Tag: walking

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!

 

Functional Resistance Training

Posted on by Michael Devon

Functional Patterns resistance training does not look the way resistance training looks in commercial gyms because traditional training isn’t functional. Pistol squats aren’t functional. Bench press isn’t functional. Deadlifts aren’t functional. How many times a day do you stop and squat on one leg, bench, deadlift, or do an isolated bicep curl when you’re moving in the real world? The muscles that these exercises train certainly function to help you move but not the way they’re being trained. It’s contextual. So you do need strong pecs and biceps as well as glutes and hamstrings but the way these muscles are being conditioned through traditional exercises doesn’t translate to how they need to function to help you move better in the real world. Your pecs and biceps help drive your arms and torso when you’re walking and strong glutes and hamstrings propel your pelvis and legs when you move. But since most of human movement is upright, on two legs, and horizontal in nature, vertical forces like squats, benches, and deads don’t have much transferability to realistic movements. Sure, those exercises will make you stronger but I say again, in what context? Are you squatting down the street or walking down the street?

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.

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?

Big and Strong

Posted on by Michael Devon

My name is Michael, and I am the owner of SA Functional Fitness. I used to think that lifting heavy weight and having big muscles made you strong, it does and it doesn’t. It does make you strong when you lift that particular weight in that particular pattern, however the strength I gained in the gym didn’t translate to reality. The way my body moved when I was in the real world, never represented the way I moved my body in the gym, so that strength in the gym only applied to the gym- never to my lifestyle.

I ended up with various aches and pains in my early 20’s that I wrote off as “no pain, no gain” and continued to do what I thought, at the time, was the correct way to train the human body. As time went on the aches and pains got worse and little injuries started to pop up, first as nagging, then as something that required me to alter my training program and seek traditional methods of healing. I tried chiropractic, massage, physical therapy, cryotherapy, Airrosti, foam rolling, stretching, mobility exercises, body weight training, and more. They all served a purpose toward managing my pain, however nothing truly fixed the underlying issue- I didn’t know how to move well. Poor movement over time started to break my body down due to various compensation patterns I had developed to offset my aches, pains, and injuries.

I finally connected the dots that the way I had trained my entire life was inadequate and what led to my body becoming disconnected, and essentially useless for the way I wanted to live- pain free! It wasn’t solely the heavy lifting, but the exercise patterns that I was moving my body through when I lifted. When the human body moves, at it’s basic function, muscles on one side of the body shorten and muscles on the opposing side of the body lengthen, to propel the body through space. This is called contralateral reciprocation- connecting opposing limbs with each other, right arm/ left leg. It’s easily observed during the most fundamental human movement, walking. When I went to the gym I was squatting, deadlifting, bench pressing, doing isolated muscle work on machines, and ultimately trying to activate individual muscles to make them stronger and balance out the body. None of that worked as I intended. I discovered that muscles can never be isolated, unless your surgically separate them, due to a web that surrounds our body and unites every muscle with each other, called fascia. In other words, when one muscle is working, multiple muscles elsewhere in the body are also working to achieve the intended action. The way I was originally taught to exercise didn’t account for any of that. Over time, my body become out of synch with all the moving parts that make up efficient movement, and little things like walking my dog, playing frisbee, getting in and out of my car, and living life started to become hard because my body wasn’t prepared for the various forces encountered in reality.

These experiences led me to discover a training system called Functional Patterns, that’s geared toward training the human body and the mechanics that compose its various movement patterns, and then getting the body stronger when it moves through those patterns. After employing these new techniques into my training I immediately felt the benefits and saw the logic behind the system. Unfortunately I was still incorporating some of my old traditional exercises into my workouts because I thought it would compliment the new techniques. So some days my body would feel great and then the next day I could be in the same state that caused me to seek out alternative exercises in the first place. Finally I decided to abandon the traditional methods that didn’t serve my function, but only fed my ego and body image. After a few weeks of solely training with the new system I noticed that something felt different. I didn’t wake up with a stiff lower back, my knees didn’t hurt climbing down stairs, and I felt taller, lighter, decompressed, whatever you want to call it, my body felt like it was healing.

