How to Incorporate Functional Movement Into Your Daily Routine

**Transcript**

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Hey, Dr. McNamara here. And today I wanted to talk to you guys about just overall physical fitness and how to stay healthy in regards to, how much resistance training I should be doing versus how much cardiovascular training I should be doing versus you know, how much stability balance core and stretching I need to be doing as well.

And today I wanna give you a way that you can kind of design your own program. That's gonna benefit you the best way to keep you fit, keep you active and just doing those things you love and enjoy in life as you get on into your later years in life. So, without further ado, I have this PowerPoint for you and we will get started.

So, let's get going. So I titled this how to move the right way with functional fitness. So the reason why I wanted to present on this is because being a chiropractor, we're often seeing individuals that are in pain. That's primarily what we see. And one of the best ways to keep yourself out of pain, once we've helped you get out of that pain is to be exercising, but not just exercising, doing it in the correct way.

What we'll be talking about today, just a quick overview is why should we move? Why is it healthy to move? Why does it benefit? Not just our bodies, but our minds and our overall health and wellbeing. When we move, we'll get into that. And then we'll talk a little bit about what is functional movement and how functional movement can benefit you and your health. How do I know if I'm moving correctly or incorrectly? We're gonna talk a little bit about some things that you could do to make sure you are, have correct movement patterns.

And if you don't have correct movement patterns, we're gonna talk about how to improve those movement patterns in order to stay outta pain, doing those things we love. And then I want to finally go over how to develop an exercise program that allows you to live long, be happy and perform those activities that you do love.

Let's get started. So why should I move? This is a great question. If you think about it. Movement equals life. As soon as you wake up in the morning, the first thing you do is you, you know, kick those arms up and, you know, yawn, even before you start moving upon waking your brain is constantly moving through different waves of sleep, alpha beta Delta and that rapid eye movement, literally it's called rapid eye movement part of sleep.

So, you're moving even when you think you're not moving, you can even think of at the macro level, you know, we're living on this planet that is constantly spinning on its access while hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. So even again, when you're not moving, you're actually always moving. So let's do a little quick test. Everybody go ahead and stand up. If you can, I can. I'm not going to now stand on one leg. Now, the reason I wanted you to do this little test is because there was a study that showed that a successful ten second one-legged stand helped predict survival in middle age and older adults.

So in this study, what the authors did was they took individuals ages 51 to 75, and they had 'em performed that simple single leg balance test. What they found from this study was that the individuals that could not hold for more than 10 seconds had a four times higher likelihood of all cause mortality that's death from cardiovascular disease, cancer any type of chronic diseases that you can really think of are incorporated into that. So even just, beginning with learning how to stand on one leg for, over 10 seconds is gonna improve your health in a pretty significant way.

As we're talking about movement is the key to healthspan and lifespan. Now let me define these terms a little bit for you, because you may have never heard of them. Healthspan is defined as the part of a person's life during which they're generally in good health lifespan is the length of time for which a person or animal lives, or I think functions.

So generally Lifespan is usually longer than healthspan, but we wanna make that healthspan as long as possible, so it can match up with that lifespan. So we are living not just for a long time, but we're living well. We're living awesome. We're doing the things we like and we're healthy. So why is exercise so important for this?

Well, it's in anti-inflammatory, inflammation of muscles and other tissues of body are associated with accelerating that aging process and exercise can help reduce this effect. It's also gonna help boost your mood. It's gonna boost your sleep. It's gonna improve cognitive function and reduce memory loss.

So it's great for the brain. It's also going to help improve your immune system. So less likelihood of getting infections as well as improving your digestive function. And what we see mostly is it really, really helps at decreasing pain guys. So let's talk a little bit about pain. You know, you got low back pain, mid back pain, neck pain.

Maybe you guys are looking at these pictures and you're relating. So generally with a chiropractor's office, we will have a patient come in and they're in pain. And we're really, really good at getting 'em out of pain. A lot of times, there's this misconception though that the patient thinks that they need to come back for the rest of their life.

And that's just simply not true. What we do is we teach you the proper correct ways to move. So we don't get ourselves into those situations. Where we have some sort of tra traumatic injury because we moved incorrectly, or even if some sort of repetitive injury such as, maybe you're just bending over the wrong way constantly and putting an unnecessary pressure on that disc and over time that could cause issues.

So, we always teach our patients how to move the correct way to keep them out of pain. So what exactly is functional? Well, functional movements are movements based on real world, situational biomechanics. They usually involve multi-player multi-joint movements, which place a demand on the body's core musculature and its nervous innervation functional movement applies to everyday life sports specific movements as well as muscle specific movements.

Think as simple as, bending over to pick up something off the floor, all the way to performing some sort of. Motor skills like dancing or shooting a bow and arrow, or even throwing a baseball, all of that incorporates functional movement and proper human biomechanics require the appropriate neurological control, muscle tone, and joint range of motion in order to move properly. And again, why is this important? Well, moving in the correct patterns is going to help prevent that traumatic injury as well as that repetitive injury. Also moving through that full range of motion with control is key. It's gonna stimulate the brain. It's gonna improve cognition, even depression, as well as anxiety.

So yes, moving is great. Great for the brain health guys. And last but not least this is gonna allow you guys to do those things you love into those later years of life, whether it's, you know, playing with family, getting on the floor with kids and playing with dolls and cars and all that good stuff.

Just performing your hobbies, but mainly just keeping your independence as you go on throughout life. So here's a few studies just showing what we just talked about. So this first one physical activity is linked to greater moment to moment variability in spontaneous brain activity of older adults.

