTE: The problem is we can't separate ourselves from what we know. So it's very hard for humans to get rid of what we know and just follow instinct.
KATY: Yes. Yes.
JEANNETTE: But interesting questions for another time.
KATY: For another time. She was also not interested in me separating her experience from what I know. But we settled for a happy medium and as soon as she had her first real contraction, she ran right out from underneath the deck and came right to me and she said, "Ok, now I'm here, you're here. Let's do this."
JEANNETTE: You're my elder.
KATY: Yes, that's right.
JEANNETTE: A parent. I need to go to you. So she actually did what humans would do. Maybe. She chose a person with experience that she trusted.
KATY: Well and who knows if that's not the right spot? I don't know.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: There's a really good book that I'm starting that kind of dives into canine culture as a species. I've seen cows midwife other cows when they go into it. And I've seen a network come around. So I just think it's much more complex than we probably - maybe there are plenty of people who are like, "Yes, of course it's complex" and there's midwifing animals that will show up. But it was beautiful and it was everyone's healthy. And all the puppies are healthy and mama's healthy.
JEANNETTE: That's amazing.
KATY: We're resting. It was beautiful. Thanks for asking about that. Now what are we gonna talk about today?
JEANNETTE: So, we're gonna talk about your book.
KATY: Yes! Another one!
JEANNETTE: Another one. So how many is that? Is it 11? So many?
KATY: I don't know. I do push out multiples and they're just delayed over time.
JEANNETTE: It's true.
KATY: But this one was, I feel like this is maybe 10 or 11. I'd have to go back. Because some books were re-released - slightly different editions.
JEANNETTE: You're at double digits.
KATY: I'm in double digits and this was the hardest one. This one needed forceps to be ... I needed a lot more intervention.
JEANNETTE: (laughs)
KATY: Thank you for all the editorial support and I just needed a huge - it took a village to get this one out.
JEANNETTE: There we go.
KATY: And it's a workbook! I thought a workbook would be easier.
JEANNETTE: Because you were gonna get other people to do the work, but no.
KATY: Yes. You'll write the other half of the book, person. And it turns out writing a workbook is harder. Plus I was simultaneously trying to synthesize in text and words the entire system of movement nutrition and graphically represent it. And have a way for people to break it down.
JEANNETTE: I actually think that, yeah, there's a lot in this book with different explanations, different models. So I think, I can see how it was challenging. But I think you've done a beautiful job.
KATY: Thank you!
JEANNETTE: The nice thing about this chat is that we've already covered a bit about the movement nutrition.
JEANNETTE: As sort of the basis of the kind of academic part of the book. So with this book, what you really do is help people determine what kind of movement diet they have right now. And then how they could tweak their movement diet to be more nutritious. In a nutshell. But you use an ingenious kind of model to help people do it. Because, I think everyone is probably "Well, I know perhaps I need more movement but I don't have any time. How am I going to get this time to do this movement?" And that's when you introduce this sloth model. Which is a fantastic name. Could you explain the SLOTH model and how you use it in this book to help people create their perfect movement plan?
KATY: Yes. And I didn't actually create the SLOTH model. Just to know when you read it, it's been used in a couple of other public health papers, specifically trying to deal with this element of time - this barrier of time. OK, where do people spend their time? They spend it in these following domains: they're sleeping, they're leisuring, they're occupationing, they're transporting/transportationing, and they're home/homing. So those are the domains in which every minute of your day could be sorted into.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: So once you start to be able to do that, now ... I must be really interested in containers because I did Grow Wild by container also.
JEANNETTE: Right, yes you did. Yeah.
KATY: And I think the reason I do that is because there's so much health information out there. And there's so much movement information out there. I could see how someone would be entirely overwhelmed. You can't integrate all of it. You can barely integrate any of it. And how do you sort and prioritize and pick? So I feel like by having people not just be like this is today, or this is not just this set of hours, it's more like think about these containers of your time, of your day. And let's approach the problem of getting ourselves to move more or move better - move more nutritiously - within each of these smaller containers or smaller domains. Because it makes it a lot easier to not be overwhelmed. "I'm gonna work on just home."
