Stronger on one leg than the other. Work one arm better than the other. Strength imbalances are common. Easy way to find out…. Hot forward on one leg 5 times landing the last time on both legs. Do on each side and measure the distance. More than a 10% difference in distance indicates a strength imbalance
Functional Training – Not just for Sports
David Hansey
NASM Certified Performance Enhancement Specialist
NASM Certified Sports Fitness Specialist
NASM Certified Personal Trainer
I talk a lot about training for sports here. And while sports are a fun part of a lot of people’s lives, I think sometimes people think that personal training is only for the athlete. They forget that we are all involved in the sport of life and that life takes a toll on us in more ways than our sport ever could. You know when you hear about someone bending over and not being able to get back up because they have hurt their back so badly. Or someone’s knee just “giving out” and they fall and are injured. These are not freak accidents. They are signs from your body that you have been doing damage for a while and it finally has to let you down because it just cannot take the abuse anymore. Functional training allows you to stop abusing your body and allows you to do these things without the worry that you are going to injure yourself.
Do you lift children and packages in and out of your car? Do you sit at a desk (or in your vehicle or on a plane) for large periods of time? Do you have to stand for long periods of time? Are you a caregiver (to an adult or child) who must lift someone regularly or in an emergency? These are just examples but I think you will find that regardless of profession or lifestyle, we all have times where we do movements that put a strain on our body.
I realize that this kind of training may not be as glamorous as sports training, but the functional training concepts people use for sport training can help you do all of these things better. One of the concepts of functional training is to lift weights in a method that emulates the movement you are trying to perfect. So for example if you play tennis, you would have weight training movements that emulate the reach of the serve and you would do drills that emulate the quick directional changes required for tennis. A baseball player may use cable crossovers to emulate the motion of swinging a bat. Well this twisting weighted movement also works well for anyone because we all lift things out of our cars and twist with them. Think of all the times you lift your groceries or your golf clubs or your children out of the car.
Now that said, I don’t want to see everyone at the gym just twisting all over the place. The idea of personal training is to design a program for your life, your goals and your needs. In order to truly get a routine for you, you have to spend some time with a Certified Personal Trainer who can do an assessment on your posture and your movements in order to determine if you have any tight or weak muscles that need to be corrected. When your trainer pairs that assessment with your goals (to not have a stiff back in the morning, to lose 15 pounds, to run the Peachtree, etc) then it is possible to design a program that you can work on to meet these goals.
Functional training movements in your customized workout will make major differences to an athlete’s performance when they are added to a workout. And they will make a major difference in not only your fitness and appearance but also in the quality of life. Those little aches and pains like that sore back when you lift your toddler will be gone. For more information on Functional Training and Sports Specific Training, call me at 404-514-1896 or visit my website at www.4fitbodies.com.
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