The traditional form of exercise has many well-known benefits, it increases metabolism, encourages cellular metabolism, builds bone, joint and muscle strength and releases endorphins, along with countless other positive physical and mental affects; and for all the athletes out there, exercise is not just a way to stay healthy, it is your passion, your dream, your career. It gives you a rush, a feeling of extacy. You push yourself to the max and are thrilled the whole way to the finish line.

Most of us have been active at an early age, whether it was joining the local soccer team, running track in school, or just climbing the tree in your front lawn. Our young little bodies’ craved movement, and we loved the rush it gave us, just as we do now. But while we still cherish the passion of our sports, one thing that has changed for most us is our invincibility. When we were kids, we could jump on a trampoline all day and not even get a sore muscle, now, well, it’s a different story. Our backs are sore after a long day at work, or our knees are still hurting from injuries in high school. But then we still expect our bodies’ to perform for us in a balanced and strong manner, pounding it on the asphalt as we run our stress out. There’s a difference, maybe even a problem, here. We took our efficient and balanced mechanics for granted at that young age, but as stresses and traumas accumulate and our bodies’ learn to compensate or cope, we realize that maybe we aren’t so invincible.

So how do we return, or at least get closer, to those pain-free, efficiently-blissful days? Exercise. Exercise to exercise. You see, the traditional form of exercise, the kind that we all think of when we think of breathing hard and sweating, moving till our muscles burn, does not address our biomechanical imbalances or muscular inhibitions. In fact, often this type of exercise can exasterbate, or even create, these compensations. Corrective exercises must be applied to address your compensations, to strengthen the weaker muscles and, as a result, relieve the over-worked ones.

The body is a complex system, and the biomechanics of even simple movements or postures will baffle the greatest experts. Every joint is dependent upon proper neuromuscular feedback, or proper motor neuron input from the central nervous system to the muscles and back, for stability, mobility and strength, not only locally, but globally as well. It is this communication that gives the muscles their ability to react and contract, and over time, resulting in an increase, or maintenance, of strength. Each joint and each muscle crossing a joint is dependant upon this type of communication, between the central nervous system and the muscles, and even muscle to muscle. When an excess of stress or force overwhelms the muscles or central nervous system, inhibitions will result, protecting the overwhelmed areas. An inhibition in a single muscle or movement will affect the entire body, altering its relative positioning, posture and alignment.

To correct this functional imbalance, we must go back to the basics, start at the foundation.

The neuromuscular system has the greatest ability to control our biomechanics, and it is a complex system of nerves, tissues and receptors. When it is functioning properly, it has the capability to do amazing things, most are even unconscious and something we take for granted. But this complex system is dependant upon many things, including other systems in the body, and can be affected by both internal and external stimuli. Positive stimuli can strengthen the neuromuscular system and encourage quick and efficient communication between the central nervous system, joints and muscles, resulting in increased muscle strength, reaction time and joint mobility with stability. Dysfunction, on the other hand, can be caused by an acute trauma or an accumulation of smaller ones, and if it is not given a safe environment to heal shortly after these excessive negative stimuli, the areas that were injured will remain in a protected state, neuromuscularly inhibited. The neurological system will compensate for the inhibition by increasing its frequencies to surrounding muscles and other muscles that can create similar movements. It will become the hypertonic muscles’ job to protect and compensate for the inhibited ones.

The traditional forms of exercise will not address these compensation patterns. In fact, as the force through the imbalanced joints increases with exercise, so will the body’s natural protective mechanism. The strong muscles will accept the majority of the force and the inhibited ones will avoid it. The gap between the strong and weak muscles will widen, further ingraining the compensations.

It is these imbalances that create instability in joints, uneven wear patterns in the joints’ surface, decreased physical performance and vulnerability to further injury. Specific exercises designed to increase motor neuron input to the inhibited muscles must be created to reverse these compensations. Typically exercises with this purpose have very low amounts of force involved so that the inhibited muscles will have a chance to recognize the resistance and respond, without further shutting down due to overstimulation and forcing you to resort back into your compensation pattern. Usually they are also very slow, if not isometric, to give you time to consciously identify the area that is being emphasized. This is why I call these types of corrective exercises the foundation of all exercise and sport, because it will create efficient movement and ensure proper mechanics before you demand strength through global exercises. Neuromuscularly, it will strengthen each individual link of the biomechanical chain before stressing the entire thing.

