Category: featured

The Kinetic Chain

Posted on by Michael Devon

MUSCLE INTEGRATION MAKES UP EFFICIENT MOVEMENT. THIS IS BECAUSE ALL OF OUR MUSCLES ARE LINKED THROUGH THE KINETIC CHAIN. IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT HAPPENS IN ONE AREA OF THE BODY HAS A DIRECT OR INDIRECT EFFECT ELSEWHERE.

THE POWER OF THE KINETIC CHAIN CAN MAKE MOVEMENT THERAPEUTIC BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE KNEE PAIN, THE PAIN COULD BE CAUSED BY WEAK GLUTES. SO BY STRENGTHENING THE GLUTES, YOU RESOLVE YOUR KNEE PAIN.

IMAGINE YOUR KINETIC CHAIN LIKE A ROW TEAM, WHEN ALL YOUR TEAMMATES ARE ROWING AND DOING THEIR PART, THE BOAT MOVES WITH LESS EFFORT. BUT WHEN ONE OF THE ROWERS ISN’T DOING THEIR JOB, IT PUTS MORE RESPONSIBILITY ON THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE TEAM. THE TEAM GETS TIRED FASTER, BECAUSE EACH MEMBER GETS OVER WORKED,

WHEN LINKS ARE WEAK AND NOT DOING THEIR JOB (LIKE THE ROW TEAM ANALOGY), MOTOR COMPENSATIONS DRIVE YOUR MOVEMENTS. WHEN YOU DON’T MOVE WITH OPTIMAL MECHANICS YOU RISK INJURY AND REPETITIVE  DYSFUNCTIONAL MECHANICS LEAD TO PAIN.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO GET YOUR KINETIC CHAIN LINKED UP AND FUNCTIONING LIKE A ROW TEAM THATS IN SYNCH. WHEN YOU EXERCISE IN A WAY THAT ADDRESSES THE WHOLE SYSTEM AND THE WAY IT INTERCONNECTS, YOU BUILD MUSCLE FOR THE WAY YOUR BODY IS GOING TO USE IT IN REAL WORLD CONDITIONS.

 

Why We Do What We Do

Posted on by Michael Devon

A lot of you have been asking what we do, and the simple answer is we want to bring value to our customers lives. Whether that’s helping them out of pain, building muscle and strength, aligning their posture, or getting them to move better to reduce their risk of injury. All of which go hand in hand.

The fitness world is littered with trainers that promote getting stronger but usually at the expense of your posture, muscle strain, joint pain, and movement restrictions. We opened our doors to be a solution to this approach to getting fit, by teaching alternative techniques that simultaneously build strength and mobility without damaging your joints or exacerbating muscle imbalance.

We are Functional Patterns practitioners providing training that your body needs to function without adversity. Come try our gym to experience where personal training meets physical therapy. We help you reach goals you thought weren’t possible!

Pain & Anxiety Relationship

Posted on by Michael Devon

Suffering from chronic pain and anxiety?

Both correlate to the way your body handles stress, based on your physical frame aka posture. A slouched posture correlates to depressive episodes and high anxiety, because your fascia stores emotions- ie; childhood traumas, environmental stress- and those emotions influence the way you carry yourself.

It’s rare to see someone with a strong posture suffer from depression and unmanageable anxiety, because their structure cultivates a better response to handle those stressors. The goal is not to avoid stress, but to teach your body to handle it more efficiently.

It goes deeper, but if you’re on the fence about improving your health, learn Functional Patterns training. The results fix structural imbalances influencing your physical and mental health, producing a body equipped to handle stress.

Learn more here.

*pictures based on Functional Patterns Training Methodology Results from FP Practitioners world wide. Notice more resilient structures vs. body language before training.

We’re the only facility in San Antonio and surrounding areas that train Functional Patterns and have 3 Functional Patterns Practitioners on staff! If you’re not local to SA check out the Practitioner Map to locate someone near you, for results like these!

