A year of abundant health starts with setting smart goals and taking proactive daily steps to support your body being its best. Movement and exercise are both essential foundations to living your best life. Movement and exercise help you feel better physically, but emerging research shows they may also help your brain stay sharp and focused.
Before you can begin a daily exercise routine, you’ll need your spine and joints to move well. If you have fixations or limitations with how your spinal joints move, it will be difficult to safely and painlessly move through your entire range of motion. With a limited range of motion, you may increase your risk for injury as other joints compensate and become overloaded. Here are the three types of movement that are key to optimizing your health.
Segmental: As the foundation of your spinal motion, segmental movement describes the motion between each set of bones in your spine.
Regional: Your spine is divided into four primary regions: cervical (neck), thoracic (mid-back), lumbar (low back), and sacral (tailbone).
Whole Body: When you combine your spine’s segmental and regional movements with your extremities, you have whole-body motion.
Next Steps:
Each of these movement types builds upon the other. To have optimal whole-body movement, you must ensure that your regional and segmental motion is tip-top. Problems with segmental motion can cause problems with your regional and whole-body movement. We know that abundant health starts with moving well and feeling great. So, if you notice pain or limitations in your movement patterns, schedule a visit with us today.
Science Source:
How Simply Moving Benefits Your Mental Health. Harvard Health. 2016
7 Steps to Boosting Energy. Mayo Clinic. 2017
Setting Smart Goals for Success. Mayo Clinic Health System. 2020
Constitution. World Health Organization. 2021
