Tag: functional patterns

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!

“Corrective” Exercise- Training For Life.

Posted on by Michael Devon

Corrective exercise shouldn’t be in its own box.

All exercises should include corrections to enhance your body mechanics.
Proper mechanics lead to better movement and moving better leads to less wear & tear on your joints and ligaments.

If you’re exercising with a trainer that’s just there counting reps or showing you exercises that you can find on YouTube then you’re missing out on the critical biomechanical corrections needed to build muscle and strength for what your body wants to do away from the gym.

We aren’t here to show you exercises for the sake of exercising. We teach you what exercises your body needs and how you need to do them to strengthen your weakest link(s), enhancing your function and performance in life outside of the gym.

Stretching, Evolved.

Posted on by Michael Devon

Evolve the way you “stretch” your muscles 


We condition muscles, along with the fascia that surrounds them, to lengthen and shorten through an entire rep. Thus we are stretching and exercising all in one move


The benefit to this simultaneous coordination is that the muscles are preserving their elasticity (ability to elongate and then recoil to their original position) which is key to moving well and without joint damage.


We know that flexibility is important to overall function, but the way we push extreme ranges of motion in a static stretching position (pictured) is damaging this function of your muscles. The range of motion achieved in a pose does not automatically translate to improved flexibility when you’re actively using your muscles to move.


That’s why we train the kinetic chain to actively contract (shorten) and then stretch (lengthen) muscles while the body is moving. Then we improve flexibility by gently testing the spectrums of available range of motions that the body is capable of getting into and then out of, using the muscles. This is important because the body can achieve a range of motion (sometimes forced and painful as in a deep stretch, other times accidentally just by moving the wrong way) from the force of gravity alone. So instead of leaving ranges of motion to chance, we teach the muscles how to guide and control those ranges. 

 

The exercises we utilize are built around the core staying engaged, while the surrounding muscles go through their series of contractions and stretches. A basic explanation of a more effective way to “stretch” while still respecting the functions of the human body.

Ankle Sprains

Posted on by Michael Devon

A dysfunctional muscle in your lower kinetic chain will disrupt the interdependence of your neuromusculoskeletal system and cause dysfunction further up the chain.

Malfunction at your ankle causes your knee and hip to move poorly and compensate around the misuse of the ankle, the spine shifts to make up for the lack of proper mobility at the hip, which distorts the position of your ribcage and shoulder blades, causing your head and neck to be pushed out of alignment.

If left unresolved, movement compensations cumulate over your lifetime and signal to your brain and body that your dysfunctional alignment is “normal.”

Misalignment that stems from dysfunctional muscle, can’t be corrected for the long term with remedies like chiropractic adjustments alone. Your muscles are signaling to your nervous system that they “like” this position, no matter how damaging to the wellness of your body it is, and any time the spine gets realigned passively from a chiropractic adjustment the muscles intuitively pull you back out of optimal alignment. The objective should be to override the muscles keeping your body in malalignment, and through proper strength training, reprogram better muscle function!

A body that suffers from pain, doesn’t move well, and being stuck in a poor posture is not normal. Malalignment is a key risk factor for joint deterioration because the muscles are no longer in a state to support the joint in its proper position, leading to unnecessary force absorbed in the joint.

Stop looking for short term fixes, and passive manipulations, thinking they will help your body the way they’re advertised. Your body (muscles) and your brain (nervous system) are the only tools required to reprogram the function you’re missing to help your body regenerate.

FIX YOUR BODY… it’s the only one you have.

Functional Training

Posted on by Michael Devon

Your functional capacity is a byproduct of your exercise regimen, or lack thereof. Lifting weights up and down to build big muscles is shortsighted when you don’t consider the function of the muscle.

Muscle mass built on a compromised structure turns into dysfunctional muscle because its main function(s) isn’t its only job anymore. It’s having to hold your body upright in positions that aren’t preferable but it’s stuck there, because you have trained the muscle to associate its function “this way” instead of the way nature intended.

Lift weights to train your muscles in the context that your body uses them most. You walk on a daily basis, so a unilateral stance progressed with stepping patterns translates more to reality than a squat because you’re learning how to transfer and distribute weight every rep with a step, as opposed to keeping your feet fixed in one plane during the simplicity of a squat.

Is the way your train relevant for what you want your body to be capable of, in life outside of the gym?

