4 Ways Natural Movement is More Challenging than Machine Repetitions

If you find yourself becoming comfortable in your current gym routine, mixing it up could be the best way to get the most out of your body’s capabilities. Machine repetitions are easy enough, but after a while these can become extremely tedious and you may feel as if you are just doing the same workout each time you go to a gym.

But, if you choose to adopt a natural movement-orientated workout, each exercise session will feel different as you challenge yourself against the environment in front of you. Here’s the core reasons why you’ll get more out of natural movement workouts than machine repetitions.

Undertaking the same training routines in the same environments can cause limitations to your capability and injuries, due to overusing the same muscles and mindlessness during a workout. By varying your movement patterns to different spaces and environments, you can give you an added sense of freedom as you exercise, as you’re adapting to the ‘equipment’ (i.e. the trees, walls and structures) in front of you. Forcing yourself to make exercise routines with the environment in front of you is a key aspect of making natural movement workouts more challenging than your standard machine-based gym session.

With machine repetitions, you tend to choose a muscle set to work and focus your efforts into strengthening these areas. Pushing yourself through repetition after repetition on the same machine may help build that specific muscle up, but you aren’t giving your body the overall workout that it needs. With natural movements, there isn’t a leg day or an arm day - every day is an all-around body workout. Having to push your entire body through a workout can be testing at first, but the challenge will be something you thrive on as you become more accustomed to natural workouts.

When you’re undertaking natural movement exercises, the challenge should be to solve problems, arguably, only you have faced. Shifting your workouts to make you think more technically will increase the difficulty of your exercises - using the environment in unique and unusual ways that require a longer thought process will in return give you a more challenging workout. Going to regular gym and doing machine based repetition requires no ingenuity from the user, as the problem they face is straightforward and self-explanatory, making it an easy routine to complete.

The whole reason for going to the gym is to use the machinery to complete a repetition-based workout which will improve your body strength - it’s a specific task you have set out to complete. With natural movement, it’s completely different. Your daily movement patterns need to include actual challenges to ensure you’re getting exercise into your day. Covering various terrain and obstacles as part of your daily routine may seem a simple task, but to really get the most from your natural movements, you need to push your exploration and ingenuity to the limits to align your everyday tasks and exercise.

For exercise enthusiasts who want to push themselves, opting for a natural movement-based exercise plan will give you a more rewarding challenge than going to a traditional gym. Not only will repetitions be obsolete, you’re also creating unique and technical problems for your body to solve, which will make your muscles work harder during your always-on workout.