[00:00:00] Welcome to the UFFDA! Podcast, hosted by Emily O'Connor and Jordan Rudolph. The UFFDA! Podcast brings you a surprisingly fresh take on everyday topics in health, fitness, and everything in between. We want to open the door to explore new information and new solutions in a way that's easy for you to understand and apply to your own life.
Let's get into today's episode.
Hello everyone, welcome back to the UFFDA! Podcast. I'm Jordan Rudolph.
And I'm Emily Morris.
We are happy as ever to be with you on Season 4, Episode 34. 34. And today we're talking about
The power of physical development.
The power of physical development. So [00:01:00] if you've been following along with any of these over 100 episodes of the UFFDA! Podcast, we've dove into specific topics in regards to more fitness related things, and we've labeled them the power of blank.
Today it's the power of physical development. And another way we could say this physical development is your physical progression, your physical abilities as is. But I'll let Em take it over to kind of give you this because As we exist in unity today, uh, Emily is kind of the head honcho of our physical development.
So I'll let, I'll let you guys get an understanding, uh, the listeners. If for those of you that are not at unity or, um, you know, I've never heard a podcast at all, but give an understanding of like what the physical development is and where there's power there. We'll, we'll, we'll kind of focus on that to make sure it's a, it's an area that's often, we'll get into the weeds of it a little bit.
And you'll hear it from Em here, uh, for, for you guys in a moment, but it's, it's, [00:02:00] it's one of those things that can get neglected or often misplaced, maybe misused. Um, we like to think of it as like, it's, Oh, it's just cardio. Oh, it's just strength training. And there's a lot more to it than that. So we'll, we'll take kind of like a deep dive into it.
Right. Well, like you just said, talking about physical development can often be overlooked or neglected because it can be the journey of the end result, right? So a lot of times we start in health and fitness journey. Most frequently, people do not start here saying they want to get better at doing the things that we're going to ask them to do, right?
Doing a squat with more range of motion or more weight is typically not the goal that someone sets out on a fitness journey with. Certainly can be, certainly exciting when it is, but most frequently, it is not. So, the physical development then side of things comes in as a byproduct and the [00:03:00] how to how we achieve those end results or end outcomes that someone does want to achieve, right?
I want to be able to pick my grandkids up without thinking about it. I want to be able to walk up the stairs without feeling pain in my knee, right? Like those are the things we're focused on, but the physical development is the how we get there. So the increasing the range of motion over time, increasing strength, right?
Measuring those things, we've had multiple podcasts on tracking and how tracking is important from, yes, in some of them we focused on the nutrition side, but also from an assessment side as well. I think we might have done one on quite specifically the power of assessments. Um, I'm not totally sure. I know we did one on assessing.
But. Physical development comes into play where we become better at the journey as we go along the journey, right? We become stronger as we progress in our strength, as we train. We become, we have [00:04:00] greater ranges of motion perhaps available. We, all, all of those things then contribute to that end outcome.
So, in the power of physical development, in looking at that, in really addressing and maximizing that, It becomes more important not to overlook those details along the way. Like, hey, actually I do feel a little bit looser. I feel like I could squat a little bit deeper today. Am I able to do this safely?
Oh, cool, I've been at 25 pounds for my squat for quite a while now. Am I ready to go to 30, 35? What does that feel like? Those intention, the intentionality behind some of that becomes more and more important to continue to deliver a above and beyond stimulus to the body to drive progress towards that end outcome as well.
Season 4, episode 23, Advantage of physical [00:05:00] assessments. There we go. Um, I'm like,
I know it was in there somewhere. Yes.
Recently. Yeah. Within the last few months. Yeah. So the, the, the main point too, is understanding a lot of times when people think of the gym, they think right away, it's all about strength training, or it's all about a certain number of reps or like it's, it's usually predicted around a performance type of thing.
And what that physical development that Em just spoke of and what we use as here, We go through this physical assessment portion and we're looking at range of motion. We're measuring mobility and range of motion in some of these areas. We're looking at left to right sides. We're looking to see how your body moves through a certain pattern.
We are for 90 something percent of how we program. Our training programs, our fitness programs, a majority of them from the physical side of outside of like cardiovascular aerobic work is based on movement. So, so we're a movement first gym, not a muscle [00:06:00] first gym. We train our muscles through movement and we deem that lifestyles and lives are lived in three dimensions.
We're not lived in single dimensions. So we don't waste a ton of time on single joint exercises. For an example, a bicep curl, although a bicep curl could be argued as one of the most valuable strength training components or functional fitness components of our lives because of the ability to pick something up and curl it towards our body.
Uh, we would focus on that, but we focus on the movement side of things. Majority of what we do. So looking at Triplanar movements, three dimensional directions, how your body resists and moves in each plane of motion, uh, and how your body interacts with those, like that's all included in how we move and what our physical development is, along with the traditional stuff.
