Over the years we have worked with thousands of clients and fitness professionals. One thing that we have noticed with the majority of the programs that people are doing is that people are skipping very small steps in their training programs.
Let’s face it, people want to get after it, work hard, and do the most challenging exercises possible. This way they can get the best results possible as fast as possible. The problem is, this theory has a major flaw. Don’t get me wrong, we both think it’s good to get after it and work as hard as possible, but when a small step is skipped, the entire process becomes dysfunctional.
Does this even apply to you? Do you have clients that:
Have a lot of 1’s on the FMS
Have movement quality issues
Keep getting nagging injuries
Always have bad form
Are elderly
Are athletes that need top-notch movement prep
I’m positive that you do, because we ALL have at least some clients like this. So what do you do to make sure you are not skipping any steps in your training programs?
We build solid foundations with our clients by taking them through developmental sequencing, or developmental movement re-patterning. This process takes you through corrective exercise progressions for each developmental position, allowing you to re-build your clients just like we developed as babies in the first place. This sequence has been proven time and time again to be extremely effective in fixing any issues your clients may have, making them as injury free, and efficient as possible.
The key is to make sure that your client has proper posture and breathing in each position.
Just start your program with the movements that your clients can do in good posture with good breathing. You may be surprised at the compensations that you see when put your clients in perfect form and ask them to take a breath in certain positions during that movement. If they can’t control a movement in this program while exhaling, they are not ready to move on.
*For more info check out an earlier blog post with an in-service on proper posture and breathing by position
http://smartgrouptraining.com/incorporating-breathing-and-posture-in-to-real-world-training/
Here are the basic positions that we need to see proficiency in before progressing to the next position.
- Supine position
- Prone position
- Rolling
- Quadruped Position
- Prone 2
- Crawling
- Kneeling Position
- Transitional Movements like Turkish Get Ups
- Bilateral Stance, Split Stance, and Stride Stance
