FUNCTION & MOVE WITH EASE: 

Over the long term, having a training program that emphasizes strength, mobility, and stability will help you do day to day things with greater ease. However, “function” is a specific concept rather than a general one. It’s often individual and more like skill training. We are not saying that strength exercise isn’t an important aspect for function, it definitely is, however; a bigger part of function is “skill training” or “practice”. 

We need to train both strength and skill, and they don’t always go to together well or safely. At times we have to move away from muscle fatigue and more into specifically training what you want to perform better. If you want to get better at walking you have to practice walking, if you want to get better at running you have to practice running. If you want to move and function better you have to:

1.     Train for Strength: Being able to lift heavier objects with ease.

2.     Train for mobility: Moving your body with a tolerable load through your entire range of motion (ROM), with control, will improve how mobile you are.

3.     Train for stability: Be able to resist or sustain positions with or without load for a prolonged duration. At times, if we identify a lack of basic stability at a particular joint or group of joints, we will add specific home exercises to train this.

4.     Train for function: Practice more frequently, without much fatigue, exactly what you want to get better at, but scale it. Meaning, break down the skill into learnable steps that mitigate your risk of injury and fatigue. “Practice little bits all the time.”