One of my favorite guys to hear speak in the fitness

industry is Gray Cook, one of the guys behind the Functional Movement Screen.

Gray has an amazing way of putting complex concepts into simple, easy to

understand terms that I really admire.

The other day I was driving around listening to a recorded

presentation he had done when he dropped another gem -

Perception drives

movement function and movement function drives perception.

This is a very profound concept that I have understood for a

while but had trouble explaining to riders. It is so important, though, because

it explains how your equipment and bike set up can negatively change how you

perform without you even realizing it.

This blog post is a combination article/ podcast. I have

posted my notes from my podcast below, you can read them and get a good feel

for what I am trying to explain. However, I get into more detail on the podcast

and I encourage you to listen to it first before drawing too many conclusions

from the notes.- How your brain interprets things will determine how you

are able to move.

- How you are able to move will determine how your brain

inteprets things.

- Ties into the Physical and Mental Confidence concept of

how your brain percieves things will affect your mental confidence.

- Your brain interprets things on 2 levels 1) conscious and

2) sub-conscious.

- The first is what you actually think/ what the voice in

your head is telling you.

- The second takes place below our conscious percpetion and

there is no way that we know exactly what it is thinking, however what it is thinking has an effect an what we

are thinking and how we can perform.

- Example:

Imagine that I ask you to do a regular squat with your feet

shoulder width apart, weight distributed evenly on your feet and standing on a

solid surface.

Now imagine that I ask you to do a squat with your feet in

the same position but now I want you to balance on the balls of your feet and

to stand on a surface with no lateral friction.

I’m sure you can imagine yourself having a much harder time

with the second scenario. No matter how much your practice and how comfortable

you are in that position your brain will percieve the less stable position and

shut down the strenght and power to  the

legs – you will never be able to produce as much strength or power in the

second scenario.

The only thing that changed was the brains perception of

where you were in space and how stable you were. So your peception drove your

movement function (how well you could squat).

- Example 2:

Imagine that I have a rider who wants to learn how to jump

on his bike. Right now he has no hip hinge – he can’t touch his toes and is

unable to drive movement from his hips and not his lower back.

I can explain to him all day long how to jump but because he lacks the fundamental movement needed to

drive the skill it will feel and seem impossible to him. Because of this, small

jumps will intimidate them because of the lack of consistency and general

feeling of not being balanced in the air.

Now, imagine that this rider has spent a few weeks (or

months) working on their hip hinge and can not effectively move their hips

forward and backwards while keeping a neutral spine. This time when they hit

the jumps things will feel different.

They will feel more consistent with their take-offs and stable in the air.

This increases their confidence and they end up seeing small

jumps as relatively easy instead of intimidating. Suddenly the step up in the

jump line doesn’t look as death defying as it once did. The process repeats

intself until you are sailing over 40 footers with the greatest of steez…

- In both examples yoru performance was affected more by how

you subconsciously percieved the situation and how you were able to move than

anything else.

- One the bike you see this in a few areas…

1) Clipless pedals.

These are like balancing on your toes and standing on a suface with no lateral

fiction (essentially what pedal fl