BABY MOVES #4

Time to add a few new things for the movement toolbox (building on FD05, FD09, FD13, FD14). And as always – integrate the sights, sounds, touch, language, and communications.

NOTE: Most guidelines are built for “birth at 40 weeks”. If your baby came early – it is recommended to “correct” or “adjust for due date”, specifically in movement. *Learn more about corrected age HERE.

Try This

Supported Sitting

Gently put your baby in a supported sitting position. Depending on where your baby is at in the progression of sitting, you might find yourself supporting them under the armpits or maybe mid torso. As they develop stability from neck to bum, you’ll progressively support their trunk/spine from lower positions, eventually supporting just above the hips, as they learn to do it themselves. Here are a few ways to challenge the stability and control in the trunk.

Cue your baby to arch the back and upper body by gently stroking the lower back while getting their attention with a toy held high up in front of him/her. This trains forward and backward upper body motion from the hips while sitting. Sitting directly behind or to the side of your baby while you support their sitting is helpful here.

Move an interesting object up and down in front of the baby. The thing to look for and work toward is getting the head, chin, neck, and trunk moving.

Have them explore freely with hands while in supported sitting. This can be done with the baby in your lap, while sitting at a table, and placing interesting objects in front of them.

With any of these – do for as long as your baby remains engaged.

Grasping and Reaching Cues

Grasping and reaching can be encouraged through touch, by stroking one hand/palm/arm at a time with a toy/object. Encourage the grasping and reaching in all the positions – back lying, side lying, tummy time, supported sitting and upright. As a progression – repeat on legs and feet.

Encourage the use of both arms and hands together in response to a stimulus (things might be going to the mouth). Also encourage alternate sides of the body to grasp and reach, promoting single arm use, as well as crossing, and initial twisting. Pushing up on arms during tummy time may signal tummy time reaching.

For both supported sitting and as a tummy time modification – here are a few springboards for things to add in to grab, reach, and look at – rubber band pan/bowl, water + stuff in a clear bag or jar, open water play (have a towel ready).

Place objects within as well as just beyond the reach of infants, encouraging them to reach.

Throwing it back to FD13 – social and emotional motivation are a big part of learning and reinforcing goal oriented behaviors (which is just another way of saying moving with intention). This intention encourages development. One example is how the eyes are used with intention to look at something, the eyes moving with intention encourages the head to turn, which encourages the neck to twist, and the shoulders to follow, and eventually the body – from head to foot. Keep up the encouragement and excitement as you support the progression of things.

Creativity Mode – Unlocked

Movement variety, movement variety, movement variety. Here’s a few more that want to join the party – location variety, posture variety, position variety. Creativity helps variety.

Everyone has the ability to produce creative outcomes – it’s just a matter of belief (FD16). Challenge yourself to think of ways to keep it fresh for your baby (and yourself). It’s easy to fall into a routine (which has its place, babies thrive with routines), but when doing specific movement training, or really any baby wiring, keep an eye out for ways to keep it fresh and stimulating for your baby. Find as many things in the house that could safely be used with a baby – it may even surprise you how many things can become baby play things with a little creative thinking. Try showing/talking about foods.

DAD MOVES

FD14 planted the seed for “The Active Dad”. The premise here is to join the journey of baby movement by building some awareness of your own movement patterns. That seed was planted with the intention to build better Dad moves. Since fatherhood is foundational, it only makes sense to get right to foundations for movement by getting back to basics, and back to stable foundations, alongside baby.

Getting right to the point, regardless of how you personally move, as age goes up, the amount of thought put into movement tends to go down – the intentionality slips away. And since Fantastic Dads was born from sport – I’ve reached out to some of the top minds in human movement and human performance – to build progressions that any dad would benefit from. The goal of Dad Moves is to get back to moving with intention, and sustain it for longer.

In the coming months, the Dad Moves progression will build out from the following foundations:

1 Breath
2 Posture
3 Stability
4 Movement
5 Skills of the Sport of Dad

This is not a fad. This is not an exercise/workout routine. Dad Moves is built for any dad that wants to learn to move and breathe in a way that is fluid, smooth, effortless, and unconscious. AND – when we talk about the THINGS THAT WE CAN CONTROL – learning about our own body, health, and movement is one of those things we can control. We have full control of how we show up, and the mindset we take (hopefully a curious mindset that lets us experiment and find what works for us and our families, over time).

