What Is Corrective Exercise?
Corrective Exercise is a form of exercise that helps bring the body back into good postural position. If you have poor posture, you may be experiencing muscle imbalances that can impede movement, create aches and pains, cause injury, and decrease performance, strength and endurance.
Many clients come to Fitness-Tek initially to lose weight or to get back in shape. Usually the team discovers, after talking to them for a short period of time, that they have many other problems that need correcting.
A common scenario might look like this:
Jon previously had constant knee pain, high cholesterol and was hypoglycemic.
Jill, another client, had constant low back pain
Mark was a high-level college football player and had terrible shoulder and knee pain and was overweight.
Steve had severe knee pain. He was thinking of quitting his job as a deliveryman.
Bob, had major knee surgeries and had to quit the game of golf.
Others wake up in the morning with many aches, pains and stiffness in their joints. They have lived this way for years and have come to believe that it must simply be the aging process and accept that they are going to live with these aches and pain forever. It does not necessarily need to be that way.
The Long And The Short Of It
The problem is that the human body is designed asymmetrically. That is we are one-side dominant. This alone can create muscle imbalances. Even everyday living can cause certain muscles to be overused (this shortens a muscle) and certain muscles to be underused (this weakens and lengthens a muscle). Add to this sitting long hours hunched over a computer, being inactive, walking, running or even standing in poor form and you begin to see how easily bad posture can exacerbate or even cause chronic pain.
If you have poor posture, you are experiencing muscle imbalances that can impede movement, create pain, cause injury, and decrease performance, strength and endurance. Sadly, many of us feel this is the natural aging process so we live with these aches and pains and accept this is how life is. Not so.
Corrective Exercise is a form of exercise designed to help bring the body back into good postural position. I would describe it as somewhere between personal training and physical therapy. Corrective Exercise is designed to correct all of these muscle and postural imbalances and start to get those under-used muscles working again. Bringing your body back into perfect posture so that it can function at its’ optimum level.
How Is Your Posture?
Picture this scenario:
You want to get back in shape so you decide to join a gym. You begin a weight training and conditioning program. You hire a trainer to teach you how to do the exercises properly in good form. You are ready to go right? Not yet you´re not. If you were not given a proper movement assessment, you are likely to encounter pain and injury down the road.
Some Examples
This simple overhead squat test shows potential injuries to both of these women If they were to begin doing squatting exercises. (figures 1 and 2) Notice our example in figure 1 on the left. She has excessive rounding in the low back and the women in figure 2 on the right has excessive arching in the low back. Notice how our example in figure 3 is unable to lift his arms up to the dotted line. Imagine this person doing an overhead dumbbell press…ouch! Our example in figure 4 is unable to touch his arms on the wall without bending them and is unable to press his low back into the wall as well. He likely has tight lat muscles, a tight shoulder girdle and tight hip flexors. By engaging in any weight training program without first addressing his muscle and postural imbalance would be risking potentially serious injury.
It becomes obvious that we are all built differently. We have different muscle imbalances and without proper assessments given by a professional, problems will undoubtedly occur down the road.
What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
As corrective exercise specialists, the team here at Fitness-Tek can help you in your quest to fitness and pain free living. Take the first step and call us at 813.431.1846 or contact us today to schedule your movement and postural assessment.