Surgery Isn’t Your Only Option

Posted on by Michael Devon

It’s unfortunate that so many surgeons push surgery to correct injuries and pain brought on by mechanical dysfunction. Surgeons are crucial for emergency surgery, but when it comes to addressing bone malformations, joint replacements, spinal fusions, etc., they fix the joint at fault but don’t take into account what led the joint to get to that point in the first place, or how that newly fixed joint is going to mesh back into movement with the rest of the structure. Sometimes surgery fixes the issue you’re complaining about but creates another one.

Sometimes surgery is the only option, but if you’re like us and want to prevent surgery or approach rehabilitation from a non surgical route, then your training should address what is causing the problem. Exercise no longer has to be exercise to lose weight or sculpt a ripped physique. The right kind of exercise can provide rehabilitation to old injuries, while simultaneously building muscle where your body needs it, to prevent future injuries!

Don’t get trapped in the mindset that you need to exercise to lose weight (that’s mostly influenced by your dietary habits anyway) and then because you’re dealing with pain or suffering from an injury, you need to carve out more time to go to physical therapy. As mentioned, the evolved way of exercising takes into account therapy that the body needs to mitigate pain and injuries while you exercise.

But exercise can’t be performed the way you’ve always trained, or the way you see most others exercising or being trained, because those same exercises are likely leading to worse mechanics that cause your body to be more prone to injuries and deal with aches and pains. Exercise needs to be pinpointed to simultaneously build the strength and muscle you desire, to support your body, without causing poor movement patterns that lead the body to pain and injury that require surgery.

Circle back to why you need surgery in the first place, and what options you have to heal. Surgeons are always going to look at the problem and what surgery can do to fix it, occasionally you’ll get sent to physical therapy, but usually it only delays surgery or the surgeon will only see surgery as the only option to fix the issue. We want you to know, there are likely other options to fix the issue. Because sometimes the issue you complain about, isn’t the underlying issue. Sometimes it goes deeper than having knee pain and you need a new joint. Sometimes building a strong core and glutes will help support your pelvis better and influence the movement of force in the knee joint. Sometimes building a strong upper body will help your lower body move better, leading to less stress on the knee joint. Sometimes it’s a combination of things that improve the health of your knee joint. We work to get to the bottom of what your body needs to improve your overall health and function.

If you’re on the fence about surgery to fix an issue, you might want to consider the recovery from that. Using the knee for example, if the issue is with weak glutes or a weak upper body, surgery magically gives you a new knee joint, but if you don’t address the weakness in your body, in a few years you’ll be back in the same predicament. Your new joint will take the same force that your real joint used to take on because the rest of your body wasn’t built up to support your movements.

We are the only personal training studio in San Antonio that trains this way. We don’t like to call ourselves personal trainers because we get lumped in the category with the rest of the industry’s trainers. We are Functional Patterns Human Biomechanics Specialists. If you’re not familiar with Functional Patterns, look it up. It’s what sets us apart form the rest of the trainers out there and it’s the way we conduct our training sessions- to improve the current body you have, naturally and non invasively. For obvious reason we don’t display the corrective exercises that rehab your body, what you see on our website and social media is a tip of the iceberg of what we do. We only showcase the dynamic exercises that reinforce the corrective exercises we do behind the scenes.

Sure, it will take time, but with the work we put your body through, the results will last over time and not offer temporarily relief, but relief that is here to stay! Come find out more about our style of training and why it’s changing the fitness and rehab industry.

Top 3 Training Mistakes

Posted on by Michael Devon

When you start exercising you either see people around you doing an exercise and you copy them, you learn from a YouTube video, or you get guidance from a personal trainer. Sometimes these learning techniques work well- depending who you’re learning from. The problem is that not everyone learns the same way, or what you’re learning is wrong… or maybe not the “best” option.

We prioritized these top 3 mistakes beginners, and experts, often aren’t taught or forget about when training.

