Body By Design, Inc.

09/10/2026

Something new is being built at AltaFit.

Not a replacement. Not a reinvention. An expansion.

We are bringing applied biomechanics, movement assessment, and human-performance education into an already strong environment of coaching, strength, conditioning, and community.

We build upon what works—and create new opportunities to understand what may be possible.

09/02/2026

The body does not respond to the name of an exercise.

It responds to information.

Every movement changes joint position, tissue tension, pressure, speed, direction, balance, and the body’s relationship with gravity and the ground. Proprioception, vision, the vestibular system, and tactile receptors continually send that information to the nervous system.

The nervous system interprets those signals and organizes a movement response—often before we are consciously aware that it is happening.

This does not mean the exercise is unimportant. It means the exercise is only part of the experience.

Change the position, direction, speed, reach, surface, target, load, or person—and you change the information the body receives. Change the information, and you may change the response the body learns to create.

My new article explores why movement is not only something the body produces.

Movement is also information the body receives.

https://bobfanelli.substack.com/p/the-body-does-not-respond-to-exercise

Read the full article on my Substack.

08/26/2026

We often ask whether a squat, lunge, deadlift, machine, or balance drill is “functional.”

But an exercise cannot answer that question by itself.

Its value depends on the person performing it, the purpose it is intended to serve, the environment in which it occurs, the information it creates, and the adaptation we are trying to encourage.

The same exercise may be appropriate for one person and poorly matched to another. It may even be appropriate for the same person on one day and inappropriate on another.

The exercise has not changed.

The relationship has.

Its value depends on the person performing it, the purpose it serves, the environment in which it occurs, the information it generates, and the adaptation we are trying to encourage. It is a process of understanding, prescribing, observing, and adapting.

The exercise is not the prescription.

The Experience is the prescription.

Read: “Functional Exercise Is Not an Exercise: It Is a Prescription.”

Understanding Reveals Possibility.™

08/18/2026

unctional training has evolved. Has our definition?

For years, functional training has often been described by movements:

Push. Pull. Squat. Lunge. Bend. Rotate.

Those are certainly movements humans perform.

But I'm increasingly interested in a different question:

What actually makes an exercise functional for the person standing in front of us?

Because a lunge isn't simply a lunge.

Change the direction.
Change the speed.
Change the load.
Change the reach.
Change the environment.
Change the intention.

And most importantly—

change the person.

The biological experience changes.

The body doesn't experience the name we give an exercise. It experiences motion, forces and information—and it responds and adapts accordingly.

That's the subject of the first article in my new series exploring the continuing evolution of functional training and functional exercise prescription.

Not because what we've done before was wrong.

Because our understanding of the human system continues to grow.

And as our understanding evolves, our prescription should evolve with it.

Full article available through the link in my bio.

Functional training has evolved. Has our definition?rcise. It experiences motion, forces,Functional and information—and it responds and adapts accordingly.

08/08/2026

08/06/2026

If bone responds to mechanical loading, why doesn’t every heavy resistance-training program produce the same skeletal response?

Why can one person lift substantial weights for years yet show only modest changes in bone strength, while another person responds more significantly to a program using different directions, speeds, impacts, and movement patterns?

The answer is that bone does not respond to weight alone.

It responds to the strain environment that weight creates.

And weight and strain are not the same thing.

What does this mean for how we train?

Find out in my latest substack...Why Heavy Isn't Always Enough. Why Your Bones May Stop Listening Long Before Your Muscles Do

Link in Bio

07/28/2026

Most people think stronger bones come from lifting heavier weights.

That's true...

but it isn't the whole story.

Your bones aren't measuring pounds.

They're measuring information.

Every step...
Every jump...
Every lift...
Every change in direction...

is sending your skeleton a mechanical message.

The remarkable question isn't:

"How heavy is the weight?"

The remarkable question is:

"What information is reaching your bones?"

That's the question we're beginning to explore in The Library of Human Adaptation™.

The first article has just been published, and over the next several weeks we'll dive much deeper into the fascinating science of how your body adapts.

Because understanding how your body changes is the first step toward changing it.

Your Bones Aren't Listening to Weight. They're Listening to Information.

(Link in comments section).

Understanding the Human System. Developing Human Potential.™

07/28/2026

It began with one simple question from a client...

How does bone know when it should become stronger?

That question changed the way I think about exercise.

Your bones aren't listening to weight.

They're listening to information.

Every movement begins as mechanics.

Mechanics become biological information.

Information guides adaptation.

That's the remarkable conversation happening inside your skeleton every day.

Here's why that changes the way we think about exercise, rehabilitation, and human adaptation.

Read the full article. Link in bio.

07/09/2026

Your hip arthritis may have started as a movement habit.
This is not speculation. It is what the research shows.
Studies reviewed by the Gray Institute demonstrate that proprioceptive neuropathy — a degradation of the joint’s sensory nerve function — precedes osteoarthritic changes in the hip.
The sequence goes like this:
Restricted motion → sensory nerve endings in the joint stop firing (they’re never challenged through their full range) → muscle timing and response degrade → altered, repetitive loading patterns develop → localized cartilage stress accumulates over years → degenerative changes appear on an X-ray.
By the time someone is diagnosed with hip arthrosis, the movement restriction that started the process may have been building for a decade or more.
Gary Gray called this the “functional attractor well” — a restricted movement pattern that grooves progressive degenerative change into the joint surfaces over time.
A hip hinge cue, trained for years, is exactly this pattern. Not dramatically. Not painfully — at first. Silently. Progressively. Over thousands of repetitions.
The full science is in my latest Substack piece. Link in bio.

07/08/2026

Here’s the irony behind the most common glute cue in fitness:
The hip hinge is almost always sold as the movement that “activates your glutes.”
But the gluteus maximus does not operate primarily in the sagittal plane.
Its fiber architecture is oriented to produce extension and external rotation simultaneously — and it gains its mechanical advantage through eccentric lengthening across the transverse and frontal planes during the loading phase.
To fully load the glute, you need internal rotation, adduction, and flexion occurring simultaneously at the hip.
A rigid sagittal hinge gives you flexion. And nothing else.
You are asking the body’s primary power source to fire at roughly one-third capacity — and then wondering why performance plateaus and injuries persist.
Gary Gray said it plainly: “If there ever was a neuromusculoskeletal brain in the body, it’s the butt.”
The glute is designed to be the motor. But it has to be loaded before it can fire. And loading it requires the three-dimensional freedom the hinge cue explicitly prevents.
Full article on Substack. Link in bio.