Why Most Coaches Circle Back to Natural Movement and Why Starting There Changes Everything
If you stay in the health and fitness industry long enough, you start to notice a pattern.
Most coaches don’t begin with natural movement.
They arrive there.
The path is usually familiar:
You start in bodybuilding or physique-based training.
Then you discover “functional training.”
Then you explore performance systems, mobility systems, strength systems, conditioning systems.
Eventually, sometimes years later you come to a quiet realization:
Everything works.
And the reason everything works is simple:
Almost all training methods are derivatives of natural human movement.
Movement isn’t a trend.
It’s not a philosophy.
It’s not a system someone invented.
Movement is encoded in us. It’s biological. It’s developmental. It’s evolutionary. It’s the foundation everything else is built on.
What’s strange is not that coaches arrive here, it’s how long it usually takes.
I don’t say this from theory. I say it from experience.
I’ve trained like a bodybuilder.
I’ve coached “functional fitness.”
I’ve pursued Olympic weightlifting.
I’ve earned kettlebell certifications, strength certifications, personal training certifications, and exercise physiology credentials.
I’ve learned a lot from all of them.
But none of them fundamentally changed how I understood movement, until I experienced my first MovNat certification in 2020.
That experience didn’t invalidate what I already knew.
It clarified it.
Suddenly, all the fragments fit together.
MovNat isn’t anti-strength.
It isn’t anti-performance.
It isn’t anti-tools, anti-weights, or anti-metrics.
And this is where people often misunderstand it.
Natural movement is not the opposite of functional training, but it also isn’t the same thing.
Functional training often takes natural movement and refines it toward specific outputs: load, speed, power, symmetry, efficiency. Sometimes that refinement is useful. Sometimes it misses the point.
Natural movement starts earlier.
It asks:
- What is this body designed to do?
- How does it organize itself in the real world?
- How do strength, coordination, balance, perception, and adaptability actually emerge?
MovNat isn’t a lane, it’s the ground all lanes sit on.
Once you understand that ground, you can step into other systems with far more clarity.
If you’re early in your coaching career, MovNat does something rare:
It bypasses unnecessary detours.
Not mistakes, learning is never wasted, but detours that delay understanding what you already intuitively feel to be true.
Most coaches know movement matters.
Most coaches sense that isolated metrics don’t capture real capability.
Most coaches eventually want to help people move better, feel better, and function more fully in the real world.
MovNat gives you the foundation first.
From there, you can specialize.
From there, you can integrate.
From there, you can go deeper into strength, conditioning, rehab, sport, or tools, with context instead of confusion.
We live in a time where information is everywhere. Education is no longer scarce.
So why get certified at all?
Because certification, done well, isn’t about information.
It’s about:
- Learning directly from the source, not a distorted game of telephone
- Being challenged in person, under real constraints
- Developing judgment, not just knowledge
- Becoming part of a community that shares standards, language, and values
MovNat didn’t just give me tools, it gave me people.
People I could think with. Train with. Build with.
That community aspect, the shared commitment to helping humans become more capable, is arguably the most undervalued benefit of certification.
MovNat isn’t the loudest system in the room.
It doesn’t claim exclusivity.
It doesn’t demand allegiance.
And that’s exactly why it works.
It’s not an extreme.
It’s a center.
A center that lets everything else make sense.
If you’re a coach trying to figure out where to invest your time, energy, and education, especially in an industry that’s changing fast, starting with natural movement doesn’t limit you.
It expands you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Brian Betancourt
Director of Curriculum & Performance
A movement strategist and exercise physiologist with over a decade of experience coaching athletes, leading performance programs, and designing educational systems. As MovNat’s Director of Curriculum and Performance, Betancourt is responsible for evolving the brand’s instructional framework, certification pathways, and benchmark systems to meet the needs of a modern, capability-driven audience.
Want to get Started at Home?
Start today with our MovNat e-course! Our MovNat e-courses make it easy to train Natural Movement anytime, anywhere. You can choose from individual e-courses with lifetime access or enjoy unlimited learning through a monthly or yearly subscription. A great place to begin is our MovNat e-course Starter Bundle, the perfect way to build your foundation and start moving naturally today.
Get Started With Natural Movement Fitness – TODAY!
The MovNat Level 1 Certification is your entry point into the world’s official Natural Movement® Fitness program. It equips you with the knowledge, skills, and methods you need to transform your movement & fitness and build real world capability from the ground up. You’ll learn not only the movements in the official MovNat curriculum, but also the methods to apply those movements to your unique needs, goals, and circumstances.
MovNat has helped thousands of people from all walks of life restore their natural abilities and lay a foundation for a deeper, lifelong movement practice. We are the original, official, and only Natural Movement® Fitness certification, with thousands of certified professionals and dozens of MovNat Licensed Facilities all around the world.
Whether you’re completely new to Natural Movement Fitness, or a seasoned veteran looking to expand your skillset, the MovNat Level 1 Certification is your launchpad to a deep understanding of natural human movement, how to integrate it into your training and lifestyle, and help others do the same.
