Before We Begin…

I view this series of posts as public service announcements. When it comes to children's health, I'm more inclined to distill existing high-quality information into manageable, bite-sized content for the people I care about.

This post was inspired by an episode of Perform with Andy Galpin titled "Strength Training for Kids and Building Lifelong Movement Skills." Please check out the episode and the fantastic show notes for more information on this important topic: https://performpodcast.com/strength-training-for-kids-building-lifelong-movement-skills

Connecting With Our Bodies: Then and Now…

This project, Inherent, is about listening to the wisdom within and working through the body to access that personal truth that leads to right action. If I had to place Inherent, I would say it exists at the confluence between traditions that have always recognized the importance of connection with our bodies and the emerging science that is beginning to demonstrate the necessity of working with integrated biological systems to move closer to a reliable and useful description of what it means to be a human. I could go on about this topic for quite some time, but for this post, I want to emphasize that cultivating a healthy relationship with our body is essential. Our minds can't thrive when we disregard the needs of our bodies because the reality is that each of us is more of an integrated mind-body system than we once thought.

Connecting With Our Bodies: Then and Now

My guess is that historically, cultivating a healthy relationship with our bodies was much easier. For thousands of years, we were constantly solving movement puzzles that required mind-body integration…

• How do I climb this tree to go get the fruit at the top?
• How can my friends and I transport this mastodon meat back to our people?
• How can I get over these rocks and up the steep hill to the vantage point that will allow me to scout for prey?

All day, every day, movement in every form! Locomotion, balance, coordination, stability, body control. Mind-body connection to the fullest. I imagine that our minds and bodies functioned in unison out of necessity for all but the past few hundred years.

Nature forced mind-body integration, and so to survive was, by a certain definition, to thrive. But today, survival no longer requires movement or mind-body cooperation. But our wiring is the same. The same boxes must be checked for us to feel that really good, deep down, thriving type of good. Ah, what a conundrum! We figured out how to make survival easier but because our wiring or survival circuitry or whatever you want to call it hasn't had time to adapt, we went from a simple binary situation—either you survived and thrived, or you didn't survive at all—to a complex 2x2 grid where survival and thriving exist as separate variables.

Then… 

Now…

Too many of us live in the bottom right box. It's a funny situation to be in where we've engineered our world to allow survival without thriving.

Reality and Responsibility

Alright, so now is not then. Wise words, right? As I tell my boys, if you argue with reality (aka complain), you only lose 100% of the time.

So we are left with the question: what can we do to reestablish a healthy relationship with our own bodies? More importantly, how can we help our kids foster a healthy relationship with their bodies in today's world? Because as we established in a post two weeks ago entitled Upstream, on a population level, kids are not thriving these days.

Radical Responsibility

Well, the answer begins with taking radical responsibility. That means taking ownership of what we can truly influence—free of blame, shame, or guilt.*

When we take radical responsibility by looking the problem in the eye, we recognize that we have to put more deliberate energy into helping our kids cultivate a positive relationship with their own bodies. We have to make it a real priority to help them develop something called 'movement literacy.'

What Is Movement Literacy?

The term movement literacy can sound technical, but it's simply the ability to move with confidence and creativity—developed by solving the kinds of movement puzzles we discussed that require coordination, body control, and stability. I like the term 'movement puzzles' because it emphasizes the idea of play and games.

Kids, and all of us, get better at using our bodies when we experiment and have fun. We decide we want to get from one side of the swimming pool to the other faster, so we experiment with more efficient strokes. We go on a hike with a friend and see some boulders and decide we want to climb them, so we use our bodies in different ways to get to the top. These examples might not resonate with you as an adult—our way of life tends to stamp out these playful, healthy impulses—but I guarantee that kids see and participate in countless movement puzzles every day. Allowing, encouraging, and facilitating their participation in these puzzles is one powerful way to strengthen the mind-body connection.

Why Movement Literacy Matters

I hope I've made it clear that movement literacy is the priority. While it can look completely different for everybody, in my book, it's as close as you get to there being a prerequisite for thriving. Of course, there are individuals with limited mobility who live incredible lives, but at a population level, movement makes a difference.

