Submitted by Bryan Chiropractic Center
Ten years ago, if you could even find a kettlebell in an American gym you would have been hard pressed to find a safe place to swing it, and even more rare would have been to find somebody that actually knew how to use it. Now, it is becoming standard equipment at chiropractic offices, physical therapy centers and chain gyms.
The kettlebell is the original functional movement training tool and has been used by Russian athletes and military for over 100 years. Kettlebells have only recently made their way to the states as Health and Fitness research has been increasingly showing the value of training and improving movement instead of training and developing muscles. It seems movement improvement is vital to both treating and preventing mechanical pain of the body as well as developing a person’s athleticism. The research has also shown that regardless of the sport your skill development will never exceed your movement quality and poor movement is associated with repetitive strain injuries. Movement quality is improved with whole body movement therapy called Functional Training and often involves tools like kettlebells which add unique balance and resistance challenges that increase the therapeutic benefit of exercise.
Everyone, from professional athletes in the NFL, NBA and MLB to the Navy SEALs are turning to Functional Training to enhance performance and as an injury treatment and prevention tool. Functional exercises involve fundamental human movement patterns like squatting, climbing, twisting, lunging, carrying, crawling, pulling and running. This is because muscles don’t naturally operate in isolation-not a single sport requires bicep curls and life never demands a seated leg extension. When you lay down or sit down to exercise on a machine with a fixed pattern of movement, you are developing the limbs but not the core. Think of a tree with limbs overdeveloped compared to its trunk and remember life can sometimes be a storm. Functional exercises on the other hand mimic and improve the way you move in real life. The exercises are upright so the body has to balance while multiple parts learn to work together to accomplish a task. This ensures the core and stabilization muscles are developed in balance with the large prime mover muscles.
Exercise scientists that study functional strength and its effect on athletic performance have found that the whole body is interconnected with a fibrous tissue called fascia and muscular action in one area of the body feeds power to other interconnected areas of the body by acting on this fascia. In addition, certain muscles when contracted stimulate the nervous system to promote strength in other muscles by irradiation and summation. This helps to explain why functional strength is whole body strength and why it is improved with functional exercises as they develop the efficiency in which multiple areas of the body work together to accomplish a task. Bruce Lee is a good example of what optimal movement and muscle function can do to improve your functional strength and power transfer. At 135 pounds he was able to generate more punching and kicking power than men almost twice his size. He was able to do this because his movement and muscular activity allowed him to kick and punch with his whole body and with great efficiency and very little energy loss. At 135 pounds he did not have exceptional muscular strength, but he did have exceptional functional strength, agility, and quickness.
Evaluation of the world’s strongest man competitors found the key to the tremendous power needed to pull trucks, lift and flip telephone poles and carry 400 pound bags of sand came from the linkages of the body efficiently working together to accomplish the task. When power output was tested separately at the arm, shoulder, core, hip and leg, their sum was measurably less than what was needed to accomplish these feats of strength, even though all the athletes tested were successful in each of those events. Thus, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the answer to athletic power and performance isn’t just creating bigger parts but instead it seems to be as much about improving how those parts work together. They say you cannot shoot a cannon from a canoe, so getting bigger guns would not be practical if you didn’t learn to stabilize the canoe. These strongmen know this so they use kettlebell training to teach the linkages of their bodies to work together efficiently. Regular training insures it’s in their muscle memory so it will be automatic when they compete the various events of their sport. Don’t be confused, these elite strength, athletes also need to train with heavy weights for structural strength and train the skill of each event, but they know they need the kettlebell training to improve their muscle software so they can get the most out of their hardware.
Functional training should be approached like any other new activity as there is a learning curve – you don’t start to snow ski on double black diamond runs instead you take some lessons and learn on the easier slopes. To be successful with functional exercise you must first move well when performing primary functional movements and most of us don’t. It’s common to have movement problems from past injuries, degenerative joint problems, poor conditioning and the most common source of movement dysfunction is our modern sedentary lifestyle. Ironically, compensation in movement feels normal to most people-the compensation has become their new normal. Thankfully, there are chiropractors and other professionals that have studied biomechanics and corrective exercise strategies so they have the skill needed to evaluate your ability to properly perform the primary movements associated with functional training. If you demonstrate compensation in movement and muscle activity, or if you have balance, mobility or stability problems with any movement you would be smart to fix it before you train that movement. Fortunately these movement problems are usually the result of stuck joints and muscular imbalances and can be corrected with chiropractic treatment and corrective exercise. The bottom line is you need to move well before you move aggressively or repetitively. If you don’t, you will just enhance your dysfunction and eventually develop mechanical pain and/or a repetitive use injury. Once you develop the form, flexibility, stability and muscle memory for proper movement and use of equipment you can progress to fitness level functional exercises on your own
It is helpful to envision a scale of movement quality and associated functional strength. At one end is poor movement and how it promotes mechanical pain and repetitive use injury. At the other end is optimal movement and functional strength that is found in elite athletes. This disparity exists because stuck joints and muscle imbalances cause compensation in movement which compromises the efficiency in which the body can work as a unit. This affects flexibility, balance, power transfer and functional strength. This creates energy leaks during activity that diminishes performance and creates unnatural loading of joints and ligaments. Unfortunately, most movement dysfunctions go unnoticed until the person develops mechanical pain or has a repetitive use injury or if they are fortunate and have their movement evaluated by a trained professional. The fact is if we train and improve our movement quality it will improve our physical potential. Your goal may be to eliminate back pain or prevent knee replacement or it may be to improve your performance in a sport or at work. Whether you are young or old, chiropractic care and functional movement training can improve your physical performance.
Dr. Mark Bryan is a chiropractor who has practiced in Olympia, Washington for over 25 years. His post graduate training includes: Functional biomechanics and movement assessment, orthopedics, kettlebell training and corrective exercise strategies. He practices at Bryan Chiropractic Center on Yelm Highway where he has successfully helped thousands of patients with mechanical pain involving the spine and the extremities. The office also has a fully equipped exercise suite where Dr. Bryan can evaluates a person’s ability to perform functional movements and then design and teach corrective exercise strategies to correct movement problems and muscle imbalances.
