Point of Performance: Chicken or the Egg

I received interesting feedback on a video posted to our social media the other day. The individual that sent the comment was making reference to the deviation in an athlete’s head position during an handstand walk. The deviation, of course, was away from neutral (which, is, according to many textbooks, very important).

Now, a neutral head position is a wonderful point of performance in virtually all movements we see around the gym and for good reason. What if you could keep a neutral head, but couldn’t see where you were going? How’s that for function? Would you just give up your ability to see in order to follow this Golden Rule of fitness? Or, would this task create a necessary exception?

Which comes first, after all? Does the most useful movement make the rules or does following the rules make the most useful movement?

I think you can find the answer if you do the following thought experiment. Pretend the human body could be rearranged and made up of different parts like a kind-of-Mr. Potato Head. Would the points of performance for the clean and jerk stay the same? Or, would they change based on what would work best with the new, rearranged body? If the best, most repeatable way to clean and jerk a barbell became different as the body changed then it’s the movement that makes the rules, not the other way around.

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach