Tag: biomechanics

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.

Automated Muscle Contractions

Posted on by Michael Devon

Learn to move your pelvis and ribcage in multiple contexts, against multiple demands.

These structures influence function in the upper and lower extremities, alignment of the spine and head, and the ability to engage powerful muscles- like the glutes, pecs, lats, and core!

It’s one thing to consciously contract the glutes or your abs during an exercise, but in life outside the gym your muscles contract automatically based on the position your body is in.

Ergo, when we train clients in our gym we aren’t cueing them to squeeze this muscle or that muscle during an exercise, instead we cue them to align the structures of their body in a position to illicit an automatic muscle contraction.

As these positions become more efficient, we can tailor the exercise position to the specific context that it’s encountered in the real world to produce efficient movement, facilitated by the correct muscles automatically. That way when you’re out for a walk or playing a tennis match, you don’t have to think about what muscles are controlling your body and you can just go!

Control over these regions during exercise will enhance your movement potential in the real world because of their influence on multiple muscle functions, and how that contributes to efficient body mechanics.

You only have one body, learn what it needs and how to supply its needs with our team of biomechanics specialists training you on your journey to strength, function, and sustainable fitness!

Without This, Physical Activity Suffers!

Posted on by Michael Devon
activity like this, requires muscles that work, in order to perform without aches, pains, or injuries.

Without proper muscle activity, physical activity suffers.

If your muscles don’t work when you work, your body picks up the slack in deficit ways.

The body is king/queen at compensating, which means if you want it to achieve a range of motion it will do it, but it will use whatever muscles it can to get there.

When you don’t use the correct muscles to move your body, you risk injuring yourself or triggering pain from improper mechanics.

Your mechanics are directly related to your muscle function, so muscles that don’t work are going to cause your body to move inefficiently.

Walking the dogs, playing tennis, exercising, standing, and general movements all require functional muscles if you want to perform these activities without consequences.

The consequence for dysfunctional muscles, is poor body mechanics, poor body mechanics contribute to movement compensations, which lead to aches, pains, and injuries.

Let our team of trainers help teach your body how it needs to function, to move without pain!

Posture 2.0

Posted on by Michael Devon

Posture is often associated with standing upright with the shoulders pulled back and the chest opened up, but posture is more than just standing straight.

Your body can’t hold one particular posture when it moves, so your muscles need to learn how to change “postures” when it changes positions.

When you think about what it means to have “good posture,” consider how that relates to your body in motion, and the changes movement produces in your body’s alignment.

When you bend over to pick something up, your pelvis is going to be in a different position while you’re bent over, than when you’re standing upright.

Therefore, your posture changes. It’s not about staying stacked a certain way 24/7, because certain functions require certain positions. Your muscles need to learn to drive your skeleton into those positions and get you out of them, so you don’t get stuck in a certain posture.

Posture changes constantly, and it goes deeper than what your posture looks like when you’re at rest. It’s one thing to be aware of your posture when you’re sitting, standing, or lying down. But have you ever given any thought to what your posture looks like when you’re moving? Exercising, golfing, walking, hiking, boxing, dancing, running, etc.?

Good posture means your body can maintain integrity throughout its structure, when at rest and when moving. Structural integrity is achieved when your muscles are functioning correctly to support your alignment and intrinsically stabilizing your body from external demands.

The better your structure can withstand external demands, like gravitational forces and daily activities, the better your alignment will become at rest. Your body won’t be beat into a certain posture, or “comfort zone,” because it will be strengthened to withstand those effects and align into a “neutral zone,” always ready to change and adapt to balance the demands placed on it.

Not all training is going to respect the concepts described above, some exercises may even cause your structural integrity to weaken- making your body more vulnerable to the forces acting on it. The exercises you perform should enhance your body’s capability to withstand gravity and daily activities, without adversity.

If you want all the gravitational gains, without the compressional pains, set up your consultation with one of our biomechanics trainers today!

Less Pain Is Possible!

Posted on by Michael Devon

Is pain keeping your from the activities you enjoy? Have you been told surgery is your only option?

At SA Functional Fitness our pain management trainers restore the function of your muscles to support the integrity of your joints!

This is important because without proper muscle functions, your joints take on the stress from the force that your muscles should be absorbing.

Over time this leads to inflammation in the joints and causes pain from the joints working in a way they weren’t designed to.

Each trainer plans exercises to get to the root of your dysfunction causing adversity on your joints, or pain in general.

Most of the time surgery can be prevented, delayed, or faster recovery after surgery, from the right kind of exercise.

We work with numerous clients dealing with knee pain, back pain, hip pain, shoulder pain, and neck pain. Our goal as biomechanics trainers is to fix the underlying issue that contributes to pain in the first place. Sometimes this isn’t always possible, so our next goal is to mitigate the pain, or set your body up to recover from surgery faster and fuller with exercise before surgery.

If this sounds like something your body is searching for, then call us today to get started with one of our trainers!

How To: Exercise

Posted on by Michael Devon

Confession time, I didn’t know how to exercise when I was growing up. The exercise habits I learned on my own, from fitness magazines, athletic coaches, and even other trainers, and exercise programs started ingraining dysfunction on my body and the result was aches and pains… in my early 20’s.

I finally realized if I continued down the path I was on, surely I would need a joint replacement, back surgery, or I would become crippled and unable to function the way I wanted to. I admit, what I learned about fitness and how I started training clients was not conducive to mine, nor their, overall fitness and wellbeing.

I had to wise up and humble myself, because I didn’t know everything and I had to learn more. For my health’s sake and the health and fitness of my clients if I wanted them to stick around and achieve the results I knew were possible with the right kind of training.

Through ups and downs of trial and error I finally found Functional Patterns, a training system for humans! And if you practice FP, or if you’ve ever had a chance to try it with a practitioner, you know that it is all encompassing. Training that is mentally overwhelming and physically deceiving, yet intuitively feels good and leaves you coming back for more.

The best part about Functional Patterns training is that it doesn’t bother my joints. When I first started rehabbing myself from old injuries and nagging pain coupled with joint compression I would uncover movement compensations during an exercise that highlighted my weaknesses and dysfunctions. I was able to gain insight into how to correct my motor skills to support my overall function, and also my function as it related to specific scenarios that I could train my body to adapt to.

The main area that I train my body to get stronger at is my gait. The gait cycle is a key element to human function. It’s how our movement evolved our muscles, their shape and how they function. Exercising the way I had when I was growing up didn’t train the body that way- it grouped it into individual muscles and individual functions and trained them like that. When in reality, the body functions as one integrated unit.

It was a no brainer, the way I was exercising was messing my body up even more, because it didn’t take into account how to train the body to coincide with the way it functions. It didn’t matter that everyone else in the gym was training the wrong way, it wasn’t for me. And in hindsight, it wasn’t right for them either, looking back on it, mostly everyone in the gyms I was working out at had some form of injury or joint pain that they were either working around or trying to fix with the same old rehab exercises that have been around for decades- yet still didn’t work. If they did, I feel like they would have worked for me and everyone else in the gym trying to get out of pain. Once I realized all of this, I started transitioning into more and more Functional Patterns training. I purchased their 10-week online course, started working with an FP Practitioner in person, and eventually wanted to learn more so I got certified and become a Practitioner myself!

The more I learn, and our team of FP Practitioners learn, the more we discover how traditional means of exercise (the common exercises you see being performed) create more damage on the body because they don’t align with the true mechanics that make up the motion(s) of the human body. It’s our mission to fix our own bodies so we can fix yours! We lead by example, so all of the exercises we teach, we’ve gone through and tested out on ourselves first, to ensure that they work. This allows us to deliver a low risk; high reward exercise, rather than making your body feel worse in the process of “exercising” and “getting fit.”

It’s time to learn how to train your body intentionally and with a purpose, rather than habitually and just going through the motions with whatever muscles are working. Time to exercise the right way, instead of compensating your way through an exercise. It’s finally time to see a trainer at a gym that aims to simultaneously strengthen your body while rehabbing your body, so that your body can perform the way you want it to in the real world.

While this isn’t a step by step guide on how to perform the exercise that’s right for you, it is a guide that you should consider when exercising. How does exercising make you feel, during and after, and even the next day. This is one way to recognize if the way you’re exercising and the exercises you’re performing are inflicting damage to your body and impeding your overall function.

If you want to learn what exercises to do, and how to do them, to achieve a high functioning body as you continue to age and without all the aches and pains, then schedule your Initial Consultation with one of our FP Practitioners today!

