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’. W e 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 ov...

As an athlete our number one priority should always be the capability to move functionally. This is the backbone of strength & conditioning! Moving functional means that the joints are capable of moving with strength and control through all the necessary ranges that our specific sport demands. It also means that the base movement patterns, such as running, lifting, rotating/pivoting, throwing, jumping, and more are done so using efficient biomechanics that effectively integrate the entire body into each movement. Each of our muscles must play their part in a balanced way! And to top it all of this, we need this to be habitual or second nature. When movement becomes dysfunctional, or simply if range of motion displays differences between sides, then any time spent developing strength & conditioning as well as simply playing/training your sport has a risk of locking in dysfunction further, leading to aches, pains, and injuries that could have been preventable. Sound movement is...

This is a very important article to read for anyone who works in the field of human movement. When it comes to developing functional movement, often the very first step and goal is improving the body’s capability for full range movement. Movement happens about the body’s 360 joints and the degree in which they are able to achieve movement is referred to as ‘range of motion’ or ROM. Each joint must fulfill a specific degree of ROM in order to move in a way that maximizes the body’s biomechanical output, conserves energy, minimizes the leaking of forces, and inhibits the tendency for other muscles need to overcompensate. This is known as functional range. Below you can see a nice and simple example of this where a pelvic imbalance can produce compensations further up the chain at the neck. If ROM is limited, two things happen: first of all the movement must go on and so other joints must move more in order for the body to reach its destination. And two, in order for the muscles to ea...