Pretty much. That's just showing that The individuals that are more active, have a more active brain as well. And that's a sign of a younger type of brain is it has spontaneous firing ability. So helps keep your brain, functioning at a very high cognitive level. This other study, they used a smartphone app and they had individuals record their movement as well as their subjective happiness scores.

And what they found in this study was that the individuals that moved more actually had higher happiness scores associated with that as well. And then this other one that looked more at pain and this looked at pre-professional young football players, but what they found from this study was that special exercise programs that were based off of a functional movement screen.

Improved their scores of the functional movement screen, as well as prevented injury into the season for these young football players. So, all great stuff. Great for the brain. Great for reducing symptoms of pain. So, how do I know if I'm moving correctly or incorrectly? Well, this is where we're gonna perform something called a functional movement screen.

This is a screening tool used to evaluate seven fundamental movement patterns in individuals with no current pain complaint or musculoskeletal injury. So if you're in our office and you're currently experiencing pain, we will do some sort of modified version of this functional movement screen in order to figure out which muscles are compensating and contributing to your pain symptoms, so we can reduce those compensations as soon as possible. And again, functional movement applies to everyday life sport specific movement as well as muscle specific movement. So again, the functional movement screen is not intended to diagnose orthopedic problems, but rather to demonstrate opportunities for individuals to improve their movement patterns.

Here's a quick study that looked at the reliability, validity and injury predictive value of the functional movement screen. And what the authors concluded in this study was that the FMS has excellent inter rate and intra rate reliability, meaning that. Two different practitioners could watch the same individual performing the functional movement screen and they'll come up with the same results.

That's really important. And that's what we like to see. Reproduced in science. They also saw that participants with a composite score of 14 or lower that's the low end of the score has significantly higher likelihood of an injury compared to those with higher scores demonstrating the predictive value of this test.

Again, this is a great test. It's both reliable and it can help predict injury. The way this test is scored. It's based off of 3, 2, 1 0 scoring system three being the best zero being the worst. Three is given to an individual that could perform the movement without any compensations based off the already established criteria.

Two is given to an individual that can perform the movement, but they have to utilize poor biomechanics and compensatory patterns to accomplish the movement. For example, I like to use the squat for this one the overhead squat, perhaps, maybe when you're going down, maybe your arms will drop forward, indicating there's some sort of compensation in the shoulder, maybe you'll deviate one side or the other, which will indicate perhaps there's something going on, maybe the hips or even the ankles are somewhere.

We'd have to look into that a little bit deeper. One is given to an individual that cannot perform the movement patterns, even with the compensations, you know, they can't get in the full depth of a squat. Something like that. And then the zero is given to an individual that has any type of pain during any part of the movement.

Again, this is a part where we would perform a modified version if you were currently in pain, at least in our office. And again, here's just that study talking about the reliability and validity as well as the injury predictive value of the FMS So the first test a part of the FMS is the deep squat. This is great for assessing hip mobility, ankle mobility as well as overall lower body strength, then there's the hurdle step. This is a great exercise for looking at motor control of the hip as well as the ankle. As well as balance and stability.

Incline lung, this is a great test to look at lower body strength as well as balance because we put you on an incline balance beam. Shoulder mobility. This is another great test. This is really just looking at the flexibility and the control that we have over our shoulder joint. The glenohumeral joint. Active straight leg raise, this is a great way to look at hamstring flexibility as well as motor control of the lower limb and even a little bit of core control as well. Trunk stability, pushup. This one is really good for looking at core strength and stability as well as upper body strength. And then rotary stability.

This one's looking at the spine and the core and how they work together to keep the spine stable when performing off balance movement. So great for stability. Great for balance. Great for looking at core and spinal health. So how do I improve movement patterns to stay out of pain? If you are in pain first, go see a musculoskeletal pain professional.

Come into our office. We'll see what's going on, what tissue is causing that and how to fix it. Then we're gonna wanna perform a movement screen with a qualified professional. This is gonna give us that baseline for our current movement patterns and then the direction in which we can improve these patterns.

Next everyone will have different things to work on based off their results at the movement screen. Everyone's gonna have different faults. Maybe you'll lean one side versus the other. Maybe those arms are going forward again. Maybe it's joint specific mobility. Maybe you like dorsal flexion in the ankle.

In terms of the squat, maybe it's just motor control. You don't feel like you have good control in certain positions. Maybe it's just stability. Maybe it's just a lack of strength. Or maybe it's the ability to actually get your body dressed and calm down. A lot of us have very hyperactive musculature that we need to calm down. That can be difficult. So once you're able to perform to score at least an imperfect on all movements, it is then safe to begin training these fundamental movements under load. Guys be very careful when starting any type of exercise program, you're gonna wanna take it slow. You can start with resistance as light as water aerobics, all the way as heavy as weight training.

It really just depends on your current health status and your future health goals. If you're not able to perform movements better than dysfunctional, for whatever reason, we're gonna come up with some sort of adaptation as needed to perform those exercises and activities that coincide with your goals for you to safely avoid injury and do those things that you love again, how do I improvement patterns and stay outta pain?

We gotta set up those movement goals. Maybe it's running a marathon. That's currently what I've been training for. And we keep getting closer. We're getting there. Maybe it's yoga. Yoga is a great practice. It goes through all different fundamental movement patterns under the load of gravity, and it does it in quite a beautiful way.

So yoga's a great practice. Pilates falls under this as well, in my opinion. Great options. Maybe you just wanna go on a hiking. Sometime this summer, maybe you wanna ski in the winter. Maybe it's just again, playing with your children or your grandchildren being able to get up and off the floor. So you can play with them.

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