Fitness, health, and wellness are too often confused with weight, but this belief is both troublesome and without merit. The number you see on the scale is just that: a number, without any insight into anything else. Not your happiness, not your health, not your speed, power, or flexibility—you get where we’re going with [...] The post What Are “Non-Scale Victories” and Why Do They Matter? appeared first on Vitruvian Fitness.

For decades, the standard advice for managing sprains, strains, and soft tissue injuries has been the well-known RICE method — Re st, Ice, Compression, and Elev ation . This simple and memorabl e acronym has been widely accepted by athletes, medical professionals, and everyday individuals as the go-to strategy for reducing swelling and pain after an injury. However, recent research suggests that while some components of RICE remain valuable, the emphasis on rest and ice may actually hinder the body’s natural healing process rather than support it. Unless you spend countless hours reading about exercise, rehab, and performance, it might be natural to think that resting an injured body part and applying ice is a great way to recover. After all, conventional wisdom tells us that inflammation is bad, swelling is something to be avoided, and pain relief should come first. But what if we told you that your body’s natural response to injury—mild inflammation—isn’t the enemy, and that immobilization might actually do more harm than good?

What having a bunch of friends helping you move has in common with functional training.

Reboot Your Movement: The Power of Pressing Reset Our tagline is Move better. Get stronger. Feel Great. That's what we do. In that order. So when it comes to getting stronger, the most visible aspect of strength training is weight-lifting. The concept of progressive overload — increasing intensity, volume, loads, and other variables— is what makes you stronger. However, lasting progress starts with moving well first . High-quality movement leads to high-quality results. That’s why we incorporate two separate but complementary systems into our programming: The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) and Original Strength’s "Pressing Reset" into our programs. The gist of the FMS is to identify what we do well, what we don’t do well, remove or improve the not-so-good, and add more of the oh-so-great. We include the FMS in every new client’s onboarding session and every program is designed only after we establish a baseline movement capacity. The FMS tells us what needs improvement. OS Resets are one of the ways we achieve those improvements. In this post, let's dig deep-ish into Pressing Reset as a foundational tool for better movement. What is "Pressing Reset?” Pressing Reset is a system developed by Tim Anderson from Original Strength that ”reboots” your body's natural movement patterns—the ones we developed as babies—to restore reflexive strength, coordination, and mobility . These simple, yet powerful movements (like diaphragmatic breathing, head nods, rolling, rocking, and crawling) help improve the function of your neuromuscular system, allowing you to move with less effort. Movement is a continuous loop of sensory input, processing, and action. Your body senses the world around you (through vision, touch, balance, and proprioception), your brain interprets this information and sends signals to your muscles, and you move. Each movement creates new sensory feedback, helping your brain refine and improve coordination over time. At its most fundamental level, the way we move is controlled by our nervous system. When it functions optimally, we move smoothly and with little effort. When it doesn’t, we struggle with stiffness (neural inhibition), poor coordination (inefficient movement organization), and pain (pain). Let’s break it down. Stimulating The Vestibular System The vestibular system , located in the inner ear, is responsible for detecting motion, balance, and spatial orientation. It has direct connections to the central nervous system (CNS) , influencing how we perceive movement and how our body maintains posture and stability. Purposeful movement—especially head and body repositioning—can sharpen this system, improving coordination, posture, and balance. When we Press Reset, we influence the vestibular system by performing controlled movements that change head position and spatial orientation. These movements provide sensory input to the semicircular canals and otolith organs in the inner ear, which detect rotational and linear acceleration. This information is then relayed to the brainstem and cerebellum, which integrate it with visual and proprioceptive feedback to enhance balance, coordination, and