JEANNETTE: And you're boundarying it by saying, "You only have the same amount of time." You can't find, like we were saying, you need to find the time to take your 30-minute walk.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: And you can't make more time. So this model, you've got these allotted spaces of time in these domains. We're gonna stick with that and it suddenly was oh ok, we just find where we can add movement into things that we're already doing which is the genius of the model.
KATY: That's the whole. You're never going to be able to not do it any other way.
JEANNETTE: Right.
JEANNETTE: Perfect. So the first thing is people have to work out, in these domains, what they're currently doing. So they're basically putting - I love it because as a previous research scientist they're taking their own data, they're putting it in the book. You guide us through the book. And then they get their current diet. Then the next step is to work out how they make changes to that diet. So can you walk us through, maybe with an example or maybe take one domain? How could we look at a domain and make adjustments?
KATY: Right there's two levels. There's the level of just general physical activity. General movement calories. And then eventually we get into these macros or micros. And there's a way to adjust, let's say, what's the easiest one? I'm trying not to get too limited here. Let's just say home. We all have a home. There's a way that you will maybe first make over your home for more movement calories, just more physical activity in general. But you could also be making over your home for a specific macronutrient you might be missing. Or maybe you makeover your home for certain micronutrients you're missing. And a lot of times, again, micros and macros are embedded in calories. You can't eat a food without also getting the other chemical compounds that are inside of it. And the same goes for a particular movement. So let's go to occupation. And let's assume - there's so many different occupations and many people actually labor quite intensely for their occupation. But let's assume that you are someone who is mostly sedentary for work. So whether you're doing computer work or say you're a driver. So you're mostly seated for what you're doing. So there's no more movement calories to be found here. Now if you're a desk worker then I would say what's available to you are movements that allow you to still be "in place" in front of, let's say, your computer. So we can have different shapes, body positions, while we're here that use more musculoskeletal support. So therefore you have what's called very light activity going on. And that could be, the same thing I've talked about a lot, you're gonna have a standing workstation, or a seated workstation. Or, at our company sometimes we'll need to do catch-up meetings. And we'll all do it on the phone and we can go out walking. Now, it's my company and I can set that up. But there's a lot of flexibility a lot of times where maybe you take some of your calls, your work calls, in a way that's more dynamic overall. Increasing your physical activity. Or maybe you get a balance board, if you're working from home. And you're standing on it or stretching your calves on a dome while you're doing it. The idea is you're not just sitting there with your body. You're doing something else physically while you're there. As a way of making over that particular task. If you're a driver you don't have that option. Right? You can't do a standing driving desk. But you could be thinking about the position of your head and your shoulders for better micros while you're driving. You could be adjusting your pelvic tilt while you're driving. Every time you have the opportunity to get out of the car - instead of being out on the road and hitting a drive-through. "I'm gonna park. I'm gonna get out. I'm gonna walk in. And I'm gonna order." Or, you have to get gas. Instead of getting gas and filling up there, you're going to do a set of stretches that nourishes your body in that movement. You're going to do something for your neck and shoulders. You're going to do something for your hips. And you're going to prioritize two or three minutes of physical activity because you're pulling physical activity to the forefront of your mind. You're becoming more mindful. Mindfulness is what it is. It's becoming more mindful. But if we think of mindful movement we think it has to be yoga.
JEANNETTE: In a beautiful studio with candles.
KATY: That's right. Or it has to be an Eastern practice. Do you know what I mean? We've really sectioned off what we think is mindful.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: But all it really means is you're paying attention to the shapes you're making, to the way your breath is lining up with those shapes. And so this is a way of taking this, it's like a biological imperative, this thing that you need and fitting it in.
JEANNETTE: I love that you, in the book, you mention "Think about minutes". And that really struck me. I mean, I have been following you for, oh goodness, 15 years. I think I started - I took your course 15 years ago. And you'd think I'd know this by now. But I still, I started to really observe myself as I was reading your book and it was things like, "Waiting in your car."
KATY: Yes.
JEANNETTE: And I'm really good at taking a walk. If my kid's got half an hour playing the guitar, doing his guitar lesson, I will always go for a walk. But when it's like 4 minutes or 5 minutes when I'm just waiting to pick them up from school or whatever, I'm not out of the car. So I was really... to kind of ... just watch myself a lot. Another one was hanging up laundry. I have a whirly gig. You know a shirly-gig that spins. And I realized I would just stand in one place and I would spin it towards me.
