​Safety first, always.

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Movement and exercise can lead to injury. We minimize this risk by putting safety first, always. We do this by learning proper form and execution while always paying attention to how we feel and adjusting accordingly.

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Listen to your body, listen to your brain. If something feels off or wonky or uncomfortable or painful, gently discontinue the movement and rest. Injury can require dedicated rest, rehabilitation, and sometimes medical intervention. Often though, injury can be avoided simply by paying attention and responding thoughtfully before a discomfort becomes a pain. TMF students learn how to do this with the phrase, “Be done when you’re done.”

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This material, when practiced in full, is meant to reduce risk of injury while increasing quality of life in a variety of ways. Always be sure that the space in which you’re working out is safe and clear of potential hazards.

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Be done when you’re done.

Listen to your body and respond appropriately.

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Conventional fitness often tells us to ignore feeling bad for the sake of progress. The old, “no pain, no gain” mentality is objectively and scientifically incorrect. We can indeed ‘make gains’ without pain involved. TMF students learn to respect how they feel and discontinue movement when it’s right for them. This is helpful for both staying safe and for making exercise more enjoyable and repeatable.

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At this foundational level it is more important to move with regularity than it is to move with intensity. Allowing workouts to be enjoyable without turning into misery can be critical to staying consistent and committed. Intensity can always be added later, once habits have begun to form.

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To be done when you’re done means that as soon as you feel like you want to be done with a movement, for any reason, that you choose to discontinue that movement. By choosing to always pursue feeling good, we’re able to pursue both progress and safety simultaneously.

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The Thoughtful Framework

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What are we doing and why are we doing it?

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Exercise and nutrition can quickly become unnecessarily complex and overwhelming in this modern era of social media influence and information excess. Having a thoughtful framework simplifies the process of choosing the ‘correct’ movements and approach that is right for you. We start be learning the most effective movements for most people, then over time, we build on those skills with more variety and specificity. These ‘Core Four’ compound muscle movements (SQUATS, PUSHES, PULLS, DEADLIFTS) should be around 80% - 100% of all resistance exercises performed at this level. As we learn to incorporate intensity and pursue feeling good, we will naturally increase challenge and variety while adding resistance (see TMF EZ Guidebook Volume 2) and additional exercises (see TMF EZ Guidebook Volume 1).

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A key part of building a thoughtful framework is to always be asking, “What am I doing? And why am I doing it?”. Having clear and meaningful answers to these questions is the only way to truly practice thoughtfully – if we can’t answer these questions effectively, we should not be doing whatever behavior is in question, at least until we understand why we’re choosing to do it. Doing this helps to keep us safe and focused on movements that actually build on each other in meaningful and practical ways.

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Practical function & mobility

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One of the primary benefits of approaching movement thoughtfully is that it lets us work on exercises that benefit our everyday lives. For example, by practicing bodyweight squats with full range of motion, the body will naturally create adaptations that allow us to get down lower to give the pooch a scritch or play with the kiddos. Learning how to properly use deadlift form in daily life helps to avoid lower back pain, especially for those who need to bend over regularly.

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Learning to use our bodies more effectively in the world is both more important than – and necessarily foundational to – exercising for conventional goals like weight loss and muscle gain.

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Day-to-day exercises that we do should reflect the day-to-day challenges that we may encounter. These ‘CORE FOUR’ movements create the most practically functional benefits for most people because they apply directly to these real-life challenges.