Functional Training Coach.com

Nearly 5 years ago I was working at a private personal training studio.  The owner was a guy who really enjoyed training clients and helping them reach their fat loss and fitness goals.

He was good at getting results with his clients as long as they fit the ‘apparently healthy’ category.

The thing is that for some reason we got a LOT of clients who wanted to either lose weight, build muscle or improve sports performance but weren’t reaching their goals because nagging injuries were getting in their way.

If you or anyone you know has dealt with one of these injuries before then you know how annoying it is when you can’t figure out why it’s there, what caused it or how to get rid of the damned thing.

Then one day I was in the office catching up on updating some programs for my clients while the owner was training one of his clients.

The client was a rather petite female in her early 50′s who wanted to lose some body fat so she could fit in the bikini she bought for her summer vacation which was a few weeks away.

She was so excited about this trip and really wanted to look her best.

And all was quiet in the studio until I heard a sound so loud I almost dropped my pen.

This did NOT sound good so I made my way down the hallway to the training room in the back of the studio. As I got closer I could hear the sound getting louder ‘OUCH!’

It was coming from the owner’s client who was obviously in pain and I wanted to know why (call me nosey but hey that’s just me

When I peeked into the training room it took me about 3 seconds to see why she was in pain.

The owner had her on the floor doing superman’s…

…Now you might be wondering what’s wrong with doing Superman’s?

Normally nothing except for the fact that his client suffered from chronic lower back pain.

Now, here’s where the real problem was…

…The owner thought that her problem was due to weak lower back muscles and he figured doing Superman’s would help strengthen her lower back.

And, as she was finishing the exercise she asked him ‘Is this supposed to hurt?‘

To which he replied with a grin from ear to ear ‘Yep! Your back is weak.’

Now, I’m not a physical therapist or doctor but the one thing I realized having worked with her during a few sessions when the owner needed me to cover for him was that the last thing she needed was to strengthen her lower back muscles.

Her problem wasn’t that her lower back was weak but quite the opposite.

It was actually strong and that was the problem.

See, her lower back had developed its’ strength as a way of compensating because her abdominals and hips were extremely weak. In other words, she had muscle imbalances that needed to be addressed.

Unfortunately, after that episode she left the studio never to return.

So, what’s my point to all of this?

It’s simply that the owner could have avoided losing a client (he’s lucky she didn’t file a lawsuit) if he understood the nature of her injury which was muscular imbalances.

But, despite having over 20 years of experience and multiple certifications to his credit what he did not have was a system for identifying and addressing muscle imbalances.

Had he developed a system he would have been able to understand the cause of his client’s injury and how to select the most effective exercises to help her recover from it.

Unfortunately, when it comes to addressing muscle imbalances many fitness professionals are stretching tight muscles and strengthening weak muscles without seeing their clients improve much.

It’s even more frustrating when you send a client off to their doctor and they can’t figure out what’s going on either.

To gain some insight on addressing muscle imbalances I recently interviewed Rick Kaselj.

Rick is a kinesiologist and personal trainer in Canada who specializes in teaching fitness professionals and his clients the FASTEST exercise methods to recover from injuries.

I’ve known Rick for several years and every time I get the chance to talk to him he never ceases to amaze me with his knowledge of injury rehabilitation.

So, I thought I’d pick his brain again to see what he could tell me about addressing muscle imbalances for upper body injuries.

And, he had plenty to say about:

• The biggest muscle imbalance issue in the upper body

• How to assess muscle imbalances in the upper body

• What people can do about muscle imbalances in their upper body

• A huge trend that is happening with clients in the gym

• How poor breathing can lead to muscle stress and pain

• Great example of integrating breathing with exercise

And, lot’s more…

Click Here To Listen To The Interview

(if you want to download the interview just right click your mouse and click ‘save link as’ to your desktop)

If you’re anything like me then you’ll stop at nothing when it comes to learning the fastest injury recovery methods.

If this describes you then you might want to take a look at this.

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