Tag: pain

The Body’s Interconnectedness

Posted on by Michael Devon

As we get older, we’re often told that aches and pains are just a part of aging. A twinge in your knee, restrictions in your shoulder, tightness in your lower back are all common, but not normal.

Pain in one area of your body potentially stems from another region, because of the interconnectedness of your fascial web and kinetic chain linking everything together.

The unexplained problems in your joints are likely a result of your muscles not supporting your joints. Strain in your shoulder may come from dysfunction in the pecs or the lats. Knee pain results from lack of the glutes working properly. The point being, that where you’re hurting, might not be where the problem is.

Our trainers work to get to the root of your chronic pain by addressing dysfunctional movement compensations, allowing you to simultaneously build muscle to provide your body with the strength it needs to keep aches and pain from creeping back in.

If you’re spinning your wheels spot treating pain at the source, then come meet with us to learn how everything in your body works (or doesn’t work) together to influence how you move, and how your movement plays a critical role in pain and injury if you’re moving incorrectly.

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!

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!

Always Injured?

Posted on by Michael Devon

If your personal trainer is always injured and they’re teaching you how to work around your injuries without achieving pain free status and return to full function, it’s time to consider that your trainer doesn’t know how to train the intricacies of the human body.

Maybe they’re just a meathead that likes to workout and they’re okay being injured because they think it makes them look cool or tough. But you shouldn’t have to work around their shortcomings. Get yourself a trainer that aims to be better as a trainer for themselves, so they can be a better trainer for you!

Our trainers work through fixing their own muscle dysfunctions, rehabbing old injuries, and finding solutions to nagging aches and pains so they can learn what works for them and break it down in another way to teach their clients that are dealing with the same issues, how to resolve them!

The old saying, “you are who you hang out with” can be said similarly to reflect your fitness. You’re only as “strong,” “functional,” “pain free,” “limitless,” fill in the blank with your own goals, as your trainer. In other words, if your trainer is always hurting somewhere (and it’s not getting better) it means that what they are doing for their own body isn’t worth pursuing because it’s going to lead you down that same path eventually.

In this day in age a skilled personal trainer can also serve your body with the rehabilitation that it needs to get back to working properly. When your body works properly it obtains function that helps it operate without having to avoid certain activities due to pain or injuries restricting its movement.

If your trainer can only give you a workout session- getting your heart rate up, making you sweat, fatiguing your entire body (joints included), by working out around pain and injuries, that’s not going to solve your physical problems. What do you think is going to happen? That magically your body will eventually heal when your trainer hasn’t paid any attention to the areas that need healing, and need very specific detailed work…

Our trainers pay attention to the details to get you off the sidelines and back into the game! Restoring your functions that your body needs to exist and live the life you want, without suffering from pain and being debilitated with an injury. Once the little details are taught and your body’s motor system understand what to do, then we can get your body sweating, your heart rate pumping, and your muscles working and fatiguing in the right places to give you that “good” workout- without avoiding your problems, causing something the flare up, or risking an injury- because your body has been thoroughly prepared!

If you want to workout and simultaneously rehab your body for your future benefit, then ditch the trainer that’s working around the issues that matter to your body in life outside of the gym, and try your introductory session with one of our trainers! Just like when you try on multiple outfits when you shop, or test drive multiple cars before you buy, not all trainers are created equal. Shop around until you find the right one that helps you work through the nitty gritty to fix your physical limitations and achieve pain free function!

The Only Gym In San Antonio With…

Posted on by Michael Devon

We’re the only gym in SA to offer a 25 FOOT pulley machine to train the specifics of the human body in motion. This new piece of equipment allows our trainers and their clients to truly test their body’s function!

This pulley machine has a 25 foot cable length and provides resistance for dynamic exercises that mirror walking and running. Plus other aspects of human motion like rotating and throwing. This cutting edge piece of equipment will allow us to continue treating clients with pain, compression, scoliosis, joint restrictions, movement impairments, muscle atrophy, joint replacement rehab, athletic performance, injury prevention, general function, better movement, and more!

Call us today to set up your initial consultation with one of our Human Biomechanics Specialists! 210-947-4597 or safunctionalfitness.com

Pain Is Not Normal

Posted on by Michael Devon

Pain isn’t something to accept with age or with injuries that weren’t properly rehabbed. Pain is your body telling you that something is wrong and ignoring this warning only compounds the problem as times goes on.

Pain will start interfering with your daily life more and more. It can impact your sleep, energy, strength, and function. And when these aspects become affected, other aspects of wellbeing become worse as well.

We’re not the typical “no pain, no gain” kind of gym. Our team works one on one with you to battle against muscle dysfunctions that are causing your pain in the first place. In other words we work to get to the root of your problem, rather than working around it.

What happens when the real world demands more of your body and you can’t “work around it?” Pain and injury manifest! So avoiding a certain function during an exercise because your PT or trainer told you to because it hurts when you do it, is not fixing the root of the problem.

Physical pain stems from the body being out of homeostasis and chaos ensues when your body starts compensating to make up from lack of balance. Muscles start working the wrong way when you move, and when the muscles start malfunctioning they contract at the wrong time, or use the wrong muscle to move your body around the pain or issue that you’re dealing with. These compensations compound over time and lead to pain expanding to other areas of the body or worse, eventually cause an injury.

