The Eight Components to Movement Health

We promise each one is equally significant.   

It’s no surprise, achieving true health is not about just addressing one aspect. It’s critical when assessing someone’s movement; all other components of health are also factored. Mental health, quality sleep, recovery, nutrition, preexisting injury or illness are just some things that can have a tremendous impact on someone’s movement and overall health. 

How can you know the root cause of someone’s poor or limited movement? The answer is unless it was a recent injury, you cannot know for sure. But the more information you can gather, the more likely you’ll come to an explanation.  

At Stretch Affect, we break down movement health into eight individual components, that when accounted for, gives us the information needed to create your personal outline to achieve true health optimization.  

Breath (our gateway) is the foundation for our ideal neurology and movement. It is a tool and a feedback mechanism. It allows us to enter the best physiological state for improvement and self-awareness. If not understood or optimized, it can also be a master destroyer and make other strategies more difficult or irrelevant.   

Recovery (are we ready for more?) is our time of healing. With optimal recovery, our brain and body improve from our last bout of exercise or learning something new. If our recovery is limited, we can end up worse off from exercising. We must sleep well, eat well, and embrace thoughtful, intentional rest to allow for our activity to yield positive gains.   

Mobility (does it move?) is our ability to use our body through the intended ranges of motion. The more mobility we have, the more capacity we have available to move freely.   

Stability (does it stay?) is our ability to overcome external forces, including gravity, workout equipment, people bumping into you, or even a bumpy ride in a car. Our body needs stability or tension in certain areas so that other areas can explore movement. We often think of stability as the absence of movement.   

Endurance (how long?) is our ability to maintain positions or movements for time. This can be in the form of stability, strength, power, cardiorespiratory endurance.   

Strength (how much?) is a measure of how much force we can overcome in different positions and different ranges of joint motion. We need strength our entire lives, not just when we are young. We can view strength as the applied combination of mobility, strength, and motor control. 

Power (how fast?) is an expression of our strength with speed added. Power is important for doing fitness, hitting a golf ball, or just preventing a fall while tripping over a curb.   

Performance (can you do it on command?) is the ability of our Central Nervous System to control our body parts in a safe, efficient way during all types of movement under the pressure of competition or assessment. 

Each of these individual components can improve rapidly if we make the appropriate investment in time, energy, and instruction. Once you’ve achieved an appropriate level of all eight components, you will have the luxury to express your movement health however you’d like. Ultimately, expression of movement health is what begins to recreate youthful confidence that we can all benefit from.  

The benefits of improved confidence can be obvious. But what are the less obvious benefits of movement health to overall health?  

You see, we were designed to move, and our systems were designed to work in harmony. When one isn’t working optimally, it burdens the other systems. When we move well, it supports our Cardiorespiratory system and our Endocrine system; we have improved lymphatic function and even increased immune function to fight disease and infection.   

Imagine feeling less pain and tension and more youthful and energetic, but more importantly, you have the knowledge and tools to keep yourself feeling that way. That’s what movement health is all about, people being more capable of taking care of themselves and helping others do the same.   

 In your pursuit to regain your health, if there are areas that need to be examined further by other experts, we have trusted partnerships with a team of health professionals that are accessible, credible, and reliable.  

If you want to learn more about the movement health side of wellness, let’s get started.