Not Your Typical Gym

Posted on by Michael Devon

Working with a trainer for over a year without noteworthy changes in strength, most importantly strength gains without pain, is time and money you can’t get back. Not stronger arm muscles, but an entire body ready to function- function without any wrist aches or back pains. You only have one body and unless you’re on an active pursuit to take care and treat it right- the “old school” fitness industry will get the best of you.

Tricking you into thinking that building muscle and getting stronger means that you have to lift massive amounts of weight, or until you body “adapts” your joints might hurt and your lower back will feel stiff until it gets “stronger” etc., etc. FYI: your body will adapt… to whatever stimulus you’re putting it through. So if the way you train (or the way your trainer trains you) is harming your body then your brain will think that’s supposed to be that way and program it as normal.

Then you’re stuck in the vicious cycle of trying to workout and be healthy but also hurting, poorly conditioned, and living with aches and pains. Spending more time and money “supplementing” your training with massages, chiropractors, physical therapists, acupuncture, and cryotherapy to recover from the gym.

A trainer who’s evolved with their skills with Functional Patterns is out of league with traditional fitness trainers and work to mitigate all the arbitrary “supplemental practices” and focus on a strength program, a cardio program, a flexibility program, a rehab/prehab/injury prevention/injury recovery program, a posture/alignment program, a recovery program ALL IN ONE. A program this is sustainable and promotes longevity.

Challenge your trainer by insisting on better results- or find a new one. Your future health and wellbeing depends on it.

www.safunctionalfitness.com

Unique, Different, Relevant

Posted on by Michael Devon

A lot comes to mind when users experience the style of training we implement, it’s “weird, unconventional, confusing” yet “applicable, practical, sustainable, and for a purpose.”

We utilize Functional Patterns techniques and methodologies to produce changes on the human body that forms of traditional training and therapies aim to do, but can’t. It boils down to what is relevant and what is not… aka useless.

Are back squats, bench presses, mini band walks, and clam shells making the most of time spent exercising or rehabbing? From personal and observational experience, no. They might help, a little bit, for some strength and general movement to avoid being a couch potato, but the risks outweigh the benefits, and the carry over is minimal compared to what the human body actually needs.

As pictured, the way humans move most is via contralateral reciprocation- opposing limbs connecting. When one leg is forward, the other is back. When the leg is back, that same arm is forward. Exercise patterns should aim to respect this fundamental concept of movement, as it relates to the human body. IF we only had an upper body, then the isolation of the bench press would be more appropriate. Rather our pec muscles connect through fascia across our body via the oblique slings, to the opposing leg muscles of the hip and inner thigh. Isolation destroys these connections and teaches the body to work in isolation, when in reality it integrates to function as an efficient unit.

The human body evolved to walk, run, and throw. Thus our muscular connections developed to support these functions, so training the body in isolation continuously without training the entire muscular chain, and the chains it connects to, is a recipe for a degenerated body.

Integrated movement is one thing, but integrating your muscles through exercise patterns that mirror the way the body moves in real life is the recipe for a fully functioning, high performing body in life outside of the gym.

Moving to stay healthy and avoid a sedentary lifestyle is beneficial, and as mentioned earlier, the benefits are enhanced when the proper training stimulus is implemented. The risks of training your body the way the mainstream gym culture advertises leads to some muscle strength and overall muscle mass, but at the expense of joint pain, lower back stiffness, having to wear a knee brace, and a general decline in your capabilities in activities outside of the gym.

Whereas movement that replicates the way the human body moves on a day to day basis enhances your quality of life in the real world. Recreational activities like golf and tennis can be played without aches and pains, your muscles learn to leverage your motion rather than unnecessary strain on the joints as levers, and an overall freedom with your everyday movement manifests. In other words, the benefits of exercise extend far beyond the exercise itself and last long after the exercise is over.

The way we integrate the muscles during movement has a lasting impact and carry over to reality is because our focus is on human biomechanics. Relevant movement that conditions the body according to your biological blueprint rather than arbitrarily lifting weights balancing on one foot and raising a dumbbell out to the side at the same time. There are multiple ways to train multiple muscles at once but only one way to train the muscles for a purpose beyond exercise.

