Why Original Strength Makes Me Salty
May 05, 2019
And now a guest article all the way from down under and over yonder in Australia, OS Lead Instructor, Piers Kwan....
I remember the first Original Strength workshop we held in Australia. We had trainers come from all around to learn from Tim and Geoff as they explained how to apply the principles of Original Strength.
Not everyone came though. People had all kind of reasons for not attending: I already know the basic idea; we crawl in my system already, I don’t know what else there is to learn; oh I already use animal movements; I learned about developmental patterning at university... People had a bunch of reasons why Original Strength wasn’t for them, and why they wouldn’t benefit from it.
The main issues for people, both then and now, are that the idea either seems too simple, or people are threatened that it will replace or devalue the things they love doing. What they don’t understand, is that Original Strength is a bit like salt!
Salt?
Salt is incredibly valuable, and has diverse characteristics.
There are apparently 14,000 uses for salt. Salt helps preserve food, it is a powerful cleaning agent, it has strong health and beauty benefits, and, most importantly, it tastes good. It doesn’t take a lot of salt to make your favourite dish even better, or to rescue a bland dish from a sorry end.
Alongside all of that, you need zero Michelin stars to use it effectively! I could go on and on and on about salt (a subject I didn’t realise I was this passionate about) but the point that I’m making is that Original Strength behaves in a very similar fashion for our bodies.
The list above it is easily re-applied to Original Strength. Original Strength preserves our movement and health, it helps to restore things to their original design, it has great health and beauty benefits, and, most importantly, it feels good! It also doesn’t take a lot of OS to make your favourite activities better, or to make an exercise of previously limited value much more effective. Alongside all of that, it’s simple! The very thing that makes people think they know it all and don’t need to spend the time understanding the basic tenets, is actually the system’s greatest strength.
Original Strength is easy to apply. You can do it right now.
The workshop will make you better, but one of the main jobs the Pressing Reset Certification accomplishes is to make it obvious just how easy it is to be ‘the chef in your own kitchen’. I often encourage people to go and check out the YouTube channel and to give it a go, because it’s a really hard thing to mess up or to hurt yourself with.
Original Strength is not designed to replace the things you are doing right now, unless you don’t want to do them! It is a spice that takes the training you are doing right now, CrossFit, yoga, kettlebell training, F45, powerlifting, weightlifting, calisthenics, cricket, basketball, prancercise, whatever! - and makes it more effective, more sustainable, and more fun. It helps your body to do what it was initially designed for so that instead of focusing on your sore knee, you can focus on catching the ball or maintaining a pose.
The main difference between Original Strength and salt, is that too much Original Strength won’t hurt you, and it is very capable of being the main dish. You can quite happily reset into your old age, and I’d be shocked to find out that it had been anything other than the best choice you ever made for your physical health.
Given that the world is your oyster, where should you start with Original Strength? The easy answer is wherever you want. Just like salt, it’s worth trying it on everything at least once. Try using it as your warm up, your cool down, your main event, whatever pops into your mind. Do what feels good, and avoid the things that don’t feel good yet.
If you need more structure, keep reading the blogs here on the site, follow OS on YouTube and Instagram, get to a Pressing Reset Certification, go a see an Original Strength Coach, pick one of those, and do it!
The main thing is that you just try it. Original Strength is worth its salt, and so are you!
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