One of the key areas overlooked by many personal trainers and also strength and conditioning coaches is the FMS or functional movement screen. Functional movement screening is essential if your clients are to remain healthy and reduce the chances of injury during training. The basic movement screening process to the trained eyes can reveal many structural imbalances within the body that if not addressed can lead to chronic postural problems and training related injuries.
Many personal trainers will ask their clients to push through the pain- this is acceptable if the pain is fatigue,latic acid etc but what I see time and time again are trainers refusing to adapt exercises when a certain motion produces pain. This is complete ineptitude at its worst. Ask an individual to keep going with a painful motion and you will either pile strength on top of dysfunction, or the client will adjust the motion to avoid producing pain-this can alter a perfect squat into an awful one with each rep building a deeper and more engrained motor pattern. As Gray Cook notes- It is very possible to have perfect form in the squat that produces pain in client and an awful squat that produces no pain. Each client’s structural integrity has to be looked at from an individual basis.
The trouble is that many personal trainers and s&c coaches are really nothing better than fitness coaches, and have a hard time coaching exercises let alone assessing client’s functional movement patterns. I'm not saying being a fitness coach is a bad profession but as Mike Boyle talks about in his book Functional Movement you are either a chef or a cook. A cook can reproduce recipes but a chef makes the recipes. A chef can also evaluate a certain menu or meal and adapt it to produce the best results for the individual. The same is true for personal trainers. You're either a chef or a cook. And to be honest if you're paying good money for a 1-1 service make sure you're in the chef's kitchen!
Sunday 24 July 2011
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