Tag: body therapy

You Get What You Pay For

Posted on by Michael Devon

Sometimes the cheapest option isn’t the best option. Not just with your health but anything. For example, a cheap apartment might cost you less per month in rent, but when the landlord doesn’t take care of things and there’s bugs everywhere or something’s always broken and needing repairs, the inconvenience isn’t worth it. Just like a gym that cost $20 a month but you’re left to your own devices and training your own body, figuring out what works for you through trial and error. Or maybe you pay $80 a month for unlimited group classes but then you’re drowning in a sea of other people, forced to go through a workout that everyone else is going through, that might not be right for your individual needs.

This is when it pays, to pay a little more for personal training. You get one on one attention, exercises created for your unique requirements, and you can ask questions, offer feedback to your trainer, and the workout can be modified to best address what your body needs!

Sure, it costs more, but when you only have one body to invest in, make sure it is a wise investment. You want to see AND feel tangible results that are sustainable, rather than just paying someone to stand around and count reps while you do the exercise they just demonstrated. Our trainers do all of that, plus we let you know what to expect during the exercise, where you should feel tension, what is normal, and what is not supposed to be, and then while you’re doing it, we remind you of what you’re supposed to be focusing on to manifest what we described during the demonstration. You’re constantly being reminded what you should be mentally focusing on, so physically your body is doing what it needs to be doing to ensure you aren’t going to hurt yourself.

If you want to shut your brain off and just copy an exercise you see for the desired amount of reps without knowing what muscles you should be working or how to activate them, then use YouTube or a cookie cutter fitness app. But if you actually want to learn about your body’s function and how to put that function to use correctly, to mitigate pain, ward off injuries, and enhance your peak physical function- during exercise and in life outside of the gym, then follow us on social media, subscribe to our newsletter, read our blogs, check out FunctionalPatterns.com to see the type of training methods we utilize, and then you can decide if you want to spend your money with us!

No pressure, it’s your body, treat it the way you want to treat it.

What Does Functional Training Look Like?

Posted on by Michael Devon

We often get asked “what exactly does your training look like?”

“Is it stretching?”

“Is it mobility work?”

“Is it rehab… or exercise?”

“Is it strength and conditioning?”

“Is it performance or injury prevention?”

Simply put, it’s all of the above!

When you move well, you are “stretching” parts of your body, while “strengthening” another.

Learning to move well also means that you learn to position your joints in a way to produce maximum mobility, while still being safe and beneficial for your body.

When you train your body to move well, you are in fact doing “rehab” while still building strength and training to perform better.

You can’t separate flexibility from strength and you certainly can’t separate rehab from performance either.

Training your body to separate those elements won’t get you long term physical wellbeing because your body operates as one complex system. Train it according, and if you can’t, we can!

Fitness: The Ability To Adapt To Your Environment

Posted on by Michael Devon

At this gym we take the mind and muscle connection to a deeper level of understanding and coordination to ensure you get results and not an injury!

You see it’s not enough to think of one muscle while you’re exercising, because when you’re being human and moving your body around like a human body is designed to move (with all its neuromyofascial connections) you have multiple muscles working at the same time- in coordination with each other to facilitate motion. In reality, an isolated muscle contraction can’t do anything to cause better movement, because an isolated muscle contraction does not exist… except in the gym.

Training to stimulate one muscle at a time creates a broken kinetic chain, which is what your body utilizes to function, move, and perform in the real world. Instead of just focusing on the legs or arms, we teach you to integrate your lower body with your core, and with your upper body. Then you learn to use those muscles to move your body through a specific exercise pattern that makes integrating those muscles more feasible. You’re verbally cued to position your bones and joints a certain way to start the exercise, move through the exercise, and finish the exercise so your muscles learn to automatically contract when your body moves through certain positions. Then we pattern exercises to mirror the positions your body moves through most in the real world, so your muscles contract properly during activities away from the gym.

