START AT THE BEGINNING FOR SUCCESS
by David Gilks
I am sure all of us have seen the myriad of fitness DVD's, programs and gadgets offered of TV. There is a new fitness invention seemingly every week, offering faster and better results than every before. I have been in and around the fitness scene for almost 25 years and I can tell straight up that the things that worked back then are still the same things that work today, the basics.
Conversely, we have come a long way in our understanding of fitness training, health and nutrition. I am truly embarrassed by some of the things I took my clients through in the earlier days of my career. But I thought that the things I did to get into shape should work for everybody. What I didn't take into account was the bio mechanical differences that we all have, or easier said, the different physical backgrounds we all come from. For example, I grew up on the east coast of Canada, and during my childhood as far back as I can remember I worked in the huge garden with the rest of the family during the summer and fall and worked with my father on his construction sites pulling lumber and other manual labour duties. Not a video game to been seen anywhere!
How does that make a difference today in my physical ability you ask? Are you ready for it "we are the sum total of all the movement patterns we have created in our life". What does this mean exactly? This means that if your life has been one of relative sedentary behaviour, than our nervous system has not been taught all the possible patterns of movement available to it. And if you go into a gym or exercise program with only a small percentage of your musculature that is truly active, you are headed for trouble. As I am a weightlifter, lets look at a common strength exercise we all do, "wrong"! For all of you who sit a desk for a living and have tight shoulders (anterior deltoid) and tight upper neck muscles (upper trapezius) this is for you. A basic exercise like the seated row is supposed to target your latissmus dorsi (or lats) the muscle just below your armpits. But because you have really tight neck and shoulder muscles, which ones do you think will get involved? As your lats are probably weak and the tight muscles of your upper back can approximate the same motion, which one do you think you will use? You guessed it, the upper shoulder girdle! Not the desired result unfortunately, but the most common one. The only way, and I mean the only way to succeed at the fitness game is first identify the present bio mechanical issues (posture) you may have, fix them first then proceed with the rest of your fitness program. If your trainer has never provided you with a mechanical assessment, they are doing you a grave disservice.
If you are serious about your fitness talk to your physiotherapist about having postural assessment done or contact us about our Med Fit Screen program. Success!! As the fitness movement gathers momentum, there are more and more new "fitness experts" and ways of getting shape then ever before. As exciting as the possibilities are, it is necessary to proceed with caution and a little bit of scepticism.