KATY: Like a Lazy Susan.
JEANNETTE: Right. Like a Lazy Susan. And I realized I could just keep hanging them up but I could walk round and in exactly the same time.... there was no more time.
KATY: And get different nutrients.
JEANNETTE: And get different nutrients. "Why have I been standing here just zooming this thing round?" So coming up, it's observing yourself. And I think you say this in the book, it's coming up, we have these two inbuilt things in Western, in modern culture that's really hard to reconcile. We have this need for lots of movement but we have this resistance. This inbuilt energy conservation.
KATY: Yeah. Both are in our DNA.
JEANNETTE: Yes. So we're sort of always having to come up against ourselves and be mindful. I felt you really made that very clear in the book. So that kind of brings us, because you've categorized movement as nutrition. We've categorized these spaces, these containers, where our time spent. But you also have other ways in this book to categorize movement, which I really love. And, in fact, you have a whole chapter on it which is Purposeful, Meaningful, and Functional.
JEANNETTE: And I think that's so important. And in fact, the book actually starts with redefining their why for movement. So are those readers being able to implement this? It has to work for our personal situations and desires. Do you want to, I know you've don't a podcast on meaningful movement, but maybe you'd just like to elaborate on that for readers to understand how you're making this their movement plan. It's not THE perfect movement plan.
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: It is THEIRS.
KATY: And that's always been the tricky thing about writing about movement overall. Here's how movement works. Here's how it works in the body and here's what you need. And it's sort of like getting a book on dietary nutrients. Here's what vitamin A does, and here's a list of the full things. But you have a textbook of what you need. But it ultimately has to work for your, I'm gonna say in general, work for your life in order for you to be able to do it. And there's been a lot of research in what's called exercise adherence. We can leave the exercise part out. It's getting people to move. And a lot of the barriers are time. But a lot of them is while physical robustisity and health and feeling good in your body is meaningful to most people, exercise is not necessarily meaningful to a lot of people. So I try to clarify for readers why that is and why researchers are trying to figure out why that is. And this is my favorite chapter, by the way. So purposeful is not is it effective. Purposeful means is this movement accomplishing something else beyond just making me physically better. Because that's kind of a defining characteristic of the clinical definition of exercise is that it's movement being done for your physical well-being. You've preselected doing it. You've elected doing it. It's often rhythmic and for a set period of time. You've picked the mode. You've picked the intensity. It's so pre-organized to benefit some physical tissue in some way. But it doesn't do anything else during that period of time. Where physical activity is a broader category. Exercise is a smaller circle within physical activity. And that's any time you're using your body In a way that benefits you. Usually the musculoskeletal system and your energetic pathways. But you're riding your bike to work. That goes into the transportation domain. It also benefits you physically, but that's not the only thing that's happening during that period of time. You're also getting yourself to work. And so when there is purpose with movement it's a lot easier for people to fit it into their lives. And the transportation is the easiest example like when it connects you to other people. If it connects you to your value system. People will often walk for fundraisers. Right?
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And when they're connected to the cause they're more likely to do this big physical feat. So that's why purpose and meaning are so important that we … and we choose for ourselves. Purpose is pretty clear. Is it serving something beyond physical benefit? Meaning is something that's completely up to you to decide what is meaningful to you. And then Functional is the third category in that chapter. And Functional means: do the movements you are choosing to do benefit your physicality in a way that you will depend on in the future? Meaning it's functional for you. And Functional - we've got some functionality in common. In general, being able to ambulate; to be able to walk upright. And to be balanced; to be able to carry a bag of groceries or something. To go up and down stairs. To get into without falling over. To be able to touch, bend down, get something off the floor, get to the floor. These are all functional movements that we would need to function kind of on our own. And not to say that completely depending on yourself is the goal, but there's a basic level of physical capacity that we know will show up again and again for us. And then, you might have other meaningful to you - activities that use your physicality in some way and you want to make sure that what your movement plan is is serving those activities as well. So that would mean... what's an example? Let's say you are a musician. Playing an instrument's a physical act. What are the movements that go into playing your instrument? Right? There's obviously what's happening with your arms. I'm right now thinking of a cello or a stand-up bass, right? You've got to stand or maybe hold your own torso upright if you're in a chair. And you've got your arm movements going. You have to be able to pack your instrument. Carry and lift your instrument. So you would want to make sure - in the book I talk about the law of specificity with exercise - you want to make sure that what you're choosing to do for physical activity is preparing your body for the activities, whether they be physical activity or exercise or not. That are physical by nature. That you're preparing yourself to maintain. Like you're keeping your parts stretched out. You're making sure that your shoulders don't over-stiffen so that you can continue to do the thing that you like to do. So the task for the person, for the reader, is to go "What activities do you find meaningful?" And then if you break them down into smaller movements, what are those movements? And your plan needs to be making you better at or to maintain how well you are doing these movements throughout a lifetime. So that's why you always want to keep those in mind as you're planning. As you're choosing. And I wrote this book because people say "Which exercises should I do?"