If you’re still blindly performing an exercise for the sake of exercise, and not sure what or where you should feel muscle activity then you’re selling yourself short and not making the most of your time in the gym. We all have busy lives and struggle to fit exercise into our schedules, so you might as well make the most of every minute by mentally controlling the physical actions of your body during a workout. The mental coordination to position your body to produce proper muscle activity can be overwhelming at first, that’s why we help guide you through the process to ensure you’re building your body up and not breaking it down. We show you how your body prefers the path of least resistance and will easily compensate it’s way through an exercise, but then we correct your compensational movements by retraining your brain to recognize the difference and ingraining the correct form of body mechanics to serve your body in the gym, and away from the gym- enhancing your fitness, aka your ability to adapt to any environment and fulfill the task at hand!

If this all sounds super intimidating, don’t worry, because this is what we take care of for you. We hash out all the technical difficulties on our end so you don’t have to figure out what exercises will help or hinder you. If you want results, thats what this gym is about! Contact us today to find the answers your body needs to make real changes that last.

Lower Back Pain? Try this!

Posted on by Michael Devon

Our favorite part about Monday is that it’s a great day to spend time doing some self care and preparing your body and mind for the week ahead. In this case these ladies are spending time doing some myofascial release and breathing to relax their muscles and recondition their nervous system to handle stress better!

If you can equip your body to respond to stress in a healthier way that will directly translate to a healthier life because you won’t be managing stress with alcohol, drugs, or other addictions like food. Doing myofascial release won’t magically make your stress go away but it will start to train your body to handle the stress when it does come. Then you’re less likely to break down and you’ll be able to understand what is causing the stress in the first place.

Aside from the stress relief, this release is great for knee pain, hip pain, and even lower back pain. It can be done with a pvc pipe or a tennis or lacrosse ball. Start by rolling the pipe or a ball up and down the front of your thigh until you find a trigger point or a “knot” and hang around that area for a solid 2-4 minutes until the tension starts to release, then switch to the other leg and repeat. But don’t forget to breath!

This release is a starting point for managing aches and pains in your day to day life, it creates body awareness and can activate dormant muscles or relax overactive ones to restore balance and harmony to your body. Once your body is responding well to myofascial release work then it’s time to go onto the next step and learn how to re-tension your body. For example, if your lower back is always tight then your body holds tension there so through proper exercises we would re-tension your core and signal to your central nervous system to hold more tension in your core and less in your lower back.

If you’re serious about managing your aches and pains so you can live a more functional and active lifestyle then we’re here to guide you in the right direction. We bridge the gap between physical therapy and personal training and give you the best of both worlds. Simultaneously rehabbing any injuries, preventing injuries from occurring, strengthening your body to function in the real world, and conditioning your body for everything life throws at you!

 

Body. Brain. Let’s Connect

Posted on by Michael Devon

A picture is worth a 1,000 words… this picture says a lot because a lot is going on during this exercise, physically and mentally. John is incorporating thoracic rotation by connecting his Left lat to his Right glute & his Right shoulder to his Left hip via a deep connection of muscle groups known as the myofascial slings. These slings connect the upper body with the lower body- an important connection for quality movement. We’re taking it a step further with this exercise and integrating the movement at a nueromuscular level to make this sling connection a sub conscious action. If you want to move pain free the rest of your life, the way all your muscles work in unison with each other has to happen at a sub-conscious, automatic level. 

During this exercise John’s left glute is on fire and the deep core musculature is engaging as the left lat pulls and right arm punches connecting with the obliques to help rotate his ribcage and thus the myofascial slings are engaged and connecting John’s upper body with his lower body. The action during this exercise replicates a way our muscles connect with each other in life outside of the gym. It’s important to connect the body in the right way if you want to move better in day to day life and move better during exercise, both which lead to less overall aches and pains in the body. 

This exercise was all about getting John’s body in the correct position to automatically activate the correct muscles at the correct time so his joints didn’t do the muscles job, aka no more joint pain when he is out functioning in the real world! When your muscles work correctly this means less wear and tear on your joints, the key to sustaining an active lifestyle well past your prime!

If you’d like to learn how you can optimize your lifestyle, we’re here to help!

Book Your Consult!