  1. Compromising your form just to complete “3×15” reps because what’s the sense of dong any reps if you’re compensating you’re way through the movement?
  2. Incorporating too many variables just to lose sense of the basics because without the fundamentals working, like a strong core and functioning glutes, to support you- your body isn’t integrating as unit.
  3. Going through the motions without *the correct* muscles activating because your body will compensate in ways that you don’t know or your trainer can’t see.

If you can relate to this, you’re like the cup in the image. Trying to function but everything you do, to treat it like a cup, is wasted because it’s broken. Your body breaks down from exercising incorrectly, sometimes it’s immediately, from an injury or sometimes over time, from wear and tear on your structure being exacerbated by these mistakes.

Get yourself a trainer that knows what they’re doing to progress you intelligently and why it’s important to avoid these top training mistakes.

Reciprocity

Posted on by Michael Devon

What goes up, must come down, what goes left, goes right. Basic principles that can be used to train functions for the body, specifically with exercises that reinforce basic human movement patterns.

One pattern that accounts for moving your body is referred to as contralateral reciprocation. It’s primarily explained as your arms and legs working in uniform opposition- right arm swings forward as your left leg kicks forward, while your right leg kicks back and your left arm swings back, to rhythmically propel yourself through space; as in walking.

Watch any person walk or run (and even throw) and you’ll see reciprocal functions taking place throughout their body. Ipsilaterally and contralaterally. It’s a trait that the human body has developed as a result of its movement patterns.

Since the human body primarily operates through a series of reciprocal actions, you can use the principle of reciprocity and apply it to exercises in a way that replicates how the body moves in reality.

Realistically, walking is a, taken for granted, movement that your body does the most. If you want to get “strong” in a way that matters for the world you’re living in, get better at strengthening your body to master the mechanics behind walking, and running… (and throwing). That way you built your body to be resilient for what it endures on a daily basis, and to better withstand the damage from gravity and the force it places on your body.

Let’s reign this back in to, the title of this post: Reciprocity, and why it’s a piece of the puzzle to overall better movement.

If you study the patterns of human movement you’ll find that the body is constantly reciprocating, from basic examples like agonist and antagonist muscles- as one muscle contracts, the one opposite of it it, stretches. And the  timing of the inhale and exhale of your breathing mechanics. Then to the mechanics of contralateral reciprocation like walking, sprinting, kicking, punching, a golf swing, even a baseball pitch. And to more advanced reciprocation, like the micro sequences within oppositional motion. Like the Yin and the Yang, without one, you’d have too much of the other, and that would throw out the balance.

Let’s circle that back to exercise and “training” the body. Training doesn’t always need to be referred to as physical. With the right kind of exercise you should be training your brain and body, and using stimuli to condition the desired response you want for your body, or brain. If you understand that mechanisms in the body work in reciprocation then you can use exercise as form of stimuli to condition more harmony within the body. Exercises that revolve around the principles within gait (walking, running, throwing) involve contralateral reciprocation patterns of movement that communicate to the brain, that the body is in harmony with its biology- how humans evolved to move.

Think about it this way- an upright chest press, with a step, is reinforcing movement patterns that align with human movement, and reconditioning the neuromuscular system to achieve a more rewarding response. Versus, squatting with a bar on your neck, and lifting the weight up and down, or using a dumbbell to pump out 20 reps of curls for big arms- with no regard to what’s going on with the rest of your body. Have you consider that because the body works in harmony and integrates muscles to work synergistically at once, that isolating one muscle to work one at a time, creates disconnections in your neuromuscular system. So, which form of exercise do you think would create more symbiosis versus division in the body? No more Yin and Yang together.

