Movement Bottlenecks Unlocking Human Potential

Constraints-based learning is a framework that recognizes how motor skills emerge from the interplay between the individual, task, and environment. Skill acquisition occurs through exploring and exploiting the possibilities within these constraints. External cueing is a technique that directs attention to the desired outcome or effect of a movement, promoting automaticity, efficiency, and coordination. This approach enhances performance and skill retention. Constraints-based learning and external cueing offer valuable approaches to motor learning that can optimize teaching methods and help individuals reach their full potential in various athletic pursuits.

The brain needs boundary conditions (constraints) to help it learn and explore movement.

Overthinking during the golf swing

We know constraint-based learning and external cueing can bypass the cognitive constraints of overthinking, creating a more efficient learning environment for movement or athletic skill. These ideas are also handy when rehabilitating from an injury, again to minimize overthinking when learning a new way to move. Still, internal constraints will always be the first bottleneck in motor learning, skill acquisition, or performance.

There are many bottlenecks to movement.

For example, if we were to take two different baseball pitchers who both throw 91 mph, our goal was to get them to 95 mph. One of the athletes has a history of rotator cuff tendinopathy, labral pathology, previous thoracic spine limitations, and hip stiffness. Compare that with an athlete whose joints move well and have no injury history. Which one would you want on your team, and who would have the easiest time achieving 95 mph? You would like an athlete who moves more efficiently with minimal injury history. The health of your tissue and the health of the articulations is what allows you to learn. The brain only knows what is going on in the external environment based on the information provided by the mechanoreceptors providing the afference from the joint. Suppose you think of tissue as a tool that senses and relays information. In that case, you realize that if the information is clean, up-to-date, and accurate, the neural network can learn whatever skill you throw at it much quicker because it has up-to-date information and knows where you are in space. It also can make minor adjustments based on the variables in the external environment. The health of the joint is the rate-limiting enzyme for how well you can learn a skill.

You can’t move where you can’t move. An athlete’s pitching technique is dictated by what the tissues can do in addition to pitching specific task constraints

Workspace: what can this particular joint do independent of the surrounding joints?

Hip controlled articular rotations. Hip CARs

Movement creates space, movement maintains the space, and space governs movement. Space is the ultimate prerequisite measure of movement potential. Space is the potential degree of freedom for movement possibility. Degrees of freedom are the ability to move freely without constraint. A degree of freedom is not a singular thing regarding movement. We move in "zones,' and those zones overlap. From a mechanics point of view, a degree of freedom is a variable that a system can move into that allows the ability to have freedom of motion. With this definition, range of motion cannot be just one thing in each direction. For example, let’s take the shoulder and want to move into various flexion potentials (raising the arm overhead). Describing flexion as a zone with hundreds of possibilities makes more sense. The range of motion into flexion, which we call the flexion degree of freedom, is not one degree of freedom; it is options of movement in the flexion zone. A degree of freedom is an opportunity for the system to control itself. We want the system (the body) to learn about itself and to be able to control itself in any way possible. You have movement zones, not individual ranges of motion. These movement zones consist of degrees of freedom, which are how you learn to explore space.

Movement Zones of the shoulder

Workspace > Everything. Having sufficient workspace is a fundamental concept when trying to optimize the human movement experience. Without the workspace, all other desires or training outputs, like coordination, speed, strength, balance, etc., cannot be achieved. If there is no space to move, then there is no space to govern, and if there is no space to manage, eventually, the system will lead to chaos.

For the space to be usable, the nervous system has to create boundary conditions to define the area and then monitor subsequent changes. The joint capsule is the body's way of determining the space surrounding an articulation three-dimensionally for the brain. Information coming from the capsule is the first information that makes it to the CNS. Information is spatially constrained. The brain will receive data from the tissue proximal to the central nervous system faster than the tissue distal to the CNS. The tissues of most significance are prioritized and closer to the center; those tissues relay their information more quickly than those further away from the CNS. Movement creates afference; afference shapes cortical maps by defining the workspace.

Dissection images of the shoulder capsule

Because the brain is sequestered deep inside the skull and has no direct connection to the outside world, the body's different tissues and sensory receptors are how the brain determines what is going on in 3D space. When you want to reach for something on the top shelf, your brain does not see what is happening at your hand. Your eyes see the cup, which helps determine the proximity and estimates how much force is needed to overcome gravity. While this is all true, the only thing the brain sees is the space your shoulder can move into, which creates the movement of shoulder flexion to reach for the cup. If the space is inadequate, the surrounding joints and tissues must compensate.

The nervous system creates a spotlight of attention

Neural information is spatially constrained, meaning information coming from tissues closer to the space of the articulations gets to the brain faster than information from a distant muscle. The body sees itself from the inside out. If you look at the anatomy and the neurophysiology, it is very distinct that the "stuff" closest to the space is the most important. The nervous system craves the information that will determine the space faster than anything else. In order of importance, the body sees that the space and the deepest tissue are the most important to maintain, while everything else is a tool to monitor the space along with the deep tissue.

Capsular space governs the workspace, which regulates the global workspace or how you move in the external environment.

MRI Arthrogram showing the capsular space

The quality of the capsular tissue is essential. The capsular tissue is what provides afference or information about what the articulation is capable of performing. When you look at a typical workout, where is the focus on maintaining and improving how the capsule manages, accepts, and produces force? It is not there. In every joint other than the spine, the next thing you will find after the capsule is rotational tissue. The rotational muscles help regulate the tension within the capsular tissue, which defines the space, which ultimately is what the brain needs regarding moving.

 We can improve how people exercise (which is a made-up thing anyway) to make it so that the exercise means something to the body instead of to the activity, which is what the standard training model shows us. The standard model wants you to get better at the feat of strength rather than using the feat of strength to get better at You. You are not trying to bench press; you are using the bench press to change the internal system. The standard model is focused on self-organizing; how do you organize yourself into the ability to do a particular thing? We shouldn't focus on self-organization; instead, we should focus on the determinants of strength. The accomplishments of strength are just something you do with the stuff you have; it's not the goal of training.

The body's movements originate internally. The body executes activities internally as well. Internal constraints are always the first to overcome. External displays of motion are an inner expression of internal function.

In the standard training model, exercises must be cycled and changed to avoid accommodation. Accommodation is when we get more efficient at a task. We need to minimize accommodation if we are trying to create new adaptations. The standard model solution is to create variety in the exercise selection. What if we do things differently? Accommodations happen on the inside, not on the outside. We need to change the thing that is producing the exercise. What would happen if we changed the anatomy we bring to the activity? External movements are just an expression of your internal function. Internal stagnation is where no more adaptation occurs in the biological elements, with which your mechanisms can learn to use more beneficially. If we stop adaptation where it is and only focus on external training, the internal environment is what starts to break down, and the internal environment, therefore, leads to accommodation. We have to change the shape of the anatomy consistently. If we can change the shape of the anatomy to improve the ability to absorb energy, we will delay or stave off the accommodation process. Bringing a new body to the exercise or the lift will allow the adaptation process to continue.

The brain constantly looks for information (afference) to solve movement puzzles.

The movement itself is not the variable we can manipulate because it constantly changes to solve the riddle in front of it. The neurological mechanisms and biological elements have to solve the puzzle internally. We target the internal system to optimize it to produce proper motions rather than target the movement itself. When we know the system's capacities, we can lay out specific tissue requirements, allowing for precise training of each element or mechanism. Training at an accurate level will enable us to improve the system's overall quality, giving the system a better opportunity to solve movement riddles in the future.

Tissues require precision for optimized restults