At this point, I had been a personal trainer for a few years, peddling out the same exercises to my clients that I had been doing for years. None of my clients complained because, like me, they thought it was all just part of the process. Some were in pain and we’d work on traditional rehab exercises that I had learned from physical therapy, and others just wanted a good workout and we’d work on traditional strength training exercises. Neither instances ever improved my clients pain to the point that it was gone, only diminished for a couple hours or days, nor improved my clients functional strength, only to the point that they could lift heavier dumbbells or more plates on a machine. In fact, my clients who were getting stronger in the gym were starting to complain about little joint aches and muscle twinges that they hadn’t reported when we originally started working together. I knew something was missing but I never had a long term solution to fix their pain or improve their performance without causing minimal amounts of adverse tension. Until I found and experienced the Functional Patterns training system. I decided to start implementing some of the exercises that had helped me and cut out the exercises that I thought were doing more harm than good. Slowly but surely my clients started to feel more lasting relief from their pain and felt better outside of the gym when doing things like playing golf, running errands, and even keeping up with their grandkids. I knew this system was a game changer and I wanted to learn more. I purchased some of their online materials and books to start with and felt my understanding of the human body and movement increase. Then I decided to seek out a practitioner to get training first hand by someone with more experience. My perception of what I thought exercise was about, was crushed- in a good way, and the doors to physical and personal growth opened wide.

At the time I had been working at a local personal training studio, that when I had started, their training methods made sense. But as my body and the bodies of my clients slowly deteriorated I realized that I had to leave the traditional fitness culture behind and spread the knowledge I had acquired to more people. This led me to open SA Functional Fitness to make a lasting impact on helping people move better, without causing pain in the process. Fast forward and I am now a Functional Patterns practitioner, still learning from fellow practitioners that have been incorporating this system longer, and learning from each client that I see. Every body is the same, as we all have the same underlying muscles that are designed to function a particular way, however every body requires different exercises to stimulate the muscles in a way that is going to undo the compensation patterns they’ve gotten themselves into. For example, as humans, we should all have the ability to drive our body forward when we walk by utilizing the glutes, as well as other muscle functions. Sometimes we lose that ability, for various reasons like too much sitting or old injuries, and we end up moving our body with only our calves, or hiking up one of our hips. The muscles must be retrained to activate the glutes during that particular movement, but not by doing squats or clamshells with mini bands, those are the wrong patterns. We teach you the correct movement patterns that are going to engage the glutes and integrate them with the rest of the body, in a fashion that mirrors real life movement, like walking or running. Over time your body will learn to move better at the things you do most, and if you move better, you aren’t victim to aches or pains that develop from improper movement.

Ultimately, if you’re in pain, that’s your body signaling you that it needs help. It’s key to get to the root of the muscle malfunction early before your body starts to move around the pain. Your body will avoid the painful stimulus and adapt your posture and eventually the way you move to allow you to “live” with the pain. We believe that’s no way to live and so we exist to help you find a long term solution to improving your movement- to mitigate pain and improve your posture. If you’ve been living like this for years and years, it’ll take more than a few weeks to undo the damage, but with your hard work and the right techniques, we’ll teach you a recipe to improve your quality of life, and sustain it.

 

Aesthetics vs. Athletics

Posted on by Michael Devon

When we hear the word athletics, we automatically think of Michael Jordan or Emmitt Smith, individuals capable of accomplishing great movements with their bodies. But you don’t have to be an elite athlete to train your body to move better. When we only think about working out to get a six-pack or bigger biceps, because the magazines tell us that’s what we should look like, we miss the opportunity for exercise to enhance our quality of life. Rather than moving in respect to our human anatomy we contort our bodies and make ourselves so sore that we can barely walk the next day or can’t get on and off the toilet.

Human anatomy dictates the way our body functions based on the way our muscles connect with each other. The less connected your muscles are during movement the more likely your chance of injury is. Since all of our muscles are connected they never work independently, so isolating your body when you workout can potentially disrupt your muscle connections and cause your body to compensate when you move. When you move, your body is conditioned to absorb force in your joints instead of transmitting the force through a connected web of muscles. It’s like your muscles are clocking out early every day and your joints are working over time without pay, because isolated exercises utilize your joints as levers instead of transmitting force through our muscle chains. The goal with exercise should be to connect one chain of muscle with another through reciprocation, since human movement entails reciprocal forces, like opposing limbs uniting when we walk. The more your muscles work in harmony with each other, the more efficient your body will move, decreasing the likelihood of injuries, aches, and pains.