While there is still much more to account for in terms of exercising, training, principles, function, and reciprocity, this was written with the intent to create a different way to think about exercise. And the effects it has on your body, function, wellbeing, and longevity. As we learn more about the human body and how it operates, we can finally become more intelligent with the way we exercise. No longer for sport or ego, because those aren’t healthy for your body and more importantly you can’t sustain the behavior.  So you spend a few years looking good, maybe even feeling good without joint pain, but eventually it’ll catch up to you and you won’t be able to move, you’ll hurt, you’ll put on weight, turn to dysfunctional behavior for comfort, and enter the hard to get out cycle of self sabotage. What if you could use exercise to get healthier as you age? Not to look good like when you were younger but to feel youthful, energized, and functional like when you were younger! It’s a red pill to swallow but one that can be rewarding in terms of wellbeing as you age. All the fears and self fulfilling prophecies of hip replacements, back pain, and immobile joints can all be avoided, if you decide to train smarter instead of harder. Set yourself up for the long run. The world needs strong and capable humans!

Yours in Health,

Michael

The Right Kind of Training

Posted on by Michael Devon

If you’re exercising and you have to constantly work around joint restrictions and physical limitations, you’re not doing yourself much benefit in the long run.

The issues you are working around never get resolved and keep compounding and getting worse. Eventually other issues pop up from A) all the compensation you’ve been doing working around issues, B) weaknesses that keep getting weaker because you never addressed them, or C) your body just eventually caps out from the demand you’re placing on it trying to get a “good workout in.”

What is a good workout to you? Sweat dripping on the floor, pulse thumping, out of breath, and fatigue all over your body? Those markers are indicative of a good workout but not if your body (joints, tendons, ligaments, bones, and correct muscles) can’t handle it.

Those symptoms trick your brain into thinking that what you’re physically doing must be working because that’s what most of the fitness industry teaches. But do it long enough and it’s not sustainable and eventually you’ll degenerate your body and wellbeing all because you, or your trainer, don’t really weigh the pros and cons of how you’re exercising now, and what effect that will have on you in the future.

Our gym is a little different, we still view the above markers as important ways to challenge the body, but only once the physical prerequisites have been met. This allows for a “good workout” but with less wear and tear on the body, thus promoting longevity and allowing you to continue working out as you get older.

If you can continue working out, correctly, as you age then your exercises will enhance your overall function and ability to move well in life outside of the gym. Our gym promotes exercise that goes beyond the exercise itself and carries over to life in the real world.

If this sounds like something you want to try to get yourself out of the rat race of the mainstream fitness world, then call us and set up your initial consultation today!

Unconventional Gym Exercises

Posted on by Michael Devon

The exercises we teach at this gym don’t look like your typical gym exercises and you must think that they don’t build muscle or they don’t build strength. What you don’t realize is that they support muscle integration from multiple chains of muscle in a manner that replicates the dynamics of human movement (weight transfer, contralateral reciprocation, total body integration, etc.) and promotes muscular and neurological balance through the system. Key ingredients for a strong body for life versus a strong body for exercises that don’t carry over to life dynamics.

Our team of trainers don’t just stand around and count reps because there is more to exercising than just doing this exercise for 15 reps, and then this one, and then this one, only to get your heart rate up and break a sweat. That’s important but there is more to it because, if you’re just going through the motions then you could be using the wrong muscles to perform the exercise.

We want to teach you how to contract a muscle properly and at the correct time. In doing so, your body will begin to reprogram new functions to support your movement patterns- during exercise and real life! Without muscles contracting to move your body, your joints begin to pick up the slack and wear and tear is induced in parts of the body that aren’t capable of handling the demand. This is when injury risk goes up and aches and pains creep in.

If you want to avoid injuring yourself and inflicting pain, that can be prevented, then you must learn how to move well and what muscle functions are involved in certain movements. The better you can execute muscle functions during exercises, the better those functions will manifest in reality when you’re walking, running, playing sports, or just living in real world conditions.

The secret is that the exercises you perform must mirror the way your body performs in the real world. So when you’re doing the same exercises you did in high school athletics, or what you read in a fitness magazine, or what you see other gym goers doing, your body is missing out on the crucial variables that separate ‘moving your body” from moving your body, using the correct muscles to control ranges of motion and functions that your body should be capable of performing in the real world without pain. In short, you’re either habitually going through the motions the way your body defaults to movement patterns or you’re using your muscle functions to intentionally control those motions and re-train the way your body moves through ranges or motion. A lot of times the traditional, conventional exercises that you can perform by “monkey see, monkey do” don’t replicate the way your body moves in reality and that can cause misuse and misfiring of muscles when you’re just trying to move in general.

