Swagger year round with planar training.

You:  “Planar training?  What the heck is that Mike?”

Me:  “Basically it means we train in all 3 planes of motion or 3 dimensionally.”

Why is this important?

Because life is not only what you see in the mirror, nor in life do we only ambulate forward.  Sometimes we move side ways, backwards, turn around, twist, skip, lunge, reach, jump, squat, bend, etc… in different planes and often times in combinations of different planes.

Have you ever watched dancing with stars?

(how amazing are these kids?  Wow, can they move!)

Love it or hate it, you’d probably agree that dancers move well and look good doing it.  They move forwards and backwards, twirl & spin, lift, bend, reach, you name it.  You’d also probably agree that most dancers have fit looking bodies too.

Or

Have you ever heard of this thing called sports?  (Joke).

In sports, athletes need to be able to move in a multitude of planes and fast.  If we’re talking only about the skill positions of sports and not football lineman, we’re talking about sprinting straight ahead, to the left, to the right, shuffling, backpedaling looking over your left shoulder or looking over your right shoulder, dropping to the ground, jumping, twisting, diving, ducking, spinning, reaching down across your body, reaching overhead, reaching to the side, reaching behind, pulling or pushing in the same directions, turning left, right, rolling, tumbling forwards and backwards etc…You’d probably agree that athletes move well and have fit looking bodies too.

You:  “O.K.  So boot camp includes planar training?”

Me:  “Yes!”

That’s one of the innumerable things that are special about your boot camp.  You see, over the course of 3 days, you’ll move forwards and backwards (sagittal plane), side to side (frontal plane) and rotate left or right (transverse plane) and different combinations of these too.  AND you’ll do it from all 3 major joints.  Your hip joint, your trunk and your shoulder joint.

Here are some examples:

	Plane
Joint		Sagittal (front-back)	Frontal (side-side)	Transverse (rotation)
	Hip	Lunge / Squat / Dead Lift	Lateral Lunge	Turn & Lunge / 1-Leg Squat w/ Reach to inside
	Trunk	Plank	Side Plank	Straight Arm / Leg Bridge
	Shoulder	Close Grip Push Up / DB Row	Wall Slide + Overhead Press	Regular Push Up / DB High Row

What’s so great about this?

You won’t be tight or stiff like a body builder, football lineman or a 2-left foot dancer.

(notice the end of the video with the bodybuilders running)

You’ll swagger with fluidity when you move and because it’ll make you look great, you’ll feel great and you’ll strut with a sexy confidence too.

(Now I have your attention, don’t I?-joke)

Now you may not want to play sports or dance, but I’m sure you’d like to always look good and be attractive to others.

That’s what planar training does for you.

Look Great From the Front, the Side and from the Back

Your muscles will be long, firm, tone, proportional and elastic.  Your body will be vibrant and full of energy.  Ever heard the movie quote, “I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave” (said by Nicolas Cage in Face Off).  That’ll be you.  You’ll look good from all angles.

You’ll walk tall and be ready for any challenges or physical opportunities that come your way.  More doors open and you stop saying you can’t because you’re tired, “blank” hurts, you can’t do that, etc… and you start saying, o.k., I’ll try it, I can do that or that’s easy.

Standing Taller

Planar training will also help to correct postural imbalances.  Say for example you work at a desk.  The whole front side of your body gets tight and not in a good way.  Your shoulders and chest, your abs, your hips and your calves.  The whole back side of your body gets weak.  Your upper back, your butt, and your shins.  Your X years old, but you walk hunched over like you’re 80.  No way, too soon.

Change Your Body Boot Camps gets you working pull motions AND push motions, abducting motions AND adducting motions and rotating motions left and rotating motions right.  Notice all the different skipping patterns we do, the jumping jacks, the turning lunges or various plank exercises.  It’s all for a reason.

There’s this saying:  any coach can make you sweat, but only good coaches can develop you cognitively and neurologically or neuromusculary while making you sweat.

You’re learning movement skills and will be able to say, “I’ve got skills”, though if you said that, I’d laugh at you too.

Feeling Younger

When you move in different directions 2 other big things happen.  1) You start remembering how this used to feel.  You remember when you were younger and you could move like this.  It feels good.  It’s exciting.  You automatically feel good about yourself and feel younger.  That’s why, at the end of a boot camp phase, I’ll say, “you could have not signed up and all you’d feel was 4 weeks older, but instead you chose TO sign up and now you feel, 4 weeks younger”.

The 2^nd thing that happens is you have more energy.  Every muscle fiber cell has its own energy storehouse called Mitochondria.

Anatomy of Muscle to Muscle Fiber Cell

Anatomy of a Cell showing Mitochondria

Anatomy of a Mitochondria

If you only use the same muscles day in and day out, you only use the same Mitochondria, but if you use lots of different muscles and especially dormant muscles, you’ll use numerous Mitochondria and get an abundance of energy.  Now isn’t that exciting.

So in closing.

Planar training = training in 3 dimensional movement patterns = feeling better, moving better and looking better.

Take comfort in knowing you’ll not only sweat, but you’ll gain skills too.

Your coach,

Mike Alves

Newton Boot Camp

p.s. how was the length of this article?  Just right or too long?