Functional training

Functional training advocates that greater participation of the stabilising muscles in training is key to executing physiologically accurate, precise movements, thereby improving performance.

Exercises on a variety of unstable equipment, designed to engage the smaller and deeper stabilising muscles, can also be used to restore full body stability when performing a movement. Our bodies work most efficiently when they are stable and mobile. Gray Cook's joint-by-joint method best describes this: our ankles need to be mobile to keep our knees stable, our hips need to be mobile to keep our lumbar spine stable, our back needs to be mobile to keep our neck stable and our shoulder blades stable to keep our shoulder mobility. If one part of this chain is faulty, then the other parts of the chain (but most of all the joints next to the faulty part) will show faulty movements and pain. Functional training assesses the mechanics of the body's movements and highlights what we can and should improve based on the simple movements we make in our daily lives to help our patients move with pain and without symptoms and improve their performance. In the faulty movement chain part, we correct the basic problem with other methods of physiotherapy and manual therapy, and then we incorporate it into the neurological movement pattern by re-teaching movements and practicing correct movement.