How’s your form?

John’s second special guest blog post for us, and today he goes through a technique hack that can help you quickly assess any in-balances in your body! Enjoy!

How’s your form?

Have you ever thought about your posture? How you walk? Sit? Or stand? When you’re training have you ever thought does this look right? Am I balanced? Am I leaning? Why does it hurt when I do this?

Training comprises of strength, endurance and cardio, the ability the lift more, run longer or faster is on the fore front of many athletes and fitness people. But do we actually think about our posture? Mobility? Range of motion? Even our form? Our foundation is what gives us the ability to perform simple tasks to extreme fitness pain free and safe. This is what makes the difference in reducing injury and wear and tear on or bodies, it also gives us a better understanding of what underlying issues we have, most of the time we don’t even know we had.

What people don’t realise is that your body compensates, it will adjust itself to suit the work you put it under, whether it be sitting at a desk or a hard work out, if you aren’t doing the correct form you are doing more harm than good and increase the risk of further injury. Some people need more warm up techniques than others, in the cold it could take longer to warm up and any injury can affect your mobility.

There are many ways to assess someone’s mobility, A Gait analysis which checks your movement and balance, FMS (Functional Movement System) that looks a posture form and grades you on quality of each test. Any pain involved will show an underlying issue you may not have even known about give a better indication of what’s weak, tight or needs activation.

When I was assessed I leaned to one side during a squat, my left hip was raised during the hurdle step, I had poor stability in my core, and tight hamstrings, but I had good scapula (upper back) mobility and good back strength and shoulders. It gave me a good indication of where my muscles were weak, tight and needed activation, so I worked on it, learned some warm up and cooldown techniques that activate, loosen and strengthen those areas and I can tell the difference, I focus more on those areas and already can see an improvement.

Why not give it a go, get a FMS assessment and see how you go, I wasn’t disappointed as it helped me in the long run and secretly it was fun, trying to balance and get a perfect score, I bet even the elite would struggle with a few of these. When I’m in public I can already see what issues people have.

https://www.functionalmovement.com/

John Wheeler