Mindfulness, Movement, and Exercise

Before you are able to pull yourself up and over the bar, you need to know what it feels like to be in the top position and what type of coordination you need in the hand, shoulder, and back to lower yourself back down. This exercise is a great way to develop the skill, strength, and efficiency you need to to work towards pull-ups. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jennpilotti.substack.com/subscribe

The pull-up is an exercise that is challenging. One of the largest challenges comes from understanding how to coordinate the the pull of the arms with the action in the shoulders and torso. In this video, I break down common sticking points in the pull-up, with practical ways to break through those barriers and build towards the skill of pulling. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jennpilotti.substack.com/subscribe

This one only requires you and a little imagination. It's a drill I use with clients across a wide range of ages and abilities — and because there's no equipment involved, it's easy to scale on the spot. The goal is speed and directional change, which are the two things that actually make something an agility exercise. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jennpilotti.substack.com/subscribe

The third and final exercise from Spinal Intelligence is deceptively simple: move from hands and knees to seated, and pay attention to what your spine is doing along the way.That’s it. No special equipment, no particular shape to achieve.What makes it interesting is the middle part — where you get to try rounding your back through the transition, then arching it, then finding what feels easiest. Not to judge which one is “correct,” but to notice. Is one more fluid? More awkward? Does one feel like it requires more effort?This kind of exploration is at the heart of what Spinal Intelligence is about. Your spine isn’t a column that needs to be held in the right position. It’s a responsive system that’s constantly taking in information and adapting. When you give it variations to work with — instead of a single instruction to follow — you start to develop a more nuanced relationship with how it actually moves.The seated moment at the end, where you simply sense where your spine is in relation to your pelvis, matters more than it might look. That’s the practice: move, then feel. Not just move and move and move.If these three exercises have been useful, the book goes much deeper — both the exercises themselves and the reasoning behind why this approach to movement works. You can find Spinal Intelligence at the link here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jennpilotti.substack.com/subscribe

There’s a word that gets thrown around a lot in lifting: leverage. People say it constantly, but the way it’s used often doesn’t match what’s actually happening mechanically.So let’s slow it down.When you pick something heavy up off the floor, you have three variables in play: your load (the bar), your pivot point (your hips and knees), and your effort (the posterior chain doing the work). The lever arm — the thing that determines how hard or easy the lift feels — is your torso. Not your hands. Your hands aren’t where your leverage lives.But here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough: grip still matters enormously, just not for the reason most people think.The way you take hold of the bar determines how well you’re anchored — to the bar, and to yourself. A grip that pulls the bar in toward you does two things at once: it moves the load closer to your pivot point (making it mechanically lighter) and it creates a line of sensory feedback that travels all the way up through your arms and into your back. That feedback is what allows your posterior chain to actually engage in the movement rather than just endure it.This is why I re-grip every single rep. Not for strength. For reset. Each time my hands meet the bar again, I get a fresh read on where I am — and that information changes how I move.Physics is clarifying. Once you understand what’s actually creating leverage in a lift, you stop trying to solve the wrong problem. You stop white-knuckling the bar hoping that’ll help, and you start paying attention to your torso position and hip angle — which is where the movement actually lives.If you want to go deeper into how the nervous system and biomechanics work together in movement — including why sensation matters as much as mechanics — that’s exactly what Spinal Intelligence is built around. Available now at jennpilotti.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jennpilotti.substack.com/subscribe