 

 

Human Function

Posted on by Michael Devon

The human body has evolved to function in the way that it has through environmental stimulus from the natural world. In nature, a human would need to be efficient at walking, running, and throwing in order to survive. Just because we have changed our environment through technological innovation over the past several hundred years, does not negate the thousands of years that went into forming our body into what it is today.

There are specific ratios of movement, rotations, muscular tensions, and pressures that need to be coordinated in order to have efficient gait and throwing. Almost every movement that a human does is going to be a derivative of those patterns. By optimizing the length tension relationship of muscles through these patterns, you end up with a structure that is able to float in a sea of muscles and distribute force through entire kinetic chains as opposed to compressing joints and vertebrae with the impact of every step you take.

Our gym utilizes Functional Patterns training because FP seeks to codify and quantify the specific movement sequencing needed to optimize those patterns and get ordinary people to move in a closer approximation to an elite athlete.

Once these patterns are instituted, progressive overload can be utilized to build muscle that serves a functional purpose rather than isolated muscle that makes us clunky and inefficient movers.

How To Tell If Your Workouts Are Paying Off

Posted on by Michael Devon

No it’s not just that your losing weight (that’s mostly diet anyway), or that you’re lifting more weight, or you can touch your toes. All of that should come along for the ride, but what if all of that happens at the expense of your well-being, and you can lift more weight but you blow out your knee joints, or shoulder joints, or you’re losing weight by beating your body up with chronic fast paced interval workouts that you won’t be able to sustain when your body finally crashes (hence why dietary habits are more important for sustainable weight loss), or you’re more flexible but touching your toes is over stretching your hamstrings and now you can’t contract them like you should and they no longer support your body.

The way our trainers educate our clients to know if their workouts are actually yielding a return on their investment is if they’re able to move without guarding or restriction, they no longer have chronic pain when they exercise or move about in the real world, and they can function the way they need and want to without having to avoid certain activities. Of course all of this is a process and not an overnight event, but those are the goals our trainers have for all of our clients, our intentions behind every workout is to build muscle and strength that carries over to life away from the gym. After all, the gym shouldn’t be where you spend hours a day but instead get in, do your work, and get out to enjoy other activities that our gym has prepared your body for!

We are a unique boutique fitness studio that focuses on human biomechanics and our niche does’t entertain all the fluff in the fitness industry because we’ve been there and we’ve done that, and we finally realized that it was ego driven and unsustainable. We beat our bodies up at the expense of looking good, and we realized that if we continued on that path, we’d be right where the rest of gym goers were, wearing knee braces, avoiding certain lifts because it hurt, working around problems, on the path to knee replacements and back surgeries, and eventually blaming old age on a problem that was created years prior from bad fitness habits. We realize not everyone is about longevity and sustainability but for those of you who want something different, and something that will last, we’re here for you!

Once we can undo the damage done to your body from past exercise habits and old injuries, then the fun can start and you can obtain that rush of endorphins and the higher intensity cardiovascular workouts but you won’t injure yourself because your body will have been primed for advanced movements. And if it’s not, your body will tell you and we’ll stop and correct what needs correcting before blindly proceeding with an exercise that you might need more coaching on. The difference is by that point you and your body will know what feels right and what is going to produce damage, because we like to educate you along the way so that you learn the purpose of an exercise and how it should carry over to your overall function- inside and outside of the gym.

We spend time in the beginning learning foundational concepts to apply to basic exercises that involve structures like your pelvis and ribcage, that effect other structures like your arms, shoulders, and neck, as well as your legs, knees, ankles, and feet. When you learn the functions of these structures and how to move them to contract muscles and then what those muscle contractions should feel like, then we can go on to the next level. We don’t like to get ahead of ourselves or rush your progress, but we do want to push you to get your body functioning the way it needs to be. How ever long it takes, we have patience to safely progress you and ensure we aren’t going to force you into exercises your body isn’t ready for. As we keep moving you through the levels, that’s when efficiency starts to manifest and we are able to make the most of your time in the gym. Rather than keeping you in a routine that works on stretching first, then strength training, then cardiovascular exercises, then core strengthening, then mobility, then endurance and time under tension, we are able to do all of that at once. Not in one workout but in one exercise! Then not only does your time become efficient but so does your body and the way it moves.