The arbitrary exercise pattern has minimal carry over other than simply challenging your coordination, balance, and some multiplanar muscle activation. The intent is right but the execution won’t support the desired outcome. Creating a movement sequence to build tension from the ground up, rotating your body to create a lever to lift the weight overhead at the end of the rotation, and raising an opposing leg to the weight over head to counter balance the tensions and produce contralateral connections throughout the body. While maintaining proper core pressure, leg, arm, pelvis, and ribcage alignment before, during, and after the movement. Following a sequence to produce the right muscle tensions at the right time. All through patterns that your body moves through daily, so your muscles are programmed to work automatically rather than having to consciously be aware of your glutes firing properly during a run or on the tennis courts.

Wow that’s a lot to think about! And it’s necessary, if you’re legitimately concerned about aging well, performing optimally, and living life without working through pain. We don’y mindlessly count reps, every rep is corrected to make the most of the movement and connect your brain and body in new ways. Over time your body learns to self correct the fundamentals of human movement and we are able to add more variables to the mix and maximize the muscle function and carry it over to your daily living.

This isn’t your typical gym, we educate our clients on the importance of why moving intentionally is necessary, how to manage your pain by reprogramming better movement capabilities, what parts of the body connect with other parts to make up an efficient whole, when to move a muscle to create a contraction and a pairing with the opposing muscle, and who is in control of it all- your mind and your body.

*Client Testimonials*

Posted on by Michael Devon

We do things differently here at SA Functional Fitness. We aren’t riding the fad on “functional fitness” to attract a specific market of customers, we’re codifying the entire spectrum of muscle function as it relates to the way humans move most and setting you up for real world function. This methodology allows us to simultaneously build muscle, increase strength, improve flexibility, and mobility when and where it counts. A byproduct of learning how to exercise correctly and using the right muscles enhances posture and alignment, restores muscle imbalances, eliminates joint pain, and fixes the body’s structure down to the biomechanical dysfunctions that cause pain and inefficient movement patterns in the first place, allowing for efficient recovery.

We train the entire spectrum of total body function to ensure your body is getting the proper stimulus to illicit the results you paid for! We practice what we preach, and we teach you the importance of the little details, and how, if left unresolved, the little things add up to major dysfunction throughout the entire kinetic chain. We’re patient and passionate personal trainers that enjoy teaching to all levels of function and fitness, with an emphasis on human biomechanics to restore optimal function to the body and the way it performs on a daily basis.

We aren’t your typical gym, we don’t waste time with arbitrary exercises, we develop your fundamentals of movement as it relates to the human body and the way it was designed to move, and then take it to the next level as your body adapts, increasingly challenging your structure with exercises in the gym, to help your body navigate reality with ease!

Don’t take our word for it; read what our clients are saying about our methods!

 

Muscle Imbalances

Posted on by Michael Devon

What is the point of doing a plank if your pelvis is stuck in an anterior shift and you can’t articulate the structure properly to engage the correct muscles? If you’ve never considered this before then you might be doing more harm than good in the long run. Although your intentions are solid, your execution might be causing you to miss your full potential. Muscle imbalances cause misalignment in the rest of the body and without addressing the asymmetries, you’re building dysfunctional muscle. Like slapping a coat of paint on a building that’s rotting and on the verge of collapse, the paint isn’t going to help the building remain standing, like replacing the load bearing walls with new materials would.

If you start thinking of your body as a structure rather than a piece of art, you’ll begin to tune into the missing pieces that are influencing your imbalances. The more imbalanced your muscles are, the less optimally you’ll move. As you begin to compensate when you move, you’ll start using the wrong muscles at the wrong time in the wrong way, and over time, pain and injury start to arise. It’s not because you’re getting older, it’s likely related to your biomechanics. Joint replacement is not normal, it’s indicative that your muscles aren’t working well enough to support your joints… aka do their job… and all of your movement contributed to force compounding in the joints until eventually they wore out and you needed a new one.

Exercising when your body is on the verge of collapse, like the building about to fall over, and not trying to fix the imbalances will contribute to declining biomechanics. Until you start training in relation to human biomechanics, think about how often we walk on a daily basis as compared to squatting, you’ll always reinforce your imbalances. Since humans walk as a fundamental function, it’s key to train this function to become more efficient at it. If your body doesn’t know how to walk well, then literally every step you take can produce further imbalance along your structure.

While the original example of the plank doesn’t relate to the walking patterns of human movement, it is an exercise, when done correctly, that serves as a means to an end. As your body is placed in the right alignment, although it may seem foreign or wrong at first, your core muscles and other supporting muscles will start to activating on a deeper level, until we condition them to work on that same level during other movements that closely resemble the movement patterns of reality- like walking.

