Exploring Movement That Works For You
Over the past few years, as we’ve worked with more diverse groups, we’ve started to question much of what we were taught about movement and, just as importantly, how we teach it.
The more we work with people who’ve been away from structured exercise for years, or never felt at home in it, the more we realise traditional coaching methods often don’t allow us to meet people where they are.
Structured exercise classes often begin with a fixed idea of what people should be doing — let’s say squats (you can insert any other gym movement here) — and then spend an hour trying to teach people to squat or having them complete endless repetitions trying to achieve perfect form.
There’s nothing wrong with the squat. It’s a useful pattern for getting up and down from the ground or a chair, or for picking up something heavy. The problem is when we treat it as a goal in itself. If someone has lost access to that movement, it’s often more valuable to find another way to achieve a similar outcome, unless squatting itself is something they really want to do.
Have you ever been to a class — dance, yoga, or exercise — and felt completely lost? You can see what the teacher wants, but when you try it, it just doesn’t make sense.
You’re not alone. I often think back to a dance class I joined at university. It was labelled “Beginner,” but the combinations were so complicated that I slowly inched toward the back. Eventually, the teacher gave me and another student a completely different movement to do, which basically meant being parked out of the way.
Many of us don’t learn well through step-by-step instruction, especially if we’re feeling under-confident, in pain, or worried about looking like a fool.
The prescriptive approach isn’t wrong. Structure, clear cues, and precision are valuable when skill progression demands it. But it’s just one tool — and as the people we work with have changed, so too have the outcomes we aim for.
Most of our WildStrong sessions now sit somewhere between prescriptive and emergent coaching. We use both — there’s a time for high-skill precision and a time for figuring things out.
When we teach a kettlebell swing, for instance, we’ll start prescriptively: finding a neutral spine, exploring the hinge, and developing explosive power. But we often end emergently, lining up to see how far we can throw the kettlebell into the bushes, then playing a game that elicits the hinge naturally. The latter works brilliantly when clients have become tangled up in cues earlier.
If we’re teaching vaulting, we might start in pairs, simply experimenting with how to get over an object in any way that makes sense. Once people feel confident, we start layering in a more prescriptive structure with cues and tips.
If the goal is confidence, connection, or adaptability, it makes sense to encourage experimentation. If it’s technical skill or strength in a specific context, prescription can be useful. The art is knowing when to guide and when to step back. Sometimes that looks like structure; sometimes it looks like play. What matters is the why.
The dial shifts completely with our Nature Moves programme. These sessions look more like play than exercise — throwing beanbags, carrying odd-shaped objects, stepping over branches, flipping cones, crawling, balancing, solving challenges.
We’re not trying to develop specialist techniques or high-performance skills. As we work with community groups, our “why” is simple: we just want people to join in, feel safe, and build confidence in movements that matter for everyday life.
By exploring movements in pairs — trying, failing, figuring them out together — people become more open to instruction because they’ve already made sense of the task in their own bodies. The little gremlins in their heads quieten down.
Our “why” is building capabilities so people can keep joining in with whatever life throws at them. We’re agnostic about whether someone can squat or not. Learning to move isn’t always about drilling the “right” form or chasing repetitions. It’s about discovering what works for you.
Some may later move on to more technical coaching, and that’s great. But the first step is simply to begin.
Many of the games and ideas we use have roots in physical education syllabi, particularly from Australia, where games-based and constraints-led learning have influenced how movement is taught across ages and abilities.
We’ve also learned a huge amount through our own experimentation over time: adapting activities, refining what works, and testing ideas through projects with community groups, Active Partnerships, and public health teams.
Those collaborations have helped us shape sessions that are not only effective but genuinely inclusive — co-designed with the people taking part.
It’s a fun way to teach and learn, though it can take learners a few sessions to see the value.
An excellent study on police training that we reference in our courses supports this nonlinear, exploratory approach. It found that those taught through emergent, problem-solving methods performed better and retained their skills longer than those taught prescriptively.
Interestingly, the prescriptive group believed their training was better. Even though they forgot more six months later, the familiar top-down model had what researchers call face validity — it felt like learning, so participants assumed it was better.
It’s a good reminder that if you need to muck about with a movement before it clicks, that’s not a flaw. It’s just a different, and often more robust, way of learning.
What began as a handful of local Nature Moves groups is now a growing network, with sessions running across the country and new communities joining in.
Each group looks slightly different — shaped by its facilitators, context, and participants — but the shared thread is curiosity: how can we create environments where people explore what their bodies can do, together, without fear of getting it wrong?
Coaching isn’t about choosing sides between prescriptive or emergent. It’s about understanding your context, your people, and your why.
We’re still learning, but what we see again and again is that when people are given space to explore, they find more confidence, creativity, and joy in movement than any perfect form could offer.
Movement was never meant to be mastered in isolation. It’s something we learn, together.
Further Reading & Resources:
Webinar on The Prescriptive to Emergent Continuum
🎧 Playful Nature Podcast:
Playful Nature Podcast – Tim Gill on Freedom, Risk and Play
Playful Nature Podcast – Todd Hargrove on How We Learn to Move
Playful Nature Podcast - Rafe Kelley on Movement & Play
Sean Longhurst - Coaching through play
Dan Edwardes - Learning to Solve Movement Problems
Webinar on designing games for Movement Confidence
(there are some good book recommendations in here)