Efficiency is key because in the real world your brain and body don’t have time to think of how to move, it just happens automatically. So the idea of mentally “squeezing” a muscle breaks down at some point and your body needs to learn how to contract a muscle by positioning your bones at the correct angles. Don’t worry, we teach you this. And we take it a step further by matching those angles to the angles that replicate basic human movements like standing, walking, running, bending over, and even throwing, so when you go to perform these movements, you don’t have to think because your muscles already know how to contract during those functions. Again, all of this takes time, depending on how dysfunctional your body has become from improper exercise habits, arbitrary workout classes, old injuries, chronic pains, and whatever else we have to fix to start retraining the brain and body to connect better.

If you’re local to San Antonio and the surrounding areas, we’re your future gym. Not to toot our own horn (because we’re humbled everyday by unique cases like scoliosis clients, clients with chronic pain that hasn’t been helped by physical therapy so they turn to us as their last ditch effort, and other problems that the fitness industry prefers to avoid or work around), but we’re the only place that trains this way. Sure other gyms might claim to do this or have the same intentions, but chances are they are not providing the same service and techniques. The human biomechanics field is a very small, up and coming one, and the Functional Patterns institute that teaches these techniques doesn’t promote weekend or online training seminars, but instead we spend weeks learning these methods to ensure that first, we get them right, so we can properly teach our clients.

So, stop getting stuck in the stretch, lift, cardio, stretch routine and start learning how to become more efficient with exercise, to become more efficient in the real world. Contact us today to schedule an initial consultation/ evaluation and learn what your body does well so we can build off of that, and also what it doesn’t do well so we can correct that! You have your entire life ahead of you, are you going to spend it in pain and unable to move like you used to (what your doctor says is just old age) or are you going to do something about it? It’s time to regain your freedom to move and take control of your lifestyle and the way the human body was meant to move, no matter your age! This gym exists for that reason! Come find out what we do differently from the rest of the fitness world, and why we do it!

Unlock Your Movement

Posted on by Michael Devon

How much thought do you put into your training? Are you addressing your mechanical issues or are you working around them?
Are you trying to optimize the way you move or are you just beating yourself into more problems?

There’s a smarter way to do things. A way that makes moving from point A to point B effortless. The Functional Patterns way.

Let’s say, for example, you have chronically tight hip flexors. In other words your hip flexors are locked in a shortened state. That means that every movement you do, whether it’s walking, squatting, deadlifting, sleeping, or standing, you will be doing so using your contracted hip flexors. At times, your hip flexors will be required to lengthen depending on the movement you’re doing, and if they aren’t capable of doing so, then you’re ingraining a compensational tendency to work around the fact that your hips are locked up.
Even if you’re attempting an FP exercise and you’re not addressing the fact that your hip flexors are locked in a shortened state then you are just applying your current dysfunctional mechanics to a different exercise.

The reason FP training is gaining so much traction is because we focus on getting results. And we get those results by being meticulously specific in the way we stimulate tissues.
The exercises are not arbitrary, they are not designed to be different to look cool. They’re designed to solve a problem as it relates to human movement. Every single time.

Come and check us out and feel what it’s like to unlock the shackles and move without pain!

Functional Anatomy Part 2

Posted on by Michael Devon

In our previous blog we went into great detail highlighting the importance of what function means as it relates to your physical wellbeing. In this blog were simply going to teach what you need to know about your anatomy and how to move it so when you start training with us, you have a basic understanding!

Let’s first start off explaining the basics of spacial proximity, your body’s ability to sense where it’s at. This is important because to correct biomechanical dysfunctions, the brain has to have an understanding of where the body currently rests (or the posture it defaults to) and then learn how to control the body into a better position- to illicit proper muscle contractions, to support better alignment. You must understand how to move your structures forward (anterior), backward (posterior), and sideways (lateral), up (superior), down (inferior), in (adduct), and out (abduct). Once your know the general directions of how your body can and should be capable of moving, then we get into the specifics of micro directional changes of the structures themselves.

Imagine your skeleton, and now think about shifting your ribcage laterally to the right, like you’re trying to stretch your right side of your torso. Or think about shifting your pelvis laterally to the left, like you’re doing The Bump. Those are lateral shifts, but you can also shift your pelvis back (posteriorly), like sticking your butt back, or your ribcage forward (anteriorly), like you’re puffing out your chest. Shifts can apply to other parts of your body, but at the onset we focus on your ribs and hips, since these are two big structures that have influence of your upper and lower extremities. Shifts can also apply to your weight, you can distribute your weight back, in your heels, forward, in your toes, or left and right, as you lean heavier on one leg. In reference to our last blog, if someone’s skeleton is stuck in an anterior pelvic shift (hips humping the air in front of them) we’d first teach them (body and brain) how to shift their pelvis back, into a posterior pelvic shift.