JEANNETTE: I was going to say, yeah.
KATY: "Is that a good exercise?" And it depends. What is your end goal here? I put the burden on them.
JEANNETTE: How many emails do you have, "Katy just write me a plan", "I want a program", "Just tell me what to do".
KATY: I get more emails that say, "Is a rebounder a good exerciser?"
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: Then I know that people's understanding of exercise is that it's just something that I have to do with my body like brushing my teeth. Why are you brushing your teeth? OK. I don't think a lot of us have thought about why we're doing a lot of these...
JEANNETTE: Things that we're doing.
KATY: ... things we're doing. Because they seem like a burden. Just another thing some expert told me I had to do. And it's like if you can see the reason that you yourself want to do it, it makes it a lot easier to do it.
JEANNETTE: Absolutely. I think particularly when we're young everything is working pretty well.
KATY: Yeah. Exactly.
JEANNETTE: You have this list of recommendations which maybe you consider, maybe you don't. But it's interesting to me when I see a lot of private clients. And the older ones, they usually have very specific reasons. And it has to do with meaning and function. Functionality. "I want to be able to sail my boat and I need to be able to squat up and down and I'm starting to struggle." So it's very very clear. If you get really clear you'll stick with it. And you'll put the effort in because it makes sense to you. But I love the book as well because you give lots of examples. If we go back to the idea of the pyramid and these shapes that we need. These macronutrients that we need, I think traditional fitness puts a lot of people off because it's choosing from just a handful of things that maybe they don't like. Whereas this perspective of getting these different shapes, and you can get those different shapes in lots of different ways is very empowering. As I look at just comparing. My husband likes big bodywork. He likes to be in the garden. He likes to be making stuff. He never joins me in the pool for laps. Which I love because for me I feel graceful. It's my favorite sport. And it's mentally relaxing for me. But it's deadly boring for him. So I think your book, you give everyone these amazing examples of things that they could do that will appeal to them and their meaning. So I think it's very powerful.
KATY: And I was just going to say, too, I think the more we understand nutrition - whether it be dietary or movement nutrition - I think the presentation of "here's all the nutrients that you need" makes it feel very rigid. We all sort of have this wiggle room. You can go without certain nutrients for a certain amount of time. You kind of make a choice. The effects aren't immediate. And also I think that humans are always on their way and flowing to - we're just part of a big river channeling and branching into different things. Right? We're going to have changes within our body of needs and what might work for one person's body, might not be at all what works for another person's body which is clear. But also, I'll just say it this way. I love long-distance walking. But I don't necessarily think that going for a 20 or 30-mile walk is necessary for health. You know what I mean? But it's what I want to do. It makes my life feel good. And I feel graceful. I feel connected in the same way you feel in the water. So when we have this creative energy with our own lives, we just need to see how it sits within a nutritional framework to make sure it's supported.
KATY: It's the same thing. You might have foods that you love. And you just love the food and it brings you joy. And that's great. You need to see how that food sits relative to all the other foods to make sure you're being supported. That what you love is being supported in the rest of the container. So that's why I've written this book in this way.
JEANNETTE: I love that. And you help us, I think ... we haven't talked about this analogy. But you're image of the body as a constellation. I found that amazing. Maybe you should explain what the constellation is. Because no one knows yet.
