Loaded Movement Training is defined as movement-based resistance training. It combines full-body, task-oriented movement patterns with load, as performance coach John Sinclair explains.

Imagine working on a farm and doing your early morning chores. You may walk while carrying objects such as pails, shovel grain, chop wood, throw bales of hay, move an auger, or perhaps climb a ladder with a tool box. To perform each of these chores, you would move in a specific direction with an external resistance or load. That chore could be considered locomotion with load. 

I have a great deal of experience coaching amateur and professional athletes. In recent past, we have always had Olympic weightlifting as a part of their training programs. In addition to training athletes, I have extensive experience coaching stay-at-home mums and busy executives. All of these folk would perform variations or regressions of weightlifting. The key word here is ‘lifting’. In life and sport we all have to lift certain objects. Lifting could be defined as moving an object in a field of gravity from a low position to a higher position. Most training programs in the past have involved lifting objects in one direction, usually vertical, as in the example of Olympic weightlifting.

Most recently, we have approached a new way of moving load (Loaded Movement Training) for all populations. Shifting is considered as moving an external load through the field of gravity. In life, not only do we lift objects in the vertical direction from a low position to a higher position, but we also shift objects from position to position through gravity. An example may be shoveling, throwing, or simply moving your groceries from one counter top to another.

 

With every new concept that comes into our industry, it is always met with the question:

What is better?

The reality is that neither lifting nor shifting is better than the other. We might argue that they are both necessary for the body and its constituent tissues to adapt efficiently to handle the physical stressors of our daily chores or, indeed, sport. If you choose linear loaded training, such as Olympic weightlifting, for your training programs, we suggest balancing the program by adding some Loaded Movement Training with ViPR. This will ensure a well-balanced training program, which will result in less stress on your body in one plane of motion.