The next structural change you need to understand is tilts. A posterior pelvic tilt and an anterior pelvic tilt are the most common, but tilts can apply to the ribcage as well. A posterior pelvic tilt is in reference to the back of your pelvis tilting down, like your tailbone rolling under you, like a dog tucking its tail between its legs. An anterior pelvic tilt would be the opposite, the front of your pelvis tilting down, like you’re untucking your tailbone. So if you’re stuck in an anterior pelvic tilt, initially we’d teach you how to posteriorly tilt your pelvis to start reprogramming better muscle function in your posterior chain to alleviate the pressure you feel in your lower back because your pelvis is jamming up into your spine.

Rotation is another function that your anatomical structures need to be capable of, especially because rotational forces drive our body during movement. Rotating your pelvis to the right, like your pulling the back of your right hip bone backwards and the front of your left hip bone forwards, creates a turn in your pelvis and activation in your glutes! The same can be said of rotating your ribcage to the right, think about pulling the back of your right should backwards and the front of your left shoulder forwards to create a turn of your ribcage and an activation in your obliques! Can you start seeing how learning to move your structures, can create an automatic muscle contraction? This is helpful because how we teach your to move your structures, is how your body actually moves those structures during basic human functions like walking. So you don’t have to think about squeezing a muscle when you’re busy moving about in the real world, because your structures have already been primed to move like that with the exercises we teach you. And when your structures move the way they should, and they aren’t stuck in a position, your muscles learn to contract to support the ebb and flow of positions that your body moves through, to move!

Flexion applies in most cases to your spine and your extremities (arms and legs). If you flex your elbow, think about doing a bicep curl or trying to touch the front of your shoulder with your palm. If you flex your hip, think about brining your knee up like you’re going to touch your chest. If you’re flexing your knee, think about bending your leg like you’re trying to touch your heel to your butt. If you flex your spine, think about hunching over and rounding your upper back.

Extension would be the opposite of flexion. Spinal extension would be like you’re lifting your chest up and leaning back. Arm extension would be like a tricep extension, or straightening your arm. Hip extension would be like you’re reaching your leg back behind your body. Knee extension would be like you’re straightening your knee, like you’re going to kick someone in front of you.

Adduction is moving toward your midline, like you’re crossing your right leg across your left leg when you kick a ball, or bringing your arms to your sides like a standing military position. An easy way to remember this is, you’re “adding” something to your body.

Abduction is the opposite of adduction, you move away from your body. Like you’re raising your arms up to make your body into a “T” or you kick your leg out to the side like a roundhouse kick. An easy way to remember this is, you’re taking away (“abducting”) something from your body.

Protraction is when you move a structure forward, in reference to your shoulder blades protracting, your scapulae are spreading away from your spine, like your shoulders are getting wider. If you’re doing a pressing motion with your chest, you would extend your arm straight and let your shoulder blades push forward.

Retraction is when you move the structure back, again when thinking about your shoulders blades, you’re pulling/pinning them back (not too much, but some is necessary), like you’re trying to stick your chest out. If you’re doing a pulling motion you would bend your arm and let your shoulder blade pull back as needed.

Additionally, elevation and depression are useful to understand when thinking about the shoulder blades again, you can lift them up (elevate) and pull them down (depress), to allow certain functions to happen in the rest of the shoulder girdle and arms. For example, if you’re reaching over head, you’d need to learn how to properly depress your scapula… too much can cause an adverse compression in your lumbar spine. Elevating them would be useful in other exercises to help activate your upper traps properly… but not just shrugging them like an old school bodybuilder… lol.

All of these are a simplified explanation of basic mechanics that we teach you and the more you understand, the more capable your body becomes. Just because it’s a function doesn’t mean it is a function that your body will need at the start. For example, if you’re stuck in an anterior pelvic tilt, we wouldn’t want you performing an anterior pelvic tilt because that is just confusing the brain and telling it to keep reinforcing the position you’re already stuck in. So functions need to be calculated to benefit your individual body and the way it needs to get better at specific movements. If you need help learning what will benefit your specific needs, contact us to set up your introductory session!