Default Motor Patterns

The first concept I work on with my clients and encourage people to adopt is what I’ve termed “Default Motor Patterns.” The idea is that our bodies know themselves better than our minds know our bodies, and we want to delegate all the movement to the body to free up mental space. The Default Motor Patterns are what your body does without your conscious effort to control it. Most people have developed poor default patterns by passively adapting to the modern environment. Default Motor Patterns aim to place the least amount of unnecessary stress on your joints and add strength to a movement by distributing it throughout the musculature and connective tissue. Over time, we want to expose ourselves to a large base of possibilities and allow our bodies to choose the right one for the current circumstance.

A basic example would be a hip hinge: Your default hip hinge- the hinge that occurs when you are not thinking about it (when you land from a jump, when you plop onto the couch, when you are on your phone and trip but catch yourself) - should be done in a manner that engages muscles evenly and limits stress on the joints. For most, the quadriceps and lower back are the prime movers and the knees and spine receive unnecessary stress. A proper hip hinge will disperse that stress throughout the body and lessen the intensity on the knees and spine. Once you have trained yourself to hinge correctly, you can choose to do it “incorrectly.” Dancing, lifting odd objects, sports – there are many reasons to move out of alignment – make sure you are choosing to do so rather than having it happen to you passively.

There are two categories of Default Motor Patterns. The first is patterns that have become necessary due to our modern environment. These are the hip hinge, shoulder external rotation, core bracing and active contraction of the hamstrings and lats.

The second category is innate upright movements, namely gait and standing posture. These are trained primarily via tuning myofascial lines. Every “correct” step taken when walking improves our movement and posture, and every “incorrect” step worsens it.

I chose these patterns because they are often poorly done and need to be done frequently in our modern environment. Learning to engage your hamstrings to sit on or stand up from a seated position or when you walk will take some stress off the knees. Learning to “connect” your shoulder to your torso, and therefore to the rest of your body, will disperse tension throughout your body rather than bottleneck it at the shoulder. Proper bracing will shift stress off your spine and lower back and into more muscles. Over time, with each “properly” performed movement, you are further sparing your joints and further loading your muscles. You will also begin to find similarities in movement patterns and thus be able to partake in any activity you desire with the understanding of how to perform it with efficiency, strength and safety. You will regain the building blocks of your movement which remain with you for the rest of your life.