movement efficiency . As a result, movements become better organized and posture improves which lead to better exercise outcomes. The Role of the Vagus Nerve and the Autonomic Nervous System In addition to influencing the vestibular system, Pressing Reset can also influence the autonomic nervous system (ANS) via the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the body, extending from the brainstem down to the abdomen and is a key regulator of the parasympathetic nervous system. It helps control involuntary bodily functions such as heart rate, digestion, and respiratory rate, playing a crucial role in promoting recovery, relaxation, and homeostasis by counterbalancing the stress-driven sympathetic nervous system. Essentially, it regulates the balance between rest and digest and fight or flight. Movements like diaphragmatic breathing, rocking, and rolling stimulate the vagus nerve, helping to calm the nervous system, reduce inflammation, and speed up tissue healing.(1) Stimulating the vagus nerve through resets has the additional benefit of speeding up recovery from injuries, reducing inflammation, improving neuroplasticity, and other cool neuromuscular adaptions.(2)(3) How We Use It at Vitruvian Fitness At Vitruvian Fitness, resets are a key part of our training philosophy. Here’s how we integrate them: Movement Prep Before Training: Resets help prepare the body for movement, reinforcing good posture and control. Done with intention, resets help prepare you for your workout so you move more easily and efficiently overall. During Rest Intervals: Resets are great to use as active recovery between big lifts that require extended rest intervals. We can also use resets to "course-correct" when form breaks down, improving movement quality in real time. For Recovery & Longevity: Performing resets at home between workouts can accelerate recovery and improve daily function. The Resets: Simple and Powerful They are so simple, even a baby can do them! Actually, that’s who we learned them from. Breathing – Lips closed, tongue pressed to the roof of the mouth, inhale and exhale through the nose. Practice this method of breathing throughout all the resets. Head Nods and Turns – Lead with your eyes, then your head, while breathing properly. Rolling – Move your body in various directions while maintaining controlled breathing. Rocking – From a hands-and-knees position, shift back toward your heels and return. Connecting the X – Engage cross-body movement patterns like: Cross Crawls – Alternating opposite hand-to-knee taps. Crawling – Move across the floor with contralateral limb coordination (like a baby). Marching and Skipping – Add cross-crawls for enhanced coordination. The Golden Rules of Resets: Always breathe correctly. Never move into pain or discomfort. Follow rules #1 and #2—no exceptions! Watch a demonstration of each of the resets on our YouTube Channel. 

The Vitruvian Fitness Method to learn the Perfect Push Up The Perfect Push Up is an expression of strength that demonstrates serious determination and movement organization. Plus it comes with, in my opinion, more self-satisfaction than any other exercise after the Perfect Pull Up. Part 1 - The Set Up The position of the arms and shoulders is most important. Begin by lying face down on the floor and imagine looking down at yourself from directly above. You are going to make the shape of an arrow with your body. Place your chin at the imaginary point of the arrow with your upper-arms positioned at 45º to your torso and your hands directly below your elbows. If correctly positioned, your forearm will be pointed straight down or perpendicular to the floor. Looking down at yourself, you should look like a straight arrow with your arms flared out 45º. The reason for this is because when your arms/shoulders are in the 45º position, the joints and muscles are at their medium-est positions which, in simple terms, means they are positioned optimally to recruit all the muscles to help with the pushing up. It’s also healthier for your shoulders since you’re not rubbing up against any end ranges of motion. Next, drop your heels back and try to tuck your toes under your feet so your weight is resting on the balls of your feet. If your toes don’t bend that far, it’s ok but you’ll want to wear shoes. Whether your toes bend that much or not, you’ll still want to drop your heels as far back as you can. When you drop your heels, you’ll feel how your quads engage which is part of organizing your core to be as stiff as possible for the upcoming movements. After all, a Push Up is just a great plank with elbows that flex and extend. So, a solid plank is the precursor to the Perfect Push Up. Part 2 - Getting Stronger Push Ups