Again, what Emily just told you, but also the stuff of strength training records or personal records, PRs, um, max out, those things are applicable when they're [00:07:00] applicable, but not everybody goes through them. It's the physical development of that evolution of your body and what it's capable of and us being nerds We track everything and we like to retest a lot of it a lot Yeah, and the power of that is to show people that there's more to it than just the strength number or how many reps you can do.
We show them that there's progress in many different ways, and that's all from the physical, physical development side of things.
Right. Well, and if we don't track it, oftentimes these things can get overlooked and not seen, right? Because we don't notice that we're stretching to our end range of motion.
It feels the same for us, even if that end range of motion is greater and greater each time, right? If you're pulling your knee to your chest, it will constantly feel like you're in the end range of motion of your hip, most likely, but you might not notice that your knee is getting closer and closer and closer to your chest.
An outside coach or an assessment or a test that can repeat [00:08:00] this can show, oh, we're closer On this one, than we were previously, progress is being made, this is unlocking something new that you can then lean into as the athlete, as the gym goer, to maximize your body's potential to another degree. Right, so it unlocks those next steps and kind of directs some of where that journey is to go based on what we've done to get to that point.
And the assessment and reassessment is just how we get there.
And as a gym, we should be understanding what physical part of your lifestyle is, through the health and fitness side of things. We just want to make sure it's beyond the reps and sets. It's beyond what your body's doing in the gym. There's more to it.
Let's take advantage of all of it if we understand all of it. Let's show you then how you are succeeding and improving. and making sure it's not just about the number on the scale, but more so how all of these things are getting better. And all of a sudden you're in [00:09:00] less pain, you're moving better.
You're able to do more things. Yeah, sure. Strength goes up. Like all gyms should help you with strength. So if all gyms are assumed that they help you with strength, what makes us different and how do we do things different? This is just how we've evolved to doing things because this is what we feel people have benefited from and should benefit from.
So that physical development side goes way beyond Uh, body composition and then reps and sets like it, there's so much more included into it and, and a lot more of that we get excited about within that process and sharing it with people too.
Well, certainly. And it, again, just makes sure, and it, ties it back into what's important to you as well, right?
Like, how much weight can I goblet squat is likely not an important goal necessarily for most people, but can I play with my grandkids, another two examples I've used before, is critically important, right? As we move, is traveling and being able to navigate food choices in Cities and in eating out [00:10:00] is critically important if you're someone that travels a lot So maximizing that allows you to build your to draw back to another podcast episode build your capacity to handle some of that unknown and be able to Tackle those things as they arise, right?
So you're not stuck in a box that Society that life that situations might tell you you're in we have the ability to expand that box to break outside of it But sometimes we just don't know that without more physical development without seeing that physical development and that reassessment and not only from a gym side, but from a life side.
How does that go? How does that play into stress management, play into nutrition and improving you as the human mover, but also just as the human period?
Yeah. Yeah. Everything that you can think of from the health and fitness side of things that can be done in a gym or that can be done for a performance is part of physical development.[00:11:00]
It's part of the cardio plan. It's part of how your body physically is. All of that stuff plays a role. All that stuff matters. Load versus capacity, by the way. Season two, episode eight, which aired on November 7th, 2022.
I knew that was a while ago. Yeah.
Still November. Oddly enough. So the big thing is guys, when we, when this is us getting in the weeds, it's probably more for, um, a little bit more of like a coach talk, trainer talk.
When you hear some of how we say things, but this is what we believe matters And, and, and should play a role into the behaviors and the processes of like how people go through a journey. It, it shouldn't be left out. You should be understanding that and should be understanding that there's some, uh, differences in how we view physical development or how we view our services, our skills here through in that, uh, throughout that, uh, and within what we do.
But the physical development thing is a, is a real key that oftentimes people don't pay attention to, especially if it's not measured or retested. Uh, we like to [00:12:00] keep it as part of the main process of how we go through and things and evolve or progress of how we go through things and evolve, uh, because this is part of what we measured in when you came in and, and physical development is what you're here to do.
And it has a lot of different aspects. Again, it includes the flexibility, it includes the strength training, it includes your power output, your capacity, your aerobic abilities. All those things are part of this physical development and, uh, there's way more to it than just being strong, even though that's kind of like our cheat code and X factor through everything else.
Right. It's just all encompassing.
All encompassing. I
think that about wraps it up. As always, thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode of the OOFDA podcast. Share this with someone who you think will find it valuable. Leave us a rating, a review, subscribe, download, all the things that help us to grow organically.
And we'll catch you in the next episode. Bye everybody.
Thanks, everyone.
I don't know if you can see it, but I'm in the middle of the road, [00:13:00] and I can't see anything.