Exercises with this type of specificity usually need to be created by a biomechanics specialist because the assessment to determine where the compensations exist is the basis of all exercises. It is difficult, if not impossible, to do a full assessment for yourself. Once the assessment has identified the weaker areas and your specialist has created exercises accordingly, you will have the power in your own hands to correct the compensations. However, the exercises in this book are designed to address common imbalances and inhibitions in every joint, and if done correctly, will strengthen some of the weak links.

An example of how this process might look is the work that I have done with a triathlete. He came to me just over a year ago with no particular injuries, but an odd feeling that his body was not performing at its peak level no matter how hard or smart he trained. He is a top level athlete and had, at that time, just qualified for the 2008 Olympics. He wanted optimal performance from his body, but didn’t know how to get it. Through the examination I found that from all the years he had run track he developed an imbalance according to the left hand turns. The axis in the foot that are responsible for turning left were stronger than their counterpart, and the same was true in the knees, hips, spine and upper body. Having muscles that were comparatively weaker in creating torche around the opposite axis was affecting his gait pattern, specifically his ability to toe off on the left foot and land on his right, and, in relation, to extend his left knee and hip and flex his right. Left pelvic rotation and right thoracic rotation were limited, along with the left side’s ability to lengthen or decrease it’s curves in an effort to propel. The cervical spine was limited to the left. Left shoulder and elbow extension were weak and right shoulder and elbow flexion were too. His coaches had picked up on different pieces of this track pattern. His swim coach constantly cued him to lift his right elbow out of the water or keep his hand from drifting out. His right shoulder had a tendency to round forwards and jut the elbow back when running and his same-side calf would tighten up. His coach recognized this inconsistency, but did not know how to correct it outside of cueing. But none of them had pieced the imbalances together to recognize a developed compensation pattern from years prior.

So we created exercises, exercises based on the current abilities of the weakest links. We started with exercises that emphasized individual muscles and individual joint movements, encouraging communication and creating awareness of the inhibited muscles. One of his first exercises was for his lower back. He laterally bent his spine by bringing his legs to the side, concentrically contracting only one side of the spine, and continuing to contract those muscles by pressing into a post. He rotated his hips or arched his back to amplify the frequencies to different spinal erectors. By working one joint at a time, he could focus on the correct form and increase proprioception to that specific area. Within only a few days he began to feel increased, localized strength and mobility. A few more weeks of these exercises and his muscles were strong enough to assist in his training, decreasing his compensation patterns and increasing his efficiency.

As he progressed, so did his exercises. We began to integrate the exercises so that two joints were being stressed together. To advance his lower back exercise he positioned his arm so that latissimus was also participating.

After only a few months, we incorporated the entire body so that multiple joints were working at the same time in correlation to their participation in his sport. For an example, his left oblique foot axis was strained by doing calf raises at the angle of the axis while a medial-superior to lateral-inferior-directed resistance created torque around his spine. This exercise integrated a specific weakness in his foot with the correlating weakness in his spine, with the purpose of the strength transferring over to his swimming, biking and running.

Over this past year, his previously weaker links have become equal to the strong ones in nearly every joint. The more balanced he feels, the less he needs alternative therapies like chiropractic and massage, he no longer uses orthotics, and his chronically tight muscles are functioning normally now. His performance has accelerated and his racing results prove it.

His results are not unusual. I remember another triathlete who, after having an assessment, discovered that his chronic hip and shoulder pain were due to an injury from martial arts six years prior. After a few weeks of doing exercises created according to this injury, his pain was gone. In his next race, he cut seven minutes off of his overall time, three of them from the run split, giving him his personal best and first place.

