Strength is Overrated

When people get injured, one of the usual lines they hear form physios is “X muscle is weak, you have to get stronger.”

Not quite.

What you actually need to do is start moving better. Strength and movement are correlated, but very different things.

Let me use an analogy here. Think of your body as an orchestra.

Your muscles, tendons, and bones are the instruments. And your brain is the conductor.

Their joint goal is to create a harmonious melody—this melody would be movement.

When preparing for a concert, an orchestra will start tuning their your instruments (muscles) first.

Individually at first, and then together in sections – brass, woodwinds, strings… these would be your muscle groups that create pulling movements, pushing movements, hip extension etc.

Only when you have all these in order can you bring them all together to start working in harmony and produce great music (movement).

So far, so good.

Now, where does strength fit into this?

Strength would be the volume.

Similarly,

Flexibility would be the pitch.

Now, consider this: simply adding strength turning up the volume – without proper pitch (flexibility), or rhythm (joint control and stability), would result in a loud yet discordant noise.

And that would be a terrible idea, wouldn’t it?