Exercise is more complex than seeing an exercise and then doing what you see, because without the proper understanding of what you should be feeling and how your body should be functioning you could be training your body to contract the wrong muscles and compensate your way through an exercise, which leads to performing poorly for the dynamics of the real world.

As pictured, the exercises in this gym allow the body to move through the dynamics that compose human movement. The more skilled you become at these types of exercises, the more carry over those exercises have to life outside of the gym. Which is what your body needs, to function without aches and pains. When executed properly, the exercises we teach offer the combined benefit of strength training and physical rehabilitation at once.

Before you write these exercises off because they don’t look tough, don’t require lifting heavy weight, or look like dance moves consider this, maybe the way we’ve been taught to exercise as athletes, bodybuilders, powerlifters, yogis, etc., is incomplete. Maybe it’s too much for the body because the body hasn’t mastered the basics of fundamental movement. Aka human biomechanics, the complex intricate details about the way the human body moves around, and then creating and teaching exercises that match up to that movement. If you don’t train these fundamentals, how can something like lifting a heavy bar, on your spine, up and down, or moving through extreme ranges of motion, or even moving through ranges of motion that our body didn’t evolve to do, like animal crawls. Maybe all of this has some good intentions behind the practices but if our muscles evolved primarily from movements like walking, running, and throwing, then we should train those movements and create exercises around those movements. Instead of movements that we create for sport or ego boosts or just arbitrary patterns that our body, literally, at a functional level, should never have to go through- like a crab crawl or a warrior pose. Maybe we need to be a little more critical about the repercussions from some exercise practices, and the long term effects they have on your fitness, joint health, total body function, and pain. Maybe then, the need for rehab will go away, if we build strength around the movements we do most, rather than exercises that limit your strength to that exercise (in a gym and not outside in the real world). If your body is strong at what you do most, then it compensates less and has more functional capacity.

So remember, if you want to be strong, you have to be efficient at what you do most. Come try a month with us and we’ll teach your muscles how to function, in the way that your body moves, to build the strength that you need to navigate the demands of the real world!

 

Exercise Priorities

Posted on by Michael Devon

There’s a lot of different training styles that clients are exposed to in the fitness industry. Some work, some don’t. Some are good, some are better, some are bad, and some are just plain wrong. In this gym we don’t try to keep up with the latest trends, but instead focus on the function of the human-being to know our training is relevant and beneficial to our clients.

We measure function as it relates to gait (ie; walking) because it’s what we do most as humans. If what you do most is dysfunctional, a cataclysm of problems will follow in other functions you perform. They will be restricted and imbalanced, leading to asymmetrical movement and compensation.

Consequently, pain and injuries will present themselves because your fundamental movement is wiring in bad habits. If every step you take is in a compensatory manner then your muscles start to learn that it is normal, even if it isn’t right.

Our goal when training clients is to expose their compensations to see what their body is doing wrong so that we can reprogram better function and build strength as it relates to the gait cycle. Thus circling back to what we do most as humans, if you have a strong body you should have a functional gait cycle. Strong individual muscles may look nice and serve some purpose, but if those muscles don’t know how to function together at a fundamental level then it’s a waste of mass. Then you start teaching your body to move around rigid and clunky because your muscles don’t know how to work together in harmony.

Isolating your muscles when you exercise (picture the exercises you see in most commercial gyms) and expecting them to magically translate to functional body mechanics is like not studying for a board exam and expecting to get your license. You need to prepare your body with the right stimulus for the outcome you want it to achieve.

That’s why in this gym, we train functions (through exercises) and not just exercise for the sake of saying you worked out. It’s a different breed of fitness and it produces a different outcome on the body. An outcome that translates to life away from the gym and better function when you’re living life in the real world.

