The Forgotten Movement: Why I Still Obsess Over Walking

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 him an electric scooter to make the day easier on his body, which made total sense. What stuck with me was the line of otherwise healthy adults waiting to rent the same scooters, now rebranded as "electric convenience vehicles." As someone who works in health and wellness, watching people opt out of the most basic human movement pattern before they truly have to is genuinely heartbreaking.

The fix doesn't require a gym membership. The American Heart Association's 10,000-steps-a-day benchmark is still one of the best free prescriptions in health care, and a fitness tracker (I've used a Fitbit for years) makes it painless to see exactly where you stand. If 10,000 steps sounds impossible right now, don't sprint to it. Start at 2,000 steps a day for a week, add 2,000 the next week, and keep stacking until you hit the target. Then hold that number for 30 straight days to actually build the habit instead of just visiting it.

This is exactly why Phase 1 — Conditioning Ramp-Up of the workout program starts where it does: building an aerobic base and movement consistency before anything heavier gets loaded on top. Read more about why locomotion made the list on the Locomotion page, and if you haven't started Phase 1 yet, there's no better time.