Fitness Vs. Function

By Dr. Michael Castania, PT, DPT

Social media has given rise to the newest trend, which involves fitness “models” or fit influencers, recommending workout routines to their followers. While the increased focus on exercising and improving fitness is outstanding, there’s also a potential downside to this trend. Many of these workouts include extremely hard routines that have a high perceived value for followers, but these challenging movements could cause an issue for you if don’t first have optimal function to perform them correctly. So here are some things to think about before safely starting a home exercise routine.

What’s Function?

Ex. Master basic push-up form before progressing to something more advanced

Function refers to fundamental movement skills. We're talking about mobility, strength and stability which includes balance and control. Movement competency has a very specific progression. For instance, we don't learn to walk before we learn to crawl and roll. Then we stand, walk, run, jump and so on to follow the natural hierarchy of movement. Each step is built on mastering the previous one. However, many of us have lost the ability to do one or more lower-level movement patterns which opens us up to injury if we jump into a workout routine that's more advanced than our current functional level.

Are You Able To Perform a Deep Squat?
The easiest way to highlight function is to look at a very fundamental movement such as a squat. Are you able to perform a deep squat? If you cannot squat all the way down to the ground, but complete a tough workout with squats, you’re body will likely be compensating to try and keep up which could lead to injury or not produce the results you are looking for.

Functional Movement Screen

It’s important to know that general fitness cannot fix function. This is where a well executed movement screen comes into play. As trained movement experts, physical therapists can uncover your functional movement dysfunctions so they can be directly addressed and fixed. It’s like going back and becoming proficient at our ABC’s before trying to read a book. This is proven to help you reduce the risk of injury while getting better results from your workouts.

Click here to learn more about the components of a functional movement screen.

Click here to express your interest in learning more about a properly executed movement screen so you offer you an appropriate and effective routine to build off.

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