When I ask you what the purpose of exercise is, what would you tell me?
To be strong? To stay young and fit?
What if I told you that you were actually doing the opposite by exercising the way you do?
What if I told you that YOUR exercise has no purpose?
Let’s take a simple exercise, such as a plank. When I ask people what this exercise is for, they will usually respond, “It’s for my core.” When I press them harder on what “the core” means, they say “abs”. While they are planking, I will ask them what muscles they feel. Sometimes the abs don’t get brought up at all! Most will say, “My shoulders.” Many will say, “My lower back.” Others will say, “EVERYWHERE”.
Everywhere?
Is that the PURPOSE of a plank?!
Experts agree on what muscles a plank is supposed to target. Muscles should be felt somewhere between their belly button and their pubic bone. Very few feel it there. Why?
When you use a muscle, you feel it. If you have a very tight back or even debilitating back pain, and you feel your lower back, do you NEED to strengthen your lower back more? Nope!
That’s logical, right?
So, when I had debilitating back pain, I was told to get my core stronger. So, I did planks. All I felt was my back! Why? Because planks work both core AND lower backs. I needed to work my core without using my lower back. I needed a way to get force into one area of my body without putting more force into my already tight back. When back muscles are too strong, core muscles aren’t allowed to work! It’s phenomena called “reciprocal inhibition”. You CAN’T develop your core because your back is winning!
So, how do we get the muscles of the core stronger without making the lower back stronger? That needed to be invented. That became my purpose – make a system that allowed me to isolate muscles!
The purpose of exercise is to strengthen the muscles we need, while isolating them from the muscles that are already overpowering our body.
Balance is the desired outcome of this purpose.
It sounds simple and we believe it is happening. But, it isn’t.
How do I know, and how can you? Look around you.
Forward beings exist. Pain exists from merely living life and being active and not realizing how it affects our muscles. We can create debilitating pain by simply working out. Exercise, the one thing meant to keep us young and strong, often times has the opposite affect on the body. The reason is that exercise affects each person’s muscles differently. But, the one thing it does to everyone is make our muscles pull in the wrong directions. If every exercise we have for the core ALSO works muscles we don’t want then we are screwed! I was!
That’s why DAG Posture needed to be invented. DAG Posture predicts where force goes in our body during exercise. If we can predict where force goes? Well, then we can predict how much and where our body’s muscles develop. This means we can also predict the alignment of the body’s joints, which is the secret to living pain free and playing forever.
To play forever is the purpose of exercise!