are hard and take strength and good posture. Keep reminding yourself why you’re doing these - because people who can do great push ups have a lot to be proud of. In this part, we’re going to focus on the “down” phase of the Push Up. This is also known as the eccentric phase. It’s pronounced EE-sen-trick. (Not ECK-sen-trick like your goofy uncle.) It doesn’t sound intuitive at all but you can actually build strength faster by focusing on a very slow descent from the top of your ever-improving plank to the floor. So, get into the arrow position as described above and then get up into a high plank position by any means necessary. It literally doesn’t matter how good or bad it looks - just get to the top. Make sure your feet and hands don’t move out of their positions though. This is important. While maintaining your perfect plank – head, neck, core, hips, quads, feet all as stiff as a board – slowly lower yourself to the floor counting 5 Mississippi OUT LOUD along the way. When you reach the floor, take a breath and recommit to doing another 1. Repeat. Do this for a total of five 5-Mississippi Top-Down Push Ups. This all takes about 1 whole minute with 3-5 second rests in between each repetition. You’ve got 1 minute, don’t you? NOTE: You may not do these from your knees. They can only be done from your toes. Are they hard? Yes they are. You got this. NOTE 2: If you can’t time the descent to last 5 whole Mississippi’s, that’s OK. You’re still going to count out loud. If you get to the floor at 3 Mississippi, that’s fine. You’ve got 2 more Mississippi’s of strength to build. And these are hard enough that you might not be able to hold any Mississippi’s on your 5th rep. That’s OK! You know exactly where you are and what you’ve got left to gain. Start there and work on getting stronger. Once you’ve done five 5-Mississippi Top Down Push Ups, you’ve accomplished something terrific. Part 3- Repetitions The reason we never do Push Ups from our knees is because the difference between our knees and our toes is about 20 inches of body-length and that’s actually a huge jump in difficulty. Imagine if you were doing biceps curls with a 5 pound weight and then suddenly you had to do them with 25 pounds. (It’s not actually the same thing but the difference feels equally abrupt.) So, instead of doing Push Ups from the knees, we do them on an incline that we can gradually decrease which makes the Push Ups from our toes do-able and we can get in a lot of repetition. If you have stairs in your home, this will be super easy. In a gym, you can use a barbell in a squat rack, a smith machine, or anything you can get your hands on and gradually get lower. We’re going to use a “rep range” of 8-12 reps. This is important because this is how you’ll know when it’s time to increase the challenge. Your set up is the same as before - upper arms at 45º to your torso with your forearms pointing straight down and your heels dropped back. However, instead of your hands being on the floor, they're on the 5th or 6th stair up from the bottom. In this position, do as many push ups as you can stopping at 12 if you get there. If you couldn’t get to 8 reps, reposition your hands on the next stair up. If you did get to 12, reposition your hands on the next stair down. You’re seeking the stair where you can do at least 8 Push Ups but not 12. Can’t do 8? Make it easier. You can do 12, make it harder. Once you find that stair, keep working until you can do 12 Push Ups. That’s when you drop down a stair. Every time you get to 12, you drop a stair until you’re doing Push Ups with your hands on the floor. But what if you can do 12 Push Ups from one stair but you can only do 6 from the next one down? That’s OK! Do all the Perfect Push Ups you can do on the lower stair and then move back up one to finish the set. When the day comes that you can do 12 Push Ups from your toes and your hands on the floor, you’ve accomplished something so awesome. Congratulations! Be dedicated to the process and be kind to yourself. You got this. Curious to learn more? We encourage you to do a 14-Day Trial Membership. In 14 days, you will get a private onboarding session that includes the Functional Movement Screen® , then unlimited semi-private training sessions doing the program we design based on that first session. And you’ll get to be a part of one of the most inviting, inclusive, and fun communities you’ll find anywhere. At the end of your trial, you get to decide if you liked it and if you want to continue with a regular 6-month membership. All the options and prices are on our Membership page. Click here to sign up now! Our facility is conveniently located on the northwest corner of Denver in beautiful downtown Wheat Ridge.