✨ 3 Types of Movement that Prove It Doesn't Have to be Harder

Easy is better sometimes.

🎉 Happy Friday, Friends!

Here's a question...

When did you start believing that a workout only "counted" if it was hard?

I hear this constantly in the industry. From a walk being discounted as "just" a walk to folx who feel like they didn't go hard enough during a session because we spent a little extra time on breathing or releasing before getting into it. I hear it when people congratulate themselves or others for working out even though they were already exhausted or under-nourished, under-hydrated, or extra stressed. Culturally, we've internalized the idea that difficulty = value.

It doesn't. So let's talk about why and what movement has to offer when we stop treating difficulty as the entire point.

Three Types of Movement You May Not Have Heard Of...

➡️ Movement can be explosive. When a motion is "explosive," it's usually referring to jumping or quick changes of direction. It's easy to think these types of movement are just about athleticism, or that they're inherently harder than other movements. But explosive movement isn't just about training your body to switch up quickly, it's actually about training your nervous system to respond quickly. It builds coordination and reaction time that matters in your actual life, not just in the gym. As we move through perimenopause and menopause, this kind of agility work becomes genuinely important for things like fall prevention and maintaining the fast-twitch muscle fibers we naturally start to lose as well.

So that doesn't have to be "harder." It can just be bigger or faster.

➡️ And explosive movements aren't the only alternatives to difficult ones either! Think about expressive movement. Dance, rhythm-based exercise, anything that asks your body to move in ways that feel like a release, or maybe even creative. This is one of the most underrated tools for completing the stress cycle. Your body holds stress as physical tension, and expressive movement is one of the ways we actually discharge it, not just manage it mentally. That's why we have historically shaken and danced across every time, culture, and location as humans! These are responses to hard times that actually move the stress out and away. You don't even have to sweat if you don't want to. You get the benefits either way.

➡️ What about controlled movement? Think slow, intentional, and precise. This is where you build the mind-body connection that makes everything else more effective. This is your tai chi, maybe your breathing exercises, yoga, slightly more strength-forward stuff like Pilates, or more small movement exercises like barre. When you slow down and actually feel what your muscles are doing, you're once again laying that neurological groundwork. You're teaching your body something it will remember.

Some of these activities are still hard, yes. You might still break a sweat doing some of these. But they're not about pushing yourself to the outer limits of what you can do. A lot of these activities are "difficult" because they involve using different parts of your brain, not just pumping the heaviest possible iron or running the fastest possible mile. And a training practice that includes all or a few of these modalities is more complete and sustainable than one that just keeps trying to make the same old movements more challenging indefinitely.

So let's consider that next time someone starts getting all excited because they hit the gym instead of eating breakfast...

With you as we branch out and train our brains,
Dana