In the world of fitness, everybody wants to be buff and tough! Often people achieve these two goals, but at the expense of durability.
Translation?
OUCH! What did I just pull? Again? Aw man…
Ability is identified easily: you can lift x amount, run, jump, whatever, more, faster, better. Improvement is also obvious and straightforward.
However- if you don’t maintain high capacity in your movements, you will get bit by the injury bug. HARD. But what is capacity?
Capacity can be defined as biomechanics; movement efficiency, even grace. Beautiful movement doesn’t beat up your body. Capacity is the ability to perform the movement at all. Underline this: If you can’t do it beautifully with zero pounds, you can’t do it safely with 100.
Note the 2 pictures: The guy on the right is doing a 1 arm overhead squat. He looks like he has greater squat ability. He is more muscular, and looks stronger. But he can’t straighten out his arm, or sit into his hips like the guy on the left. He is shrugging with both shoulders to squat.
The guy with the beard on the left may not have the same ability, but he easily demonstrates greater capacity in this movement. He is using 2 bells instead of one. His arms are straighter, and he can descend further in his hips. His shoulders aren’t shrugged.
Who looks like the guy with greater ability? The buff guy doing the 1 arm squat. Who looks like he won’t get hurt? The guy with the beard and 2 arm squat.
Why does this matter? It isn’t ability that wins, it availability. Every professional sports team knows this.
So what you say? I’m not a pro athlete. Ok, point taken, so I guess when you get hurt, you will pay for that surgery out of your own pocket.
The solution to durability, and longevity, in fitness, or athletics, is maintaining high movement capacity. This is not a function of muscle strength, or flexibility, But instead the condition of the fascial web. More to follow on how to address this.