Corrective Exercise For Combatting Future Movement Impairments
By JJ Van Rooyen, DC Ranch Village Health Club and Spa Personal Trainer
Every trainers favorite part of training is tailoring our clients’ exercise program(s) to meet not only their fitness goals, but also their activities of daily life goals. It’s great to decrease fat mass and increase lean muscle mass and overall cardiovascular fitness. Furthermore, many people want to get “in shape” so they can more efficiently perform their activities of daily life. This is where corrective exercises come into play. These exercises will help you complete your daily tasks with ease. Getting out of your car, standing up from a chair, lifting a box, or even better, lifting your child or grandchild can become easier with corrective movements.
Why are Corrective Exercises Important?
Becoming conscious of how your daily life impacts the way your body moves and feels is pertinent information to communicate to your trainer. This allows them to carefully handcraft an exercise program that will encourage lean muscle mass growth and fat mass loss, all while strengthening muscles that may be under active and lengthening muscles that may be overactive, ie: corrective exercise! Trainers have a vast knowledge of body mechanics and understand that everything is connected, kind of like a pulley system.
Common Physical Impairments
Informing your trainer that you work an office job and sit at a desk all day allows them to prioritize exercises that require you to stand up in order to stabilize and strengthen your core and back muscles. Your trainer would also provide stretches that will help to lengthen the hip muscles that become tight with prolonged sitting. This is a very common impairment known as lower crossed syndrome. As noted before, since everything in your body is connected, this impairment can start with the hips and back and travel either up the spine to the neck and shoulders move downward and effect the knees and ankles.
Another common impairment is called upper crossed syndrome. This is when the chest and neck muscles are tight and the posture muscle in your upper back are weak and lengthened. This occurs when the chest muscles are either trained too much and/or the back muscles are neglected in your daily life or workouts. Your trainer will do an initial assessment of the current state of you body and your activities of daily life to accurately depict which exercises and performance frequency and volume of these movements would be most beneficial for you and your goals. Working with a trainer can not only be fun, but it can also be helpful when suffering from movement and muscle imbalances. If this sounds like you, get scheduled for a complimentary orientation today and meet with a trainer to discuss how corrective exercise could benefit you today!
5 corrective exercises for combatting movement impairments:
1. Stability Ball Squat
For those who struggle with knee pain caused by the knees moving to far inward toward the midline of the body. Stand with the stability ball between the wall and your back. Scoot your feet forward so that you are replying on the ball for support. Hinge at the knees and drop your hips to the floor. Move slowing and focus on range of motion, trying to create a 90 degree bend at your knees.
2. Mini Band Glute Medius Kick
Another great exercise for combatting inward knee movement. With a mini band about two inches above your knees, hold on to a wall and begin to kick slightly out to the side and backwards, a diagonal away from your body. Perform on each side.
3. Walking
Walking is one of the most underrated ways to increase movement efficiency. Taking a walk after each meal is also proven to aid in digestion.
4. Cervical Spine Stretches
Since we hold a lot of tension in our neck from daily life stress, it is important to release than tension so we don’t start to move down the spine and effect the shoulders. Drop one of your ears towards your shoulder and let that stress release. Hold three times on each side for 30 seconds each.
5. Transverse Abdominis Bracing
This exercise helps engage and strengthen the inner abdominals. The stronger the core, the smaller the chance on low back issues. Lay on your back with knees bent and feet planted on the floor. Without tilting your pelvis, suck your core in, bringing your belly button towards your spine. Hold for 10 seconds and then release, repeat 10-15 times.
Meet JJ Van Rooyen!
Hello, my name is JJ van Rooyen and I am a Personal Trainer at The Village. I am really lucky that my passion for fitness started at a young age. I grew up as an athlete, but it wasn’t until I started going to the gym and working out on my own when I really started to fall in love with body movement and how it made me feel strong and powerful. In addition to Personal Training, I also work in a Physical Therapy clinic and aim to be a DPT myself one day. Working in the clinic gives me the opportunity to help patients with ailments and injuries that interfere with their daily lives. I’ve seen miracles happen when patient care is genuine, the corrective exercise programs are thorough and masterfully crafted and consistently utilized. Movement is a gift that we all deserve!