So if you don’t want to be a gym rat, but you recognize the importance of exercise for your health, then you might want to consider learning the right way to exercise to get your body built for the world and not just a body that can perform exercises- that may or may not carry over to functioning well in real life.

If our philosophy meshes with your view on exercise then don’t wait to start functioning better today! It’s a long road but the body can be re-trained to move and function better!

 

Muscle Power

Posted on by Michael Devon

A muscle will produce more force when it is used in integration with the other muscles in its fascially connected chain/sling.

To add to that, if you focus solely on “lifting heavy” weights on a limited range of motion exercise like the bench press (as evident by the picture), you’re packing on unfunctional muscle that can’t reach its full length potential when you need it to, away from the gym.

This can alter the tension relationships between your muscles and cause postural imbalances and injuries/pain further down the road.

It’s important that muscles function as they’re designed to and that exercise respects and enhances those functions.

We’re less about exercising and more about functioning. If you work to enhance the function of a muscle then as a byproduct you’re exercising, because if your muscle doesn’t function the way it should, then the simple act of trying to teach the muscle to perform that function will be a challenge on your muscular and nervous system, and produce the same benefit as exercise but with the added benefit of enhancing your muscle function.

The exercise pictured, the bench press, is not an exercise that you can learn or even relearn function for the pecs because it doesn’t allow the pec muscles to function the way they need to. It only isolates the pec muscles in one plane of motion, and with a limited range of motion that they rarely ever go through in the real world. Think about it, how often when you’re walking down the street or running when you play sports do you drop down to the floor, lie on your back and push weight off your chest? Or even drop to the ground and do a pushup for that matter? The answer is obviously, never! So this is an example of an arbitrary exercise that really doesn’t serve a functional purpose. Maybe for an offensive lineman on a professional football team, but even then they are standing upright when they are pushing someone off of them so the context of the bench press lift doesn’t carry over as much as we think it does.

The bench press lift itself is fairly limited and doesn’t train the rest of the fascial chain/sling that the pec muscle is a part of, so it’s not going to produce as much force or power because it’s just the pec muscle activating by itself.

Try this. Tap your index finger on your desk and feel/listen to the sound it makes when it contacts your desk. Now use your other hand to pull your index finger back (essentially winding it up) and then let your index finger slam down on the desk. It should produce a louder sound and feel more powerful than just tapping by itself. This example is showcasing how weak the muscle is when it works in isolation, but by pulling it back with your other hand you are involving more of the nearby muscles and stretching the fascia that houses it so when you let go it’s ready to produce more force because of more muscle recruitment achieved from a fuller range of motion.

So when you train your pecs, absent of their fascial connections, you’re missing out on the nearby muscles that the pecs attach to resulting in less power output. Additionally you aren’t getting a full range of motion (like your finger pulling back more) to get the pec fibers to stretch more, so that you can get a deeper contraction after the stretch. Although we’ve focused on the pecs as the example, the same can be said of every muscle on your body. The more muscles you can connect with a movement, and completing a larger range of motion will allow better force production and power from that muscle, resulting in overall better function.

When you have been used to a certain way of training and exercising your entire life, whether from high school athletics, body building magazines, commercial gym culture, or YouTube videos it can be hard to grasp the concepts of what real functional training aims to do. So if all of this doesn’t make complete sense, don’t fret, this is on the cutting edge of where the fitness industry is shifting and it challenges the brain and body at the same time. We’re here to help provide clarity and direction for those wanting to workout to enhance their function in life outside of the gym. This approach is different from general exercise to just get a workout in, versus exercising to improve the function of a muscle and a muscle chain/sling as described above. The latter will have the body in a healthier state and improve the overall fitness of the body, as opposed to becoming better at exercises we’re teaching your body how to become better at functions so it can perform in any given scenario.

For more visual examples demonstrating this concept, be sure to follow us on social media, @safunctionalfitness, to see exercise videos showcasing how we train entire muscle chains through entire ranges of motion.