There are many different opinions as to what exercises to do, what exercises are good versus bad, when to do them, how to do them, how many to do, how to progress them, when to progress them, and so on. Is yoga better than pilates? Are functional exercises better than isolated ones? Is swimming better than running? Is super slow better in the gym than plymetrics? In my personal opinion, the ultimate question is: “What are my needs and goals and what exercises will best transfer to get me there?”

Corrective exercises designed according to your specific compensations are the foundation of exercise because this will prevent overuse injuries and increase efficiency in movement. They ensure that your activities and sport will build balance and properly direct and create force. Even though they typically do not mimic the movement in your sport or daily activities, the results transfer.

Single-joint exercises have been argued to be less effective for athletic performance and even postural balance than multi-joint exercises. Calf raises followed by leg extensions followed by hip extension is commonly thought to be less functional (meaning, improvement of movements that reoccur during daily actives) than a squat. I, personally, believe that strengthening each individual joint does have a beneficial transfer to biomechanically correct and increase the performance of multi-joint movements. It could, for an example, be used as part of the micro-progression to more complicated exercises.

Complicated exercises, or resisted movements that involve multiple joints acting in unison, can also be an integral part of the process to increasing strength and biomechanical efficiency. When each individual link in the chain is functioning properly and every joint has full range of motion, a multi-joint exercise will affectively transfer, resulting in improved daily activities and sport. It will create quicker reaction times and a familiarity to proper global biomechanics.

When speed, inertia and high amounts of force are added to exercises, such as plyometrics, running and traditional weight lifting, there is an underlying assumption that the body is properly prepared and fully capable of responding correctly. But, just because a chest press is called a chest press, doesn’t nessisarily mean that your pectoralis major and minor are going to properly respond to the resistance. Or, just because lateral jumps are popular for working the inner and out legs, doesn’t mean that your hip adduction and abduction is strong enough to accept the stress. The benefits of speed and power training will only reach its full potential when each individual joint is functioning properly. However, when this optimal biomechanical function is achieved and you are confident in your physical balance, this type of training will immediately transfer to bring you closer to your goals. These intense exercises will challenge your body and build strength, power and endurance. This is the type of exercise is most popular for weight loss, athletic training and muscle building and will quickly produce these results.

In short, to achieve biomechanical effiecency and optimal performance, microprogression from low-resistance, single-joint isometrics to high-intensity, multi-joint movements is the most affective approach. Proper form is just as important in creating strength as resistance or speed, and it is the form that can cause or prevent overuse injuries. All types of exercise and sport can be beneficial, biasing towards one mind-set or technique only limits you, as long as it serves this question, “What are my needs and goals and what exercises will best transfer to get me there?”

Positive growth as an individual, no matter your level of physical fitness, is largely based upon your mental perspective. Notice this picture. If you look at it one way, you see an old man with a big, bushy beard. But change your perspective and you see a girl painting on an easle with a beautiful country scene behind her. We can use this same outlook on ourselves. No one is perfect. In fact, we are all far from it. Some may hide it better, but typically that just means they have more to hide. If we see ourselves in a judgemental perspective, expecting a certain level of rightness that we never quite posses, then we will hold ourselves back, only living up to what we believe. But when we use a different viewpoint and see ourselves as amazing just as we are, perfectly imperfect, with an open mind and heart, then our growth is exponential. And, once again, we will live up to what we believe of ourselves. With a foundation built upon unconditional acceptance, we can be honestly skeptical, identify our weaknesses and use our strengths to build them up. Based upon empathy, we can challenge ourselves to reach for the unreachable star, because if we only come close, we can still celebrate the journey.

In short, when you are choosing exercises to help resolve your physical needs and attain your goals, whether they are, for an example, learning how to walk after a stroke or become the world champion in your sport , a progression from neuromuscularly-based, single joint isometrics to greater resistance, multi-joint movements may be the most effective way to accelerate your results. Muscular balance and biomechanical efficiency will activate your optimal performance, propelling you past your current abilities. Use your mental power to have a genuine acceptance of you and your body, to dream and to make it your reality. Our mind, body and spirit, in unison, is the most powerful and amazing thing on this earth, its up to us to realize it.