#FITNESSAPPLIED

Rotation rounds out my list of 7 functional movements, and it's easy to overlook because it shows up in the smallest moments — reaching back to grab your seatbelt — as much as the biggest ones, like a golf swing, a tennis serve, or a baseball throw. At its core (pun intended), rotation uses your abdominals and spine stabilizers to twist your torso around your hips, and adding your legs, hips, and shoulders into the pattern only increases the torque you can generate. A simple

Think about climbing a tree as a kid. That's pulling, the sixth movement on my list of 7, and it's built on a combination of upper-body muscles working together to bring your body toward something fixed. It's also the pattern I see people lose fastest as they get older, to the point that some struggle to stand up out of a chair without using their arms to haul themselves up. Without deliberate pulling work, you quietly lose access to a lot of life. My own regular activities —

Lifting a box onto a shelf above your head, rearranging the living room furniture, and a defensive lineman driving a blocker backward all have something in common: they're pushing movements, the fifth on my list of 7. Anything you do that moves an object away from your body counts, and it turns out we push in more situations than we ever give ourselves credit for. The direction you push determines what gets trained: push something straight out in front of you and your chest d

The deadlift is one of my favorite movements on the list of 7, mostly because you're already doing it constantly and probably don't realize it. Lifting one end of a couch? Deadlift. Picking up a heavy box off the floor? Deadlift. The only question is whether you're doing it in a way that protects your back or wrecks it. The one rule that matters most: keep your back straight and hinge from the hips, not the spine. Done well, the deadlift is a whole-body exercise that challeng

The third movement on my list is one people love to skip: the lunge. A lunge is simply dropping a knee in the middle of a step — to pick something up, step under something, or keep your body low to the ground. It looks basic. It is not. Try this quick test: do a lunge with each leg. Is one side noticeably harder than the other? Did you need to grab something nearby, or push off the ground with your hands to stand back up? Those are all signs your legs are compensating for eac

You squat more than you think. Every time you sit down in a chair or stand back up out of one, that's a squat. It's the second movement on my list of the 7 functional movements everyone should master, and it might be the one with the biggest payoff for the least effort. A strong squat pattern makes ordinary life easier: walking, climbing stairs, getting off the floor. It strengthens the hips and glutes, which helps protect the SI joint as you age, and it drives bone density g

Locomotion is the first movement on my list of the 7 functional movements everyone should master, and it's the one people take for granted the most. We walk, jog, climb stairs, and crawl around after toddlers without ever calling it "exercise." But locomotion is the foundation everything else is built on. Lose it, and you lose your independence. That truth hit me hardest on a trip to Disneyland with my best friend Anthony, who was in the middle of chemo treatments. We rented