Understanding Movement Patterns

Take your finger and touch your nose. Go ahead, actually do it before you read further. A simple enough task. I’m sure it didn’t take much thought at all. While you didn’t think twice about how to accomplish it, you actually could have performed it in any number of ways. Why did you touch your nose with your index finger? You could have used any of the other fingers and accomplished the task all the same. Why did you use the tip of your finger and not your knuckle? Why did you touch the center of your nose and not one nostril or the other? With the hundreds of options to choose from, why did you perform that simple act the way you did and why didn’t you have to think about it at all, or even consider the many other options that were certainly available to you? We move in repeatable and predictable patterns. Let’s explore why we do this and why it is important.

Our brains are designed to develop shortcuts to solve all sorts of problems and not just for movement patterns, but for almost every activity dealing with perception. We have the ability to thoughtfully analyze every activity, every single movement, but we rarely do. In fact, the only time we are really thoughtful is when we are learning something new or doing it for the first time. We have to be analytical because we have no previous experience to create a shortcut from. I took an Italian cooking class last year and had to roll 100 gnocchi down the gnocchi board. The first 10 were pretty slow and rather inconsistent looking and took all of my attention. As I went along, I developed a pattern, and by the last 10, I was firing them off pretty quickly and pretty uniformly and could even joke around with my girlfriend about who’s were better (hers of course). With repetition I got faster, more consistent, and required less attention, because I developed movement patterns. Although I was nowhere near as adept as my instructor who had clearly done thousands upon thousands, I made progress pretty quickly. When it was over I proudly looked down at my 100 little pasta rolls and noticed that they all were quite a bit fatter on one end than the other. While my pattern served to give me the speed and ability to divert my attention, it developed with a flaw. A flaw I managed to reproduce scores of times with little effort.  I rolled a few more trying to refine my process. I created a handful more symmetrical gnocchi but I was back to being slow, methodical and laser-focused on the task at hand. I boiled them up and they were delicious all the same. My flawed pattern was good enough for lunch, but perhaps not Michelin star.

What was going on in my brain while all this was happening? We have a brain system dedicated to creating shortcuts and a brain system dedicated to thoughtful analysis and they are both working simultaneously all of the time. This idea of these two brain systems was developed by Nobel prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman and described in detail in his best-selling book “Thinking Fast and Slow”. A wonderful read if you haven’t already. Analytic thinking is slow, challenging, energy consuming, and singularly focused. We cannot maintain this system of thinking for long periods or entertain multiple problems simultaneously. If this were our only system of thinking we would be overwhelmed to the point of paralysis. Because of this, we have developed a shortcut system in our brain that controls things at a more “subconscious” level. A level where you act intentionally but don’t have to worry about all the little details, like which finger to touch your nose with. We use our habits and patterns to free our minds from the burden and the labor of analyzing every option and movement decision we make. It is a necessary skill to function, but like most shortcuts, there can be flaws in the patterns we develop.

I think about my little gnocchi often when I’m watching my patients move. I’m observing their patterns and looking for how they solve all of their movement problems. Every pattern developed is or was once a solution to a problem. My patients don’t need to move perfectly, none of us do. they just need to move well enough to solve the problems they are confronted with so they can comfortably do the things they love. In next week’s post, I’ll discuss when flaws in patterns turn into pain.

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