KATY: Biomechanics can be sort of tricky. I think of shape in a very nuanced way. And so the first idea is: if you put a star at every single joint. If you put one at your elbow, and your wrists, and your shoulders. And you put them at your hips, and your knees, and your ankles. Everything you're doing is creating a constellation - an orientation between all of those stars. And when you can start thinking about your body in terms of a constellation it makes it easier to feel like, "Oh, every constellation is a different set of loads". I'm always trying to get people to think in terms of loads. But I already wrote that book, Move Your DNA. I want something more shorthand where people can think, "Oh I've been in the same constellations I've been in all day long. I'm going to change the shape of my hips." It's a different approach. And then of course there's not just stars at those points I mentioned. There's like a star at every single vertebra that you have. There's your feet. Every joint has its own star. So you've got a pile of stars in each foot. And so by the time you see all the stars that there are, you'll realize why movement is so important because it's just the reorientation of stars. It's how you get the inputs. It's how you feed the body. So that it's a shorthand so that once you can see, you don't have to use that "Oh I have to move because it's good for me". You have a different analogy. A different visual to latch on to for yourself.
JEANNETTE: Yeah. I loved it. I kept thinking of Christmas lights when I was thinking this. And I was thinking, I like a tranquil Christmas tree. And my kids like a chaotic bright colorful tree.
KATY: Yes.
JEANNETTE: And I always go put the lights on - warm, yellow, no flashing so they're always in the same constellations. Whereas my kids would put it, when they were young, they used to put it on the ones that flash and switch. And actually they're right. We need the switching lights.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: We need the switching lights to mix up our constellation. So I love the constellation. And I particularly thought it was really helpful, you mentioned asterisms. Which was a new word for me. And an asterism is a part of a constellation - a smaller part.
JEANNETTE: And you used that analogy when you were talking about the micronutrients. And I think micronutrients are so hard. And rather than giving some very sort of dry descriptions of geometries, you just gave a 20 or 21 different asterisms. Or not necessarily asterisms but 21 situations around these micronutrients. So some were joint positions. Some were environmental situations. And I think there were also some types of movement. And those were specifically areas of the body that might be underused or overused. And so rather than getting really complicated you give us the chance to kind of figure out where we use those particular shapes more often.
KATY: We need a tracker. You start by becoming mindful. You're tuning into this concept of shape. There is a shape. I always have a shape. And the next level of mindfulness is to quantify how often you are in those shapes. That you can see the volume. It's one thing to spot the shapes. It's another thing to tally them.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: It's similar to the food pyramid from our previous episode where you want to weight. You want to create an understanding of how these movements relate to each other. So the section of the book that you're talking about is the micronutrient tracker. Where you're looking at do your hips flex or extend or do you have dynamic hips? Those are three different states of a hip. So you look at all the domains of your life and you assess how are my hips participating in sleep? Leisure? Transportation? Occupation? And Home? You're looking at just your hips across a domain. And then you're going to look at just your eyeballs throughout all the domains. And then you're going to look at your feet throughout all the domains. So it really gets you to focus on not just "am I moving? Yes or no."
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: Not just am I doing big bodywork or am I walking? Or am I doing a big bodywork or upper body clamoring? Which was a macronutrient I left off in our last episode which is another big one. This idea of your arms sort of behaving as legs do - propelling you in some way. That could be like going up and down a ladder. You were talking about swimming. Where would swimming go in that pyramid? It goes into this climbing clambering.
JEANNETTE: So for clarification, Katy, where does the climbing clambering sit in the pyramid?
KATY: It goes: Active Rest Positioning, Walking, Carrying, Big Body Work, Upper Body, Climbing and Clambering, and then Making and then the Peak Movements.
JEANNETTE: Perfect. Ok Perfect.
