Squats, deadlifts, bench presses, rows, overhead presses, chins, planks, maybe a lunge or two.  Maybe a weighted pushup.  Most gym-goers look at themselves quite happily if they're strong on all those movements.  And, I suppose--rightly so.  Arguably (and there's been argument about those things in this space, and indeed, all over the place) they're the big kahunas of the weight room. 

The limitation to standard strength training--and I speak as a guy who's lifted weights for my entire adult life and much of my adolescence, and have every intention of continuing to do so--involves a little thing called gravity. 

Gravity works--wait for it--by pulling down.

Dropping my usual jejune approach for a moment, it occurred to me recently--perhaps because I'm currently steeped in training in aikido and Feldenkrais, two disciplines that require coordinated, simultaneous movement in all three planes of motion, that the big six or eight or ten strength-training movements don't do much to teach you how to move. 

Sure, strength training makes you strong.  No question.  Depending on how you do it, it can also make you big and lean, improve your endurance and your athletic power, and generally make you a better athlete.  And if you do it well for long enough, it will teach you about moving safely under load (italics mine.  Italics are always mine!  So is Calligraphy!  So is Times New Roman, and Geneva, and Baskerville Semibold!  All mine, I say!). 

But moving well under load isn't the same as moving well or efficiently.  In fact, in some ways, it might instill bad movement habits. 

Take squatting.  If you squat with a barbell on your shoulders, every Jay, Ronnie, and Arnie will tell you that you've got to keep your lumbar spine in its natural curve. 

But just sitting around squatting?  No need for the curve.  In fact, a curve limits your range of motion.  Go to a third-world country and check out everyone squatting around talking.  The lumbar is rounded.  If I were a person who liked the term, I'd postulate that our lumbar spines were 'designed' to round in that position--or at the very least, come out of the arched position that all of us so zealously guard when we're squatting with big weights on our backs. 

(indeed, maybe that's another reason squatting correctly is so tough--that the lumbar desperately wants to round, but we've got to resist the urge). 

That's just one example.  There are lots of other cases where a movement we do to stay safe under load is completely fine when we're unloaded.  

The reason I say that gravity is a limiter in the effectiveness of strength training is that the big five movements all require you to position yourself so that the targeted muscles are working directly against gravity. The bench press only exists because, in order to pound the chest muscles with an Olympic bar, you've got to scoot yourself under a bar push up against gravity.  And the body doesn't always move like that.  I'd venture to say that it rarely moves like that.  The body is usually moving at an oblique angle to gravity:  up and over; sideways, diagonally, twisting and turning.  When I think of the weird movement I have to do just to hoist my son out of his crib when he's screaming at 3 am, it has nothing to do with good strength-training form.  It's way, way off the beam.  Weight training takes all those other movements out and makes movement very linear and angular. 

I'm only saying this--and on a fitness site with a strength-training focus, no less!--to emphasize what I think is missing from the exercise programs of most strength-training individuals.  It's a start to eliminate machine-style training which has limited carry-over in everyday life; the next step is to find ways to include movement that's more exploratory, more creative and spontaneous, perhaps, than what one sees in even a well-designed strength training program. 

I don't think one needs to go too far off the beaten path to find exercises and sports which require and train this kind of movement; here are a lot of standard sports and activities that fit the bill:  basketball, for instance, requires spins and jumps and turns and shifts of focus that would be impossible to replicate in the weight room.  Other team sports, like soccer, require quick directional shifts, along with upper-body jukes and turns.  Many combat sports and martial arts do the same, as do t'ai chi and some forms of yoga. 

Looking big-picture at activities and programs which improve long-term health, I'd wager that pretty soon health pros will be talking about including some kind of activity which requires multi-directional movement to round things out.