Think about it, when your ankle starts to hurt, eventually your knee and hip might start to hurt too. The body is an interconnected web of muscle, and that muscle supports your bone alignment and the integrity of your joints. When one muscle is not functioning properly, it’s going to impact other muscles normal function- which has a direct correlation to how well your muscles provide strength, stability, and support for your body.

When you’re dealing with pain in a particular joint or region of the body, that might not be the source of the pain, but rather a symptom from a malfunction elsewhere in the body. If you (or your trainer) look far enough and evaluate deep enough to determine what is the cause of the pain, then you can formulate a game plan and create exercises tailored to your needs, to start fixing the underlying issue.

In other words you don’t have to live with the pain. You can stop compensating around a pain and prevent a new pain from occurring because you’ve been compensating. You can reprogram new function to support your body to eliminate the pain and restore balance.

Remember, pain is not normal. It’s not something to live with, wake up with, or work around, it’s something that has a source and cause. Once we figure out that source, we can engineer a training program to treat the cause, rather than the symptoms. That’s what we do at this gym. (Then once your body is healed from its pain, we start training your muscles how to exercise to keep the pain away for the long term).

We do things differently at this gym, call us to find out more about our approach!

210-947-4597

safunctionalfitness.com

Health- What Does It Mean To You?

Posted on by Michael Devon

The health and fitness industry can be overwhelming with all of the information- information that contradicts itself and information that is unpopular from the mainstream. You have to read all the sides and decide what is best suited to you- with all your health history and complex individual requirements. We think its helpful to consider what health means to you? Is it a 6 pack abs and big arms, is it good blood panels, is it being able to move without pain, is it eating nutritious food, is the ability to keep up with your kids, grandkids, and fur babies, is it NOT having to take prescription medicines, is it all of the above and then some?

We view health and fitness with the overall ability of the body to thrive. Physically, mentally, externally, internally, handle stress well, fuel your body with the right foods and environment, and have the ability to live life without being limited by pain, poor health, and other restrictions. We don’t view health and fitness as simply having a nice looking body. What looks good on the outside might be in turmoil on the inside- either from poor dietary habits, inability to cope well with stress, or too much emphasis on the physical and not enough on the mental, emotional, and internal needs of the body. All of those factors cumulate to make up health and fitness.

We want to be upfront that we aren’t your typical gym that just pushes a good looking body and doing whatever it takes to get there. Sure that is nice and a reflection of health but without all of the other aspects, no matter how toned and trim your body is, you can still be unhealthy or unfit.

So take a moment to reflect on what being healthy and fit means to you. If you’ve been hesitant about going to a gym because you’re concerned it’s all about what you look like, then look no further than SA Functional Fitness! Our gym is tailored to what your body can do, not what your body looks like. Come as you are, and as a byproduct of regaining and training function, your body composition will change along of the way. But remember, that shouldn’t be your sole focus because the way you look doesn’t always align with the way you feel and the way your body performs.

Fitness is defined as “an organisms ability to survive and reproduce in a particular  environment.” This is from a biological standpoint and not what popular opinion defines fitness as. So if you hold true to this definition, then are you fit? Are you able to navigate the daily demands and real world conditions of your environment, without turmoil, pain, anxiety, aches, and being overwhelmed, exhausted, and incapable?

Being fit determines your health, the more adaptable you and your body are to the environment you live in, the more strength you can use to handle the physical demands, the more focus you can exert to manage stressful situations without feeling like you need to cope with a drink or comfort food, the more energy you have to make it through the day without fueling yourself with caffeine just to have another restless night of sleep because your body and brain are too wired to rest, truly rest.

As all of the layers of health and fitness work with each other, the better your body is at existing in reality. Instead of forcing your body to workout and eat a nutritious diet because you know it’s good for you, your body will start to want these things because it feels good when you treat yourself right.

So stop working out and dieting solely for “looks” when you know health and fitness goes deeper than the superficial vanity you see on commercials, movies, advertisements, and peer pressure from all sides. Fueling your brain and body that way is exhausting and it’s why we don’t truly have health. The rat race of beating your body up and extreme dietary deprivation places the body in a stressed state and then it doesn’t have the means to heal itself so your hormones become out of whack- and then you’re working against your weight loss goals and so you start working out even more to lose those last few stubborn pounds that just won’t come off. But if you take a step back it’s because your health habits aren’t really that healthy.

The calorie restriction and daily cardio and strength training, stresses your physiology out and your body goes into survival mode to keep from losing more weight, and then when you try to workout harder, you still don’t lose weight because biologically your body is working to stay at homeostasis. True health and fitness is a mind shift from what you’ve been told and seen most of your life and learning to encompass physical, mental, emotional, and physiological aspects of health to truly thrive as a human being.

So, rethink your definition of health and fitness. Does it align with where you see yourself in 10, 20, 30 years. Is it sustainable or are you pushing the extremes to look good now, without regard for what’s going on inside of your body and how that impacts your future health and fitness?

“Live intentionally and not habitually.” – Naudi Aguilar