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What is the Hierarchy of Needs?
What is the Hierarchy of Needs?
What the hierarchy is NOT is a specific sequence or progression of 1-2-3. Instead, it’s a framework that guides our decision-making on what clues we should be focusing on, the same way a detective places pieces of evidence on the bulletin board before forming a hypothesis. Instead of guessing what might be wrong, it helps you figure out the most important things to fix first. It's like a detective solving a puzzle, but instead of clues, you're looking at your body's needs.
By using the hierarchy of needs, we create a plan that sets us up for success and solves some of the most frustrating and complex problems that have existed for weeks, months, years, or even decades.
Let’s take a look at it!
Here's the basic idea:
Prioritize problems: The hierarchy helps you decide which health issues are most important.
Focus your attention: It guides you to the areas that need the most attention.
Avoid guessing: Instead of guessing what might be wrong, you can get to the root of the problem.
For example: Someone with back pain might think they need more stretching. But the hierarchy of needs could show that they actually need to strengthen their core muscles.
In short: The hierarchy of needs is a simple way to improve your health by focusing on what really matters.
Recovery & Capacity Balance
Recovery & Capacity Balance
Like any hierarchy, we have to start with a base. That foundation is recovery and balance.
Here's what we mean:
How much are you doing? Are you working too hard?
Are you resting enough? Is your body getting the rest it needs?
Is your body keeping up? Can your body handle your lifestyle, stress, and workouts?
Before we even talk about how flexible or strong you are, we need to make sure your body is getting enough sleep, eating well, and managing stress.
Let's be honest: Without enough sleep, good food, a positive attitude, and healthy ways to handle stress, life can feel like a never-ending struggle. It might be the hardest thing you ever do to change these habits, but it's possible.
The good news is that you have control over these things. If you choose to take responsibility, you can make huge changes in how you feel and move. You'll hardly recognize yourself if you stick with it and choose what's right over what's easy.
Instead of living on autopilot, you'll start living with intention. Over time, these new habits will become so natural that you won't even have to think about them.
💡An important concept to grasp around this is that STRESS plus RECOVERY equals ADAPTATION.
Stress isn't inherently good or bad; it just is. It's up to us to decide what kind of stress we want to experience. For example, if you spend hours every day with your neck forward looking at a computer screen, your neck will eventually stiffen in that position.
Our goal is to help you find the right balance between stress and recovery. Too much stress without enough rest can lead to pain, injuries, plateaus in performance, and low energy. On the other hand, too much rest and not enough stress can also slow down your progress and leave you feeling frustrated.
The most important thing to remember is that you need to find the right amount of stress and recovery for your specific goals.
For instance, if you've been training seven days a week for two years, improving your hip mobility might not be the top priority. That intense training schedule could be the root of the problem, so we should focus on reducing your training volume before working on hip mobility.
The pain in your lower back while squatting might not be caused by a problem with your spine or muscles. It could be related to other factors, like getting too little sleep.
Balancing intentional stress with recovery in order to build capacity is crucial to success, both today and moving forward and if done well, allows the other pieces of the hierarchy to fall into place.
Flexibility
Flexibility
Moving up the hierarchy, we begin to look more specifically at movement.
Flexibility is defined as passive range of motion, meaning it's achieved with gravity or external force rather than active muscle contraction. It's the potential for a joint to move.
An example of flexibility would be pushing my pointer finger back towards the back of my hand as far as it'll go (see image #1). My finger has a limited range of motion; I can't move it further (without tearing something).
We say that "strength is gained in the range it's trained." So clients with limited flexibility cannot train through a full range of motion. If you don't have the necessary flexibility to get into positions, you cannot train in those positions and therefore cannot be strong in those positions.
Furthermore, you're more likely to be injured when your body has to force itself into those positions during training.
For someone with arthritis in their hip, the hip joint may not move very well. The simplest solution might be to avoid squatting deeper than what their bony anatomy allows.
On the other hand, we also see clients with full flexibility who have been stretching and mobilizing their joints to improve their pain. In this scenario, the mobility drills might not be addressing the underlying problem, wasting time, energy, and resources. It might even be making things worse.
When assessing flexibility, we're asking, "Do you have the potential to get into those positions?" Again, we're talking here about passive range of motion.
Mobility
Mobility
The other component of movement is mobility.
If flexibility is passive range, we can consider mobility as active range of motion.
Mobility is your ability to use some strength to access as much of your flexibility as possible through active ranges of motion.
In the previous example, the limit of my finger's flexibility was how far I could pull it back using my other hand (see image #1). The limit of my finger's mobility is how far I can make it move just using the strength of the finger alone (see image #2).
In short, my finger is this flexible (image #1); it is this mobile (image #2).
Notice the difference?
So, if flexibility shows you the potential for the joint to move, mobility shows you the potential to intentionally access that range of motion with your own strength.
You will rarely see somebody’s mobility (image #2) exceed their flexibility (image #1). In some cases, active engagement through range of motion can feel more comfortable than passively being taken through that range, but the total availability of range of motion remains the same.
What we want to know is this - how much of your total flexibility you can intentionally, actively access.
If somebody lacks the requisite flexibility to get into a position, they’re not going to be able to get into certain positions to move, lift, or train.
If somebody lacks the appropriate mobility, they won’t be able to access and control the range of motion they have. Adding load, in many cases, makes this especially true.
When we look at flexibility and mobility together, we see our full movement potential.
Here's a simple example: If Susan wants to squat, we can start by checking if she can raise her knee towards her chest while lying down. If she can, she has enough flexibility in her hips to squat.