We have to mention it. Consult your physician before changing your physical activity.

Meet Alex Bunt. He’s a physical preparation coach for Olympic and Pro Sport Athletes. He’s here to give an intro to Breath – getting the diaphragm moving [YouTube, 1min 53sec] (or click image below). This is the foundation to core stability. Overall stability starts within. Why? Without proper breathing, no movement can be optimized.

More to come. Reach out with any questions or requests.

The Gift of Movement

Humans are born to move, yet modern human life has become structured in a way that makes it very easy to avoid movement – or at least movement variety. This isn’t about elite fitness, endurance athletics, or abs of steel. This is the gift that quality movement enables – freedom to move the body with intent – to express wants, needs, emotions, thoughts, and ideas. When we move better (and with less creeks and pain), we think and feel better.

The gift is given to children, easiest, by a caregiver who models activity and movement and is supportive of their child’s physical activity and variety of movement. Or is it?

Researchers at Laurentian University showed in a 2010 study that children who received greater support for activity from parents, who also rated physical activity as being enjoyable, were significantly more likely to engage in one hour or more of daily physical activity when older.

But these things are always being looked into for greater understanding – science is a continuum. A 2017 study and a 2019 study explored how child and parent perceived movement and sitting behaviors. These studies seemed to indicate that lack of movement was due to children observing this in parents and friends, or because there wasn’t much else to do (boredom), or because there wasn’t access to active play or outdoor play (sometimes due to things like poor weather). This gives weight to the idea that parents may be able to buffer their own sedentary habits (in cases this is less in their control), by simply supporting and encouraging more active movement in children vs supporting and modeling it, as previous studies assumed.

Again, movement doesn’t have to mean crazy amounts of physical activity. Movement means finding ways to regularly move with variety. It’s little choices and actions that add up over time.

NASA has been studying sedentary (extended time seated) patterns for years – in order to investigate how the body adapts to weightlessness. Would you take $18,000 to stay in bed for 70 days? These are the kinds of tests they do and those that participate leave with interesting stories. The research has been clear over decades of work that sedentary behavior (lots of sitting, little movement variety) quickly pushes muscles into atrophy, cardiovascular health depletes, blood veins and bones actually weaken. Basically if you don’t use it, you will lose it.

Turns out that even people who meet generally accepted physical activity guidelines are still at risk of compromised health if they sit for long stretches of time.

Work is where sitting happens a lot – and a place where standing desks have become the rage in recent years (since about 2010), even if they may not make as big of a difference as previously hoped. Experts, now, regularly point to the need for people to get up and actually move with variety and intention on a consistent basis. Moving is the critical thing – and it doesn’t have to be a workout.

And bringing it back to early childhood – a study in February 2020, which tracked movement in toddlers and babies found that even though most toddlers have adequate physical activity, they still have substantial stretches of sedentary (seated) time, which is a concern given what science now knows about active vs sedentary implications on health.

The Gift of Movement is an attitude that movement variety is beneficial and that long stretches of sitting can be broken up with movement in between. No hard numbers exist on this front in the research, but that hasn’t stopped researchers from looking at ways to make high impact interruptions to typical movement patterns. An April 2020 study showed health benefits to 4 second bouts of activity every hour. First 8 minutes abs, then 7 minute abs, and now the 4 second workout? Not exactly, but in the study, these regular 4 second sprints added up to 33 min of time spent dedicated to this each day. Try picking up the pace on that bathroom break.

These kinds of findings add new information to the puzzle, which is shaping up as… “If you find yourself sitting for most of the day, try to rise frequently and move, preferably intensely, as often during the day as possible and for as many seconds as you can manage”. Little moves go a long way, but the most impact is found if built on strong foundations. Work smart.

This section has tidbits from around the web that are typically on Dads minds.

Creative Springboard – SIT Methodology

Creative thinking tools are many. The more powerful ones boil down to a process for looking at a problem in order to come up with creative solutions. One such tool, Systematic Inventive Thinking, gives thinking springboards such as Subtraction, Addition, Multiplication, Division – in order to reframe a problem in a new way. Try applying this to baby progressions.

At Home – No Equipment Movement

Take a deeper dive into “Olympic Athlete training made approachable” via Alex Bunt Training. Alex has built some excellent movement guidance on his website and youtube channel. From beginner to advanced, see his programs adapted from Olympic Skiers and NHL Players and Elite Athletics.