We don’t want our clients to come into our personal training studio and be fed the same exercise ideas as typical gyms. Our mission is to teach our clients why they’re doing a particular exercise and how that exercise is going to help them heal their body, enhance their alignment, and ultimately prepare them for function in the real world. An exercise is only as effective as the position of all the joints, bony structures, and muscles in your body all at the same time- alignment is crucial to fix muscle imbalances. Maintaining alignment through the proper movement patterns is key to start restoring balance to the entire structure. If you want your structure to support you as you navigate reality, consider hiring a trainer that can educate you on the importance of sustainability and longevity versus getting stronger at a particular exercise, especially if that exercise masks your imbalances and doesn’t incorporate movement patterns that translate to real world movement.

Integrated Fitness

Posted on by Michael Devon

The human body was designed to move as one fully integrated unit. The muscles connect with each other through patterns such as walking, running, and even throwing. When the muscles connect (talk) with each other, the body functions efficiently and compensations during movement are kept to a minimum. Poor movement compensations are the cause for most of the body’s aches and pains, and can be prevented by training the body the way it was designed.

If you want a fish to get better at swimming, you wouldn’t teach it to walk on land. The body of a fish is designed to swim, the same way the human body is designed to walk. Walking is a fundamental movement that every body utilizes at some point in their day. Whether you walk around the neighborhood, to and from your car, in the grocery store, or at the park, your muscles are engaging through reciprocal sequences (opposite limbs connecting) that allow it to propel itself through space. When exercise doesn’t account for reciprocation of body parts and the muscles get trained through isolated movements, it conditions the body to disconnect during basic human movements like walking. When the body is disconnected that’s when movement compensations arise, so every step you take, while you’re walking the dog around the block or walking into the gym, is a step that’s forcing your body out of its natural alignment. If you don’t do anything to remain aligned then every time you move, you’re telling your body that this misalignment is the new normal, and your body gets stuck in this position. In order to regain better alignment, you need to train your body the way it naturally moves, by engaging the myofascial sling system.

The body has a sling system that is interwoven in the myofascial network and those slings are responsible for connecting the upper body with the lower body, the same way they connect when you walk, run, or throw. (Yes your lower body is involved when you play fetch with your dog- if it’s not, then that’s a shoulder injury waiting to happen). The slings connect the right shoulder, through the external and internal obliques, to the left hip, and all the way down the front of that leg. Then around the bottom of the foot, back up the rear of the same leg, to the left glute. From the left glute, up across the spine towards the right lat, which then finishes back where it started, at the right shoulder. Then you have an identical sling connection connecting the left shoulder to the right hip. This is an in depth view of whats typically referred to as the body’s “X.” When you move, force is transmitted through the sling systems and balanced between the two sides so that you move efficiently. All of our muscles are encompassed in these slings so they’re working in harmony to balance out your movement. When muscles are isolated during exercise they stop working in harmony, so now the slings aren’t balanced the way they were designed. It’s like removing the lower left section of the “X,” it’s not going to be able to stand the way it was, instead it’s going to have to lean to one side to find balance. Our body works the same way, when the slings disconnect, you can still move, but you’re going to move with more imbalances.

If left untreated, muscular imbalances cause disturbances in your gait and shifting in your posture that contribute to joint pain and muscle aches. Since the body is no longer working optimally, the joints absorb the forces that the sling systems should be balancing. Imbalances in the sling systems cause some muscles to overwork to pick up the slack of the primary movers, leading to strains in those muscles. For example, if your hamstrings aren’t engaging when you walk, the calf usually picks up the load and since the calf wasn’t designed to handle all the responsibility it gets tired and the muscles in the bottom of your foot start to work by themselves. Hello plantar fasciitis. The same can be said of the lats and pecs not working in unison with the sling systems and being plagued with rotator cuff issues.

If you expect to live a pain free life and move freely, then exercise must account for reciprocal movements that engage the myofascial sling systems through Functional Patterns that mirror real life. Sitting on an exercise bike or a weight machine at the gym is good for your health, but it’s not preparing your body for life outside of the gym to the extent that sling training will. All exercise is better than no exercise, but not all exercise is created equal. Depending on what you want to get out of your time spent working out, evaluate what is going to be the most beneficial for your goals. Do you want to be really good at rowing or cycling for an hour but unable to run to save your life or do normal activities of daily living without experiencing aches or pains? It’s your life, build your body for how you want to live it.