Somehow, efficiency has gotten a bad rap. I mean, who doesn’t want to get the work stuff done quickly and then get on to the fun stuff? (Hint: it’s our broken system in which finishing tasks quickly wins us… more tasks. But I digress.)
In fitness, there are two kinds of efficiency we want to pay attention to, because they do in fact make the work get done better so we can do fun stuff. The first one is structural efficiency. Structural efficiency is kind of an elaborate description of alignment. If we begin our motion from an aligned place, everything goes better. Specifically, we want our basic standing position to have our ears aligned over our shoulders, which should be aligned over our hips, which should be aligned over our knees, which should be aligned over our feet. Nothing should be twisty or tilted.
Functional efficiency is the efficiency of movement. It is recruiting the right muscles at the right time with the right degree of force for the task at hand. We don’t want to waste energy swatting a fly with the kind of effort we’d use to hit a home run. Nor do we want to struggle to move the couch because we can’t get our legs to cooperate.
There are many ways to build our structural and functional efficiencies. One of the best and most fun ways is through Pilates. Uncle Joe has lots of tricks to teach us about aligning ourselves and portioning out our power in appropriate doses.
Want to try? Hit me up!
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