However, just because she has the flexibility doesn't mean she can squat effectively. We've seen people with enough flexibility who can't get into the bottom of a squat position. This is usually a mobility issue, not a flexibility issue.
We won't try to fix this with bands, lacrosse balls, or stretching. It's an active problem that requires an active solution.
On the other hand, if someone's joint doesn't have the potential to squat, strengthening it won't improve their range of motion.
Now we're starting to see movement in a new way and can assess you more effectively. We're no longer guessing. It's also clear that many common "fixes" might work for some people but not for others.
Many people know their one-rep max for squats, deadlifts, or bench presses. These are common tests in fitness and strength training. But we want to gather more information and details to understand why your body isn't performing as you'd like.
Strength Balance
Strength Balance
This is where strength balance comes in. We have a lot to discover about you when
we check things like the following:
How many high-pulls can you perform on your left versus your right side? How do you press, in comparison?
How well do you perform a squat pattern versus hinge pattern? How about right to left?
Is the back of your joint as strong as the front? Can you pull as well as you can push?
What about strength versus stamina? Are you much better at moving something heavy once or twice than you are at moving something light many times? Or the
other way around?
We want to know how well your joints absorb, transmit, and produce force in all directions. We want to know what you do well and what you do poorly - this clues us in to our greatest opportunity for improving your function.
By looking at strength balance and collecting quantitative, measurable data, we gain another layer of understanding.
Skill & Motor Control
Skill & Motor Control
When we look at skill and motor control, we put everything together. This is where we start to perform complex movements with good form and technique.
We've already checked everything else: lifestyle factors, flexibility, mobility, strength, and stamina.
Now, with skill and motor control, the focus is on practice. We need to do more reps and get more experience with the movement.
Jumping to motor control and skill first can be a mistake. For example, we've seen clients who are learning to squat and look like a baby giraffe trying to walk. You might have experienced this yourself.
With practice, they slowly improve. People with full range of motion, strength, and stamina tend to progress faster than those who don't.
By starting at the beginning and working our way up, we set ourselves up for success. We can identify potential problems and fix them before they become a real issue.
All intentional movement - from breathing to sprinting to lifting - requires a level of skill that takes focus, repetition, and time to improve.
As we stay consistent in our practice, focus on tackling the right problems, and use tools and drills that have been proven to work time and time again, this process becomes more effective.
Breathwork
Breathwork
The sub-layer which supports recovery, flexibility, mobility, strength balance, and skill, is breathwork. What we mean by this is everything from the mechanics to the method of breathing. We also consider your CO2 tolerance and stress response.
For mechanics we consider how much rib expansion is happening during inhalation and exhalation. Is it restricted? If there isn't full 360 degree movement during a breath cycle, there much opportunity for improvement!
For the method of breathing we consider whether the inhale and exhale is happening through your nose or mouth. Does that change during different levels of exertion? Like when you're sleeping vs after you've walked up and down a few flights of stairs.
CO2 Tolerance is the amount of CO2 buildup in your system you can tolerate before you experience the urge to breathe. Your ability to tolerate CO2 buildup is directly connected to your ability to handle stress.
What does the breath have to do with anything?
We already know that the way we breathe can trigger a more relaxed or more stressed state. In emergencies, our bodies breathe fast and hard through our mouths. Our bodies associate this breathing pattern with stress. We can flip the switch on our stress response by taking back our breathing pattern and breathing low, wide, slowly, and through our nose. This will tell our bodies it’s ok to relax.
One of the best ways to reduce stress is to improve our tolerance for carbon dioxide (CO2). We're often taught that we inhale oxygen and exhale CO2. But we actually inhale and exhale both.
Our bodies use CO2 levels to decide whether or not we need to breathe. When CO2 levels in our blood are high, our brains tell us we need to breathe more.
If we have a low tolerance for CO2, we'll feel stressed more often because our bodies are constantly struggling to breathe.
By increasing our CO2 tolerance, we can feel more relaxed, sleep better, perform better, and handle stress more easily. This is because we're becoming more resilient to one of the stressors we face: CO2.
Instead of worrying about breathing all the time, our bodies will be comfortable with our CO2 levels. This allows us to focus on the things we want to do and enjoy.
Improving your CO2 tolerance is one of the main ways we can help you feel better overall, sleep better, perform better, and enjoy life more.
How to take the CO2 tolerance exhale test (CO2 Tolerance Test)
How to take the CO2 tolerance exhale test (CO2 Tolerance Test)
Take 4 full breaths, 1 breath every 5-10 seconds: a 3-5 second inhale, followed by a 5-10 second relaxed exhale, 1 second pause before beginning to inhale again.
At the top of the 4th inhale (completely full), start a timer and exhale as slowly as possible. Stretch out the exhale for as long as possible without ever holding your breath or swallowing. It’s helpful to close your eyes so that you can more effectively stay relaxed.
Stop the timer when your air runs out, or you need to inhale.
How to understand your CO2 test results
How to understand your CO2 test results
Over 80 seconds: You have excellent breathing control and stress management.
60-80 seconds: You have good breathing control and stress management.
40-60 seconds: You can improve your breathing with practice.
20-40 seconds: You might be feeling stressed or anxious.
Under 20 seconds: You may have high anxiety or stress sensitivity.
Remember: This is just a simple test. If you have concerns about your breathing, it's always best to consult with your doctor.
Our mission.
Our mission.
We empower adults to reclaim their physical freedom and improve their quality of life. Using a blend of education, exercise, and mentorship, together we identify and ascend the roadblocks holding you back from living life to the fullest.
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