Biomechanical approach to exercise

Introduction Fitness instructors, personal trainers, sports therapists, complimentary therapists, P.E teachers, aerobics teachers and other studio based exercise tutors are well educated how to teach exercises. There are many courses available to learn this critical skill. They are not however well versed in how to calculate when to prescribe the right exercises. Currently many fitness professionals perform cardio-vascular testing on their clients prior to embarking on a training programme. On sampling a number of fitness instructors, very few however have the tools to provide their clients with an assessment that identifies which are the best gym and free exercises to perform relative to their bespoke biomechanical needs. And when they are asked to link this to low grade pain in their client’s back for example, they are completely at a loss.

A system is required and a training resource is necessary to fill this critical gap.

Background

There are 2 types of biomechanics: Extrinsic and Intrinsic. Extrinsic is the study and measurement of movement patterns of a particular task. Intrinsic biomechanics, in this context, is an individual’s mechanical make-up, which can be inherited or can be compensatory through extrinsic factors like sitting at a desk all day, driving, doing the wrong gym exercises or running in the wrong shoes for example. Intrinsic biomechanical efficiency will affect extrinsic biomechanical performance.

It is impossible to deliver safe and effective exercise prescription without first identifying the needs of the individual. That is the mantra that has been used in the fitness industry for years, yet the only way this is being performed at present is in the cardio-vascular field.   There are some loose ideas on exercise prescription from postural analysis and from performing particular movement patterns, but they are largely flawed biomechanically. If somebody's biomechanics are incorrect, then their posture and movement patterns will be compromised. There is little point, therefore, in testing these areas then until we have a more profound understanding of their biomechanics. An individual’s biomechanical make-up is critical to understand if you are going to prescribe safe and effective exercises for your clients.

The Health Continuum

We need to identify where clients are on what we call the Health Continuum, which is a scale from illness to wellness and on to elite performance over time. Your clients will be somewhere on the scale and you need to find out where they are before you can prescribe their conditioning exercises. Most exercises are suitable to most people; the problem is that invariably they are prescribed at the wrong time. For example, lunges can help some people and hurt others. If someone has a rotated pelvis and a leg length discrepancy with associated muscle spasm in their hips, then lunges will most likely hurt them. If they are functioning correctly around the pelvis, then lunges won’t hurt them. That is one simple example demonstrating why some of your clients can do some of the exercises you prescribe, but others can’t.

To be able to identify where your clients are on the health continuum, you need to perform a biomechanical assessment. These assessments are simple to perform and take 10 minutes. Once you know where they are on the health continuum and then you can progress them through a sequence of exercise progressions. 

The Biomechanical Model

In a biomechanical model, these progressions start by making the client biomechanically sound by ensuring their fundamental pelvic and spinal mechanics are ‘normalised’ and so provide the building blocks for normal movement. In this first phase any muscle imbalances are eradicated, nerve mobility issues sorted out and any sub-clinical muscle spasm reduced. This phase is referred to as 'Before the Core', because typically people will start their early exercise programmes with core stability-type exercises and they are simply not ready. That is why Pilates helps some people and hurts others. Why would we want to stabilise someone in a biomechanically incorrect position? Let’s 'Normalise' them first, then Stabilise them. If we are not careful all we are doing is training people to compensate for their biomechanical problems rather than training correct movement patterns.

So, once the Normalise Phase has been completed the client is then progressed to the next stage which gives them the ability to consolidate and learn new motor programming strategies in the ‘Stabilisation’ phase. Here they are progressed through a series of isolated stability exercises and then work towards more functional stability patterns.

The final phase is where they learn to use their new motor programming strategies in a more functional way and then progress on to functional velocity training. Here they work towards the functional patterns and velocities that are relevant their ‘purpose’.

Philosophy

We should always be challenging the latest 'current' thinking. Just because something new, like functional training and perhaps Pilates comes along to the industry, does that mean all the work you’re doing at the moment doesn’t work anymore? Of course not, it just means we have something else to integrate into what we are already doing, not necessarily discredit them.

The industry is often seduced by the 'next big thing', but invariably this is simply another way of achieving certain targets for your clients, not necessarily the only way and it certainly doesn’t mean you should be forgetting what you were doing - unless it’s been directly disproven. Nothing should ever be done in isolation, as the exercise model suggests, a series of progressions is the most effective way to progress exercise.

We should focus our attention to real issues, and using all the proven methodologies available to us, answer questions like,:

• How do I know which exercise to give to my clients – how do I know which will help them and which will hurt them? 
• Apart from increasing the number of reps and sets, how should I be progressing my client’s exercise programmes?
• Why chose one particular exercise over another that seemingly does the same thing?
• Should I be using gym balls in their training and if so, when?
• Should I be using machines anymore? Are they ‘functional’? Does that matter?