Motor Preferences: Why No Two Bodies Move the Same Way

Two people can be taught the same movement, practise it for the same number of hours, and still end up moving very differently. Not because one of them tried harder. Because their bodies were never going to organise that movement the same way.

What a motor preference is

A motor preference is a spontaneous way of organising movement: the posture you fall into when nobody is watching, the foot you push off first, the way your weight travels when you reach for something. It sits underneath technique. You did not choose it, and you do not have to think about it.

The ActionTypes approach, developed by Ralph Hippolyte and Bertrand Theraulaz since the 1990s, maps these preferences into a profile. Its founding idea is blunt: the body should not bend to the technique, the technique should yield to the intelligence of the body.

Grounded and aerial

The distinction most people meet first is between grounded and aerial profiles. A grounded mover keeps contact, pushes into the floor and builds power from below. An aerial mover works with rebound, spends less time on the ground and uses elasticity rather than push.

Neither is better than the other. They are two different engines. Difficulty usually appears when someone is coached as though they had the other one.

Why it matters away from sport

Your profile does not switch off when you leave the pitch. It shows in how you stand at a desk, which shoulder carries the bag, and which shoe wears out first. That is why I look at it during an assessment and not only with athletes. It tells me how you actually load your feet, rather than how a textbook says you should.

What an assessment looks like

A series of simple movement tests, most of which need no equipment at all. You stand, you reach, you shift your weight, you walk. I watch what you do before you have time to correct yourself. It takes about twenty minutes and tells me more than any static examination of the feet on their own.

From there we can talk about footwear, insoles, running form or swing mechanics, with your own profile as the starting point rather than a generic template.

Motor preference assessments are available in Cambridge as part of a sports performance appointment, and at my Paris practice in La Defense.