KATY: So that tracker helps you start to look at individual areas of your body. And you know you were talking about - I don't think it's always when we're older. I definitely think as you get older, as you do more with your body for longer - that's what age is. As you've been using your body for a longer period of time, you've got patterns that have established and so the most valuable thing in the book for you might be these micronutrients. To say, "Yes, this is the area. This is the movement that I'm not getting." As well as for athletes too. Sometimes what athletes are doing is doing a large volume of body use in a concentrated amount of time. So you'll be a lot of times younger, although there's plenty of older athletes who've often had to leave their sport.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: But instead of leaving their sport because these micronutrients, these areas are not performing well, I invite them to step back. Instead of "Well, this one part of my body isn't working", to consider that part in the context of the overall movement diet because a lot of times you're just not supporting the movement of that one little spot with a robust enough movement diet that would allow it to regenerate and to continue performing.
JEANNETTE: Yeah.
KATY: Not to regenerate. To restore. To basically rest. To rest and repair and be ready for another bout of movement.
JEANNETTE: Amazing. Thank you, Katy. I think this book is really going to be - I think people are really going to enjoy it and I keep thinking, with all this data, you could collect all these books in and you'd have this really good set of data for where our current movement patterns are. Just my nerdy brain thinking about all that data.
KATY: Well, and that's probably - if there was an app. People say, "You should make this an app." But there's something to the writing process. A lot of this book is reflection. I've heard back from some people who have early copies who didn't just look at it but filled it out to be like, "I learned things about myself that I didn't know were going on inside of myself." And so it's really helpful. I think it's all of that book, but that first part of the book is establishing your whys and sort of your values around movement and also to help you remember movement has become such a negative. In fitness culture, it can often be negative. Not negative in the sense of increasing performance or whatever. But there's a lot of punishing language around it. And we've moved past it as an industry. But the industry's quite large. I can still hear lots of conversations around using movement as a tool to undo what you're eating. When both of those things are things that you need for nourishment. So they're both negative.
JEANNETTE: We're using movement calories to get rid of food calories rather than looking at them as critical inputs.
KATY: Right. Right. We're trying to get rid of them instead of saying "No these are the vehicles for the life force". They're both positives, actually. It's a reframing. And I wanted that to be analog. I put the research in the beginning. It says actually you will adhere better when you write things down. It's a lot easier to...
JEANNETTE: Yeah. I think that's very true.
KATY: I know you had mentioned before you are a writer to process. And I'm a talker. I process through back and forth with people. But obviously, I must also do it through writing because ...
JEANNETTE: Here you are 11 books later.
KATY: All these 11 book babies nipping my feet and my toes.
JEANNETTE: So I have one more question for you.
KATY: Sure.
JEANNETTE: You have the micronutrients are probably the most complicated bit, but you are actually doing a class?
KATY: Yes. If you pre-order the book from the publisher. So you go to mpmpbook.com - I'm going to teach a class that talks about 5 areas of the body where you might have these missing movements. These sticky spots. These areas that aren't moving in the way that you think they are. And by going through that class, it will help you tune in to maybe other ones that you have in your body. You'll learn the premise of learning how to watch how your body moves. It's the ones in the shoulders. The ones in the hips. The ones in the feet. The ones in the core that are quite simple. But once you have it, I think you'll have a better grasp. And then also our book release party for this title. If you sign up for our newsletter or you follow us on social media you'll see information about that come out. I'm going to walk a few people through filling out some of these pieces. So if they have clarifications. We do so many different things in our lives. I imagine they'll be "I'm not really sure how this movement fits. Does it fit into this group or this group?" And you can see me work through it and coach other people through it and that will help you work on your plan as well.
JEANNETTE: Amazing.
KATY: Thank you for reading it ahead of time.
JEANNETTE: I loved it.
KATY: I really appreciate it. I appreciate that and I appreciate you. And I look forward to having you come over and play with all these dogs!
JEANNETTE: I so want to be there!
KATY: I know. Too bad you're so far away. Because I know you'd come over.
JEANNETTE: I know. I want one. Or eight!
KATY: All eight. You can have them. All right. Thanks, Jeannette!
JEANNETTE: Thank you!
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Hi! My name is Deb from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This has been Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman, a podcast about movement. We hope you find the general information in this podcast informative and helpful. But it is not intended to replace medical advice and should not be used as such. Our theme music was performed by Dan MacCormack. The podcast is produced by Brock Armstrong and is transcribed by Annette Yen. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to audio and find out more about Katy, her books, and her movement programs at NutritiousMovement.com.
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