HERO MOVE (Functional Movement 101)

This catchphrase “Functional Movement” is all the rant and rave these days! A few decades ago we never really heard the term. The term represents the correction to DYSfunctional movement.

Dysfunctional movement is a much more common and older term when it comes to the field of kinetic medicine. Dysfunctional movement is simply, ‘when the “pieces” of the body do not work together as they were designed to’.

We have this many bones, muscles and cables of dense connective tissue, they take on specific shapes and they connect to very specific locations...

This is all for a reason! There’s this nice little quote that goes “nature uses as little as possible of anything.” (Johannes Kepler). Nature is lazy; it only invests energy into expressing material forms when enough time and persistence deem it a necessity.

The same goes for the structural design of our modern day human body!

So, with all this said. DYSfunctional movement happens when muscles (aka our active movers) have a pattern of over or under working. How do these dysfunctional patterns happen in the first place?

1. Meridian Imbalances: Meridians are highly neurological in nature and they will express outwardly imbalances in the internal organs. Nutritional and metabolic deficiencies will give rise to internal organ dysfunctions - As these dysfunctions and imbalances persist over time, they give rise to meridian imbalances which express throughout our limbs and ultimately inhibit our movement.

Think of the meridians as the environment in which a plant is growing. Imbalances and blockages in the meridians act like a rock pressing into a tree trunk, or a sidewalk block in the way of a weed. Over time the plant grows in response to the obstacle. That tree trunk’s concentric rings will become compressed on the rock-pressured side and may even begin to expand around the rock. In the case of the weed the sidewalk block determines the path that the weed must take underground in order for it to reach the surface. There are also case of environmental chemical stressors that influence the physical structure in this same way.

The meridian environment is what gradually guides the form that our body structure will take over the years.

2. Overuse & Lifestyle Imbalances: Depending upon our sport, occupation, and our many hobbies, we tend to perform common movement patterns that predominate these. A baseball player falls into the groove of repetitive one-sided throwing and swinging. An office worker falls into the groove of static seated desk posture, and you can really get the picture when you think of an assembly-line style worker performing their one specific task again and again.

These overuse patterns hardwire the body to habituate these "strong" & proficient one-sided extremes. As a result, movements that oppose or antagonize such will become much weaker leading to imbalances producing pain, wear & tear and increased risk of traumatic injuries. These muscular imbalances will also tend to pull and change the way that the joints sit.

There’s this nice little phenomenon in the body called ‘reciprocal inhibition’ where the movers will communicate with their opposers and present pain and other inhibitory signals to protect the imbalance. When this is so we will see dynamic postural dysfunction aka dysfunctional patterning.

3. External Factors & Traumas: This last contributor to dysfunctional movement includes any external attack on the body (e.g. collision, strain, sprain, tear, break, infection, allergen, attack, etc.). For the most part these are self-explanatory. When we take a hit our body responds in an imbalanced way to protect itself, but almost always does a bad job putting an end to it's initial protective response. Even after the danger is gone and damages have healed!

The repercussions remain. How often do we hear someone say “it’s just never been the same since”. Our meridians store trauma in the form of guarding, neurological disconnect, weakened circulation, connective tissue adhesions and scar tissue. All of which will interfere with our natural ability to move functionally.

Now that we’ve discussed the key causes and contributors to dysfunctional movement, now let’s talk about how it works. Ahem! I mean.. how it fails to work.

On the external side of things our muscles achieve their greatest degree of strength in a balanced not too lengthened not too shortened position. As we move into either of these end-range extremes the strength gradually peters out. One sided strengths also bring opposing one-sided weaknesses. This weakness produces pain and dysfunction that expands to dampen even the strong side!

Structural-posture determines how the joints sit while in their default (often neutral) state. When there is structural-postural dysfunction, the muscles become placed into more lengthened or shortened states, diminishing their strength, ability to gain leverage and ultimately their function. Postural dysfunction can have it’s root “internally” in terms of our habits of movement affected by our often unconscious emotion, sense of self, awareness in our environment, meridian health, and repetitive habits or what we often call ‘muscle memory’ (all of which our Hero MOVE 'Innercise' training program develops).

Postural dysfunction may also find its root externally and as a result of our conscious action and the muscle tone itself (what our Hero MOVE 'Exercise' training program develops). Hyper and hypo-tonic muscle patterns will present as pulling, causing the joint to naturally position into poor default posture. If unaddressed, over time this can influence the way our bones remodel themselves (e.g. abnormal bone growths, abnormal bends and curves in the bone). by this stage it is very difficult to treat!

The best way to develop Functional Movement is through a balanced internal and external approach. This is why the Hero MOVE program contains both Exercise and Innercise components. They work towards the same goal but in different ways and from different angles. They synergize one another too! Think of exercise as that which “actively creates” and Innercise as that which “relinquishly allows” for balanced and biomechanically sound movement to happen. When we move there are deficiencies that fail to create movement, and then there are excesses that fail to allow movement.

This Yin-Yang approach to functional movement is one-of-a-kind in the world of sports physical therapy. This inner work, also has the perk of addressing psychological inhibitors and the ways that they present themselves in our movement. It also works to better strengthen the bones and connective tissue so that they may withstand greater stress and load. And if this still wasn't enough, the Innercise approach creates lasting unconscious changes that traditional rehab-style activation exercises typically fail to do once our mind wanders into it's habitual day-to-day zone.

Visit Hero Performance Health at www.heroperformancehealth.com to learn more about Hero MOVE: an online, ‘on your own time’ functional movement training program integrating leading and cutting-edge functional movement practices into a balanced and practical one-stop-shop package.

With the right tools, methods and guidance we can quickly and effectively develop functional movement and enhance our power and performance in sport and life. All top athletes are movement pros before they are sport-specific pros. Movement deficiencies if left unaddressed will cause us to plateau early in our sport.

What if we told you that this ability to move well that we see present in almost all the world's best athletes is not something that they are just born with, but it’s something that we all can develop in less than an hour a day.

Join Hero MOVE and improve yourself in sport without taking away from your in-sport training! 

Unlock and unleash your full superhuman potential with Hero MOVE!