Vary Levels - why changing levels changes everything for mobility, strength and confidence
Most of us don’t think much about the ‘levels’ we live at in daily life. We sit, we stand, we walk around, using roughly the same band of space, because modern life lets us, and it becomes normal.
We get out of a raised bed, walk to a shower, sit on a chair to eat at table height, drive to places, work at desk height and stand to make meals at kitchen counter height. Our modern world, designed for comfort and convenience, removes the need to get low or high.
Life happens at those heights, so it makes sense, until something makes you look more closely.
For me, it wasn’t that I couldn’t get down to the ground, being in pain made me afraid of lowering that height. That fear was what stopped me - it made me cautious. I didn’t trust the descent and wondered if my back would seize? I feared getting stuck on the way down, or worse, not being able to get back up?
Pain narrows our movement and with less need to vary levels, the pain was winning. What I didn’t realise was that by not even attempting those movements, to protect myself from pain (or so I thought), I was making it harder for myself in the long run and that the very act of practising, in a safe environment, could actually help rebuild my confidence and I had no idea it could also help lessen my pain by increasing my range of movement, strength and re-setting some essential movement patterns that were completely missing from my life.
Why levels matter more than we realise
In the book, I talk about how our bodies adapt to what we do most often. And for many of us, even active people, that means moving almost entirely at mid-height:
chair → stand → walk → repeat.
It’s not ‘wrong’, just narrow, and narrow can eventually become stiff, hesitant, and limited.
Changing levels; getting down to the ground, getting up, reaching above our heads, crouching, kneeling, bending deeply, wakes up huge areas of our strength, mobility, balance, and coordination. It also changes how capable we feel.
And that feeling matters just as much as the physical ability.
“These principles go hand in hand. The more we move, the more opportunities we have to create different shapes, and the more shapes we explore, the more capable and adaptable our bodies become.”
— Move Well for Life, Chapter 6* (p.141)
The ground: where many adults stop visiting
When I work with clients, the ground is where I usually start. Not because they ‘can’t’ get there, but because they’ve lost the need to practise it daily and don’t realise just how important getting down and up, spending time on the ground and moving there is for all the ways they move their bodies above ground. And practising it, is where confidence grows.
Lowering to the ground asks your body to:
bend more deeply
coordinate multiple joints at once to wider ranges
using muscles to control your descent (eccentrically; ‘braking’)
manage weight shifts (great for balance)
and finally, navigate getting back up (building strength)
That’s a lot of useful information for your body, and it’s why toddlers and young children spend so much time changing levels; it’s how they build strength, balance, coordination, and confidence for life.
We don’t lose those skills because we age. We lose them because we stop using them. But they are not ‘lost’, they are hiding in there and just need to be reclaimed!
Rebuilding confidence, not perfection
When I began working through pain, I didn’t start with perfect squats or advanced transitions. I started with trust.
I practised varying levels in my daily life; lowering slowly, sometimes with support, sometimes onto cushions, sometimes only halfway, focusing on control and breath, not depth.
And every time I did it, the fear softened. I wasn’t just training muscles; I was retraining my nervous system to feel safe again.
You can do the same, at your own pace.
Try this today (a non-intimidating version)
Choose one moment today where you lower just a little more than usual. Not necessarily to the floor, just lower than standing height.
For example:
squat through your hips and knees to reach down for something, instead of only curving your spine
kneel onto one knee while tidying (with a cushion underneath)
sit on a low stool and stand back up slowly
crouch to pet a dog, take a photo or pick something up
practice lowering to the floor with one hand on a stable surface
Think of it as reminding your body you have choices, not forcing anything, just getting curious and exploring.
Building these moments into daily life, realising your capability is more than you might have thought and then slowly building the strength and confidence and I promise you then, the sky’s the limit!
And then… explore the upper levels too
The same principle applies for reaching up high on tip toes with control, climbing onto something to get higher and lifting light objects above shoulder height.
These movements wake up the spine, ribs, shoulders, and balance systems; areas that often go underused. Once you start spotting and creating opportunities to move in these ways, they start to feel less foreign.
“Our bodies thrive on moving through different shapes and ranges – not staying at one level all day.”
— Move Well for Life, Chapter 7
It’s not about making movement harder, it’s about expanding the space your body lives in as well as the shapes we make. And who knows, with your newfound mobility, strength and trust in your body, you may then want to start leaving the ground with some skipping, hopping and even jumping.
Levels = capability
Varying levels builds something even deeper than strength or mobility, it builds personal agency.
You begin to trust yourself more, you stop moving around challenges and start moving through them. Everyday tasks feel easier. Confidence grows. Life opens up.
‘V - for Vary Levels’ is the third principle in my Move Well Wheel, the framework I share in my book Move Well for Life: Unlock the Life-Changing Power of Everyday Movement.
Next week, we’ll explore the fourth principle; Integrate Load, and how everyday lifting and carrying builds the most useful kind of strength there is.
Different levels change everything, especially how you feel about your own body. How are you going to mix up your levels today?
