Gray Cook, Tom Myers and Pilates Oh My!

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the Polestar Pilates Educator/Mentor meeting.  In this meeting, we review the Polestar Pilates Comprehensive Curriculum.  If you know me, you know that I get giddily excited about movement and discussing movement and postulating about movement and so on.  If you’ve ever witnessed a moment when I have excitedly tried to explain an anatomical concept, maybe I pulled out an anatomy book to show a picture, you might have even tentatively smiled with wide eyes as you realized just how excited I was.  Well imagine at this meeting an entire room of people just like me.  A room full of people who get that movement is magical…People that agree that we could save the world if we would just take care of our feet.   I was surrounded by people who get just as excited about movement theory as I do.  So as you can imagine, I thought it was a fabulous weekend!

During one of the discussions, my new friend and colleague Ada Wells brought up the theories of Gray Cook who is one of the developers of Functional Movement Systems.  Ada referenced Gray cook’s “joint by joint” idea.  In a nutshell, if we think of the joints as stacked from bottom to top then the mobility and stability of the joints alternates.  It goes like this:

·      The ankles should be mobile joints

·      The knees should be stabile joints

·      The hips should be mobile joints

·      The lumbar vertebra should have stabile joints

·      The thoracic vertebra should have mobile joints

·      The scapula should have stability

·      And the gleno-humeral joint (where the arm bone connects to the shoulder blade) should have mobility.

As an example according to Gray Cook, if a person has knee pain, the best course of action would be to mobilize the ankle and the hip. I wrote about this exact phenomenon in the Blogpost entitled, "The Foot and Knee Pain"  The only difference is I didn’t know what phenomenon I was writing about, in fact when my client asked me what happened, I had to shrug my shoulders and say, “I dunno, but that was cool.”  Then a few months later Ada Wells gave me an answer.

But did this movement geek stop there?  Of course not, once I read the webpage that I was referred to, I began to wonder, “How might this apply to the primary and secondary curves of the spine, and further more how does it apply to Tom Myers idea that extends the primary and secondary curves all the way down the back of the leg to the bottom of the foot.”  (This is absolutely the way my brain works I swear)

As I continued this exploration, I reread, "The Foot: Understanding the Arches" In which, Tom Myers talks about these curves.  The primary curves are what remain of our original fetal position.  Basically, though not beautifully stated, when we are born the back of our body is one big primary curve.  Then as we develop the secondary curves begin to take shape.  For instance the secondary curve at the neck develops as a baby learns to lift its head, and as a baby crawls he begins to develop the secondary curve of the lumber spine, and then as we work our way to standing the curves of our feet begin to develop. 

SO you must be thinking by now (if you’re actually still reading this)  How is she going to connect these two ideas.? Well when I was thinking about this I drew a line to represent the primary and secondary curves of the body and then I labeled the mobile and stabile joints.

I found that Gray Cook’s mobile joints correlate to the primary curves of the body, and his stabile joints correlate to the secondary curves of the body.  This might seem obvious and there might even be a model out there that already intersects these two tidbits but for me this was a new connection.

“So now what?” you may ask. 

Well to be honest, connecting these two models, one of which is very new to me has only brought more questions to mind.  Some of which have answers that I already intuitively know, but are worth exploring with this connection in mind.

For instance, If a person has lost the primary curve in the thoracic spine, have they also lost the mobility? And the reverse: Will working to find mobility in the thoracic spine create a healthier primary curve? (basically this question can be applied to any joint and curve)

Will all knee pain be improved with ankle and hip mobility?  Is the whole “strengthen the quads” idea moot? (That would certainly explain why a lot of people with really strong quads have knee pain)

And of course, how can I make these ideas useful at The Pilates Studio  Well, right now I’m going to start with thoracic mobility.  How can we get it?  What does it do? (That’s right be prepared clients of The Pilates Studio, next week is thoracic mobility week!)

If you have read this far, you have a glimpse into the way my brain works.  Constant wonderings that make magic happen in The Pilates Studio, and when the magic happens, my only answer to “Why did that work?” can be “I dunno, but that was cool!”

Katrina Hawley C.M.A, PMA-CPT

Director of Instruction at The Pilates Studio

And if you made it this far you get to see Ada in a fabulous video.  Once you watch you should definitely subscribe to her channel, She is a wealth of information, and a funny and witty presenter.