Fit, Fashion, & Function: Are your pants f***ing up your movement?

DOC'S EQUIPMENT REVIEW:

One of the things that I've been paying increasing attention to in the past 8 years with all the traveling I've been doing is how improperly fitting clothing can contribute to decreased performance and/or health issues. I see it with footwear, with sports bras, with eyewear, and even jewelry.

For me, one of the most noticeable pieces of clothing that affect my movement and comfort are pants. When you're forced to sit for hours at a time aboard a flight, or hustling to get to your gate in time, pants that are too baggy or too restrictive have the potential to make life uncomfortable and even unsafe. I'm amazed at how many guys tolerate wearing pants that make them feel like their legs are falling asleep, probably because it's so hard to notice until they try to get up & actually walk.

The more I wear these 5.11 Tactical Traverse pants, the more I like them. In climates as varied as wintertime Canada & summertime Hawaii, the pants have still remained comfortable wears. I don't think I've ever had a pair that looks, fits, & feels as good as these do. Regardless of how much stuff I have to load the cargo pockets with, the elastic "magazine retention bands" inside help keep the phone, wallet, keys, EDC, or whatever else from bouncing all over the place, and the 4-way stretch fabric never makes my legs or hips feel like I'm wearing a tourniquet so that my circulation is never impeded.

Photos courtesy of Fitness Ranes of Honolulu, HI

As a guy who has a bit of a caboose, slacks that are cut without the extra room in the backside make me cringe. The Traverse, however, moves with the comfort of a well-broken-in pair of sweatpants with the look of something respectable enough for a boardroom or a patient consult. While wearing pants that look classy enough to go out to a business meeting dinner, I still feel comfortable throwing a kick vertically without the fabric pinching or tearing.

Since I often have to wear the same clothing to a dinner engagement directly from teaching an all-day workshop on rehabilitative movement (a la Prehab-Rehab 101), Hardstyle kettlebell training, or even martial arts, I was a bit concerned about whether or not the synthetic fabric would show signs of "pilling" with friction, but no signs of any such wear so far. Whether teaching kneeling and ground-based movement drills on Astroturf or dropping shin kicks into a muay Thai bag, the points of hard contact still look unblemished, even after several washes. Unlike some synthetics, this blend hasn't retained odors yet, regardless of how intensely I've sweated in them.

Working on "Sphinx" position during my Prehab-Rehab 101 workshop in Honolulu with participants who came from as far away as Los Angeles & Jakarta!

To have an "all situations ready" pair of pants is quite a feat for me considering all the stuff I spend my time doing - from treating patients, to sprinting after my kids, to training pro athletes, to researching traditional martial arts, to hauling ass from one flight after another, to the rare "quiet dinner & drinks" with the Mrs! The Traverse from 5.11 Tactical leads the pack of all the pants I've ever worn.

My final review: If you live a fast-paced, active lifestyle that requires you to be on point in a variety of situations, these are worth every penny & then some! CEO Tom Davin & crew hit the ball straight out of the park on this one. http://www.511tactical.com/traverse-pant.html

UPDATE: 12/29/14 - After washing & wearing the hell out of these things & long wearing sessions during travel, the fabric is starting to pill around the seat area. I haven't yet gotten a hold of one of those electric things that shaves the pilled fabric off yet, but I'm curious to see how it responds.

Gray Cook & the Functional Movement Screen technologies

In case, I haven't already given you that impression, Gray Cook is a freakin' genius.

In my medical education, only Pavel Tsatsouline himself has impressed me to the same degree as Gray Cook, MSPT, OCS, CSCS. I've been fortunate to study with some of the most sizzling brains in my field, but when you talk to Gray Cook, you realize he's on a totally different level.

Here are the circumstances under which I had the chance to meet him. Pavel called me and asked if I'd like to meet with him and Gray to see Gray's Functional Movement Screen. As part of my medical training and clinical practice, I'd seen or done the standard orthopedics & neurological tests that are part & parcel of western medicine. I'd also seen plenty of stuff like Applied Kinesiology's muscle testing. So I thought I wasn't going into this completely blind.

Pavel & I got to the David Beckham Soccer Academy at the Home Depot Center in Carson, where we met up with Gray. He took us through his Functional Movement Screen (FMS), which looked deceptively simple but soon proved itself to be incredibly brilliant. I approached it at first with the same thick "show me something I don't already know" skepticism that I approached Pavel & his Russian kettlebell training methods.

The 7 movement screens are not rocket science when it comes to executing them, but they show where movement dysfunctions and improper patterning and compensation have occurred. A lot of what I was having to do in my clinic instinctively by watching people move and doing different exercises, Gray had reduced to an almost mathematical simplicity. The same conclusions I had come up with through experience and study, he'd come up with, but in a better, far more complete fashion. His FMS made patient diagnosis easier, more efficient, and most importantly... more complete!

And what made it all that & a bag of chips for me was Gray's COMPREHENSIVE knowledge of how to fix the problem once he'd identified it. Pain elicited in any step of the screen requires the screener to refer out for medical intervention (assuming they're not a physician already), and the screens helped me to see where the lynchpins of pain & dysfunction lied in my patients. Instead of chasing one pain after another around the body as the layers of dysfunction are peeled back, the FMS helps orthopedic medical professionals & pain specialists focus in closer to the source of the pain. Combined with the structural manual medicine of Tui-Na and the corrective exercises inherent in Hard Style Russian kettlebell training, the FMS is a crucial gem of knowledge for anyone working in the fields of fitness, athletics, movement sciences, medicine (pain management, orthopedics, physical therapy), or fire/police/military.

His works are at the TOP of my current "to study" list. 'Nuff said! Get some by clicking on the FMS banner above.