This is what we have to step up and help our kids cultivate. Just as we know that helping our kids learn to read leads to countless positive downstream effects, the same is true for movement literacy. Don't believe me? Below are some well-studied benefits of physical activity across physical, cognitive, and mental health domains. These benefits are well-documented by the CDC, American Heart Association and many other respected organizations.

The Benefits of Physical Activity

Physical

• Improved cardiovascular and metabolic fitness
  One example is that kids who exercise regularly have a reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes later in life, even when controlling for adult activity levels. Active kids also tend to become active adults, developing lifelong habits that represent one of the most powerful health interventions available.
• Stronger bones, muscles, and connective tissue
  This translates to a significantly lower risk of injury
• Better sleep quality
  Kids who move more and better tend to have improved sleep quality and duration (which creates additional cascading benefits)

Cognitive

The cognitive benefits are remarkable. It amazes me that parents might consider tutors or medications to enhance focus and academic performance before ensuring their child gets at least 60 minutes of quality physical activity daily. Here are the well-documented benefits:

• Better academic performance and executive function (with clinically and statistically significant increases in intelligence)
• Improved attention and focus
• Enhanced memory and learning (this association is especially strong with endurance activities)
• Increased creativity and problem-solving abilities
• Improved brain structure and function. Imaging studies show more efficiently organized, robust, and flexible brain networks that support higher-level cognitive processes and overall brain health.

Mental Health

While the physical and cognitive benefits are impressive, mental health benefits are what truly matter. Physical activity delivers profound improvements in multiple areas:

• Reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression
• Improved mood and emotional well-being
• Enhanced self-esteem and confidence
• Better stress management
• Improved social connection and reduced isolation
• Not surprisingly, physical activity also enhances the effectiveness of other mental health therapies.

In Summary

To conclude, let me summarize the key points:

• We all feel better and enjoy healthier lives when our minds and bodies are integrated. Science increasingly shows that viewing them as separate entities doesn't make sense—true integration comes only through using our bodies and engaging in movement puzzles.
• Movement puzzles can mean almost anything—running, lifting weights, yoga. But for kids, they're more likely to look like natural play: jumping on rocks, swinging from branches, tumbling down hills.
• Today's world does not naturally promote movement literacy.
• Movement literacy—the ability to solve movement challenges creatively through improved locomotion, coordination, stability, and body control—builds physical competence that translates to confidence, adaptability, and resilience.
• Kids with higher movement literacy enjoy extensive physical, cognitive, and mental health benefits.
• Given modern life's realities, we as parents must prioritize helping kids develop movement literacy. Just as we ensure children develop reading, math, and critical thinking skills, we must recognize the crucial importance of movement literacy.

More to Come…

In a future post or two, we are going to cover the following topics:

• A strategy for developing movement literacy - Physical Training
• Key principles for physical training with kids (play/fun, creativity/experimentation, following your child's interests, keeping formal sessions short and game-like, staying safe)
• Dispelling myths about physical training and kids
• A structured approach with endless room for personalization, including Dr. Andy Galpin's "3 I's" framework
• Thoughts on how all of us—parents, grandparents, caretakers, and busy, normal people—can work within and outside existing systems to help the next generation thrive

As always, thank you for reading!

-John

*From "The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success"

When we talk about taking radical responsibility, it can be helpful to have a framework for making this shift. The authors of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership offer a powerful three-step process:

Step 1: Accept Reality As It Is
Shift from believing that the world should be a particular way to accepting that the world simply shows up as it is.

Step 2: Embrace Curiosity Over Rigidity
Move from rigidity, close-mindedness, and self-righteousness to curiosity, learning, and wonder. This shift naturally occurs once our beliefs about how things "should be" begin to change.

Step 3: Reframe Reality as Growth Opportunity
View reality as a "custom-ordered curriculum for our highest development as people and as members of teams and organizations." This bonus step can help us feel more gratitude and move toward full responsibility with less internal resistance.

This framework applies beautifully to our approach as parents helping children develop movement literacy—when we stop arguing with the current state of our movement-poor world and instead take responsibility for creating solutions within it.