Since we all walk, an exercise like the barbell squat won’t translate as efficiently to the patterns we use on a consistent basis. The glutes developed primarily through walking and running mechanics so for most humans, squatting isn’t the most efficient way to condition your glutes for real world use. If you’re intent is to develop strength through lifting free weights then make sure the strength you develop can be transferable to other scenarios. You limit yourself by getting really strong at a particular lift but the only time you can apply that strength is when you’re performing that exercise. When you’re out with friends, walking your dog, or running errands, strength manifests in the form of comfort that you have in that scenario. If you’re standing in a group of friends and you can’t stand without leaning against a wall or shifting your weight from one leg to another, you have no relative strength- your strength only manifests when you’re in the gym doing your exercise. If fitness is meant to enhance our lives then why would you want your hours spent working hard in the gym to only apply to when you’re in the gym? Not all functional training is truly functional and when you’re trying to function and exist in the real world on a daily basis your body should be prepared.

When you exercise, prioritizing Functional Patterns of movement will condition your body for operating in reality. Training for athletics, or the goal of moving better, will outweigh the benefits of training only for aesthetics, a goal of only looking better. Working out to just build a bigger chest and arms, without taking into consideration that too much muscle mass can lead to imbalances in the body, can become disastrous for how well your body can move. Exercise patterns should mirror the mechanics of how humans move. A foundational human movement is walking, so when you exercise to only look better naked, you neglect the basic principle that the body is designed to move outside of the confines of weight machines and exercises that restrict force transmission through the entire web of muscles. Once the muscles are conditioned to support your body when you walk, without compensations like swaying hips, knees turning in, arms not moving, or a tilted ribcage, other movements, inside and outside of the gym, are streamlined. So, by addressing the way your body moves when you walk, other movements like playing ball with your friends, running a 5k, playing tennis or golf, and performing exercises that respect human body mechanics, are automatically improved.

Athletic training and aesthetic training can go hand in hand, when all systems of the body are operating in harmony, less energy is wasted and more muscle tissue is utilized, so eventually your goal of looking better naked will be achieved. The more muscles that you can integrate into one rep, the more energy you expend, so more calories are being burned per workout. Pair that with the proper nutritional habits, and it’s an efficient recipe for weight loss. Weight loss that comes as a result of better body mechanics and natural movement, not beating your body up with traditional weight lifting that leaves you hurting and injury prone so you’re unable to workout and the weight just piles on. Respect the way your body was designed to operate and keep yourself in the game so that you can move well and sustain a healthy weight for the entirety of your life.

Senior Citizens Can Walk with Confidence

Posted on by Michael Devon

As you age it gets harder to avoid falling, doctors tell you it’s just part of getting older and something you have to live with. I’m here to tell you that you can re-learn how to walk and avoid falling! It has to do with you biomechanics and the positioning of your body to support your structure as you move. No more shuffling your feet and walking with your head down, re-gain the ability to pick your feet up when you walk to avoid tripping and crashing to the ground.

At SA Functional Fitness we take it steps further than traditional balance training that has you standing on one foot for long periods. Instead we incorporate balance into walking, so we’re training your body in the environment that you want it to operate in. Going over the foundation of walking in the gym will prepare your body to handle the demands of walking in real life, so you’re body is better prepared to handle any kind of terrain.

The reason we don’t prioritize standing on one foot to improve your balance is because that will likely cause an excessive shift of your hips to one side. When your hips shift to the side your entire body comes along with it, leading to an overall shift of your body. That shift will contribute to poor posture and dysfunctional compensations when you walk, leading to pain or injury in the long run.

We mimic the patterns your body goes through in everyday life while we exercise, so your muscles engage the way we want them to in life outside of the gym. Standing on one foot may have some relevance but when you’re out on the town or even walking through your living room, when do you ever stop and stand on one foot for the sake of it? Probably never, so we shouldn’t prioritize that during our workout, we want to prioritize what you do most, walking!

The goal during each exercise session is to connect your upper body to your lower body so that we can train the body to stay integrated as we move around. If the body is not integrating muscles together when it moves then your balance and stability begin to suffer and falling becomes more likely. Re-establishing the connection between your legs, torso, and arms will ensure that you are able to walk functionally and significantly reduce your chances of falling.

If you want to improve your quality of life, your first step is to contact us to schedule a FREE consultation! You’ll get to meet our certified personal trainer who is experienced with the human gait cycle and how it impacts different aspects of our lives, from walking to posture, and balance to joint health. You’ll learn how proper exercise can address all of these important aspects and optimize your life!

info@safunctionalfitness.com

210-947-4597