Personal Fitness Professional - June 2008 - (Page 31)

THE MOVEMENT TRIAD All movements of the body including exercises have three primary components to them, which I refer to as the Movement Triad: 1. Physiological — energy systems used, recovery between sets, exercise dosage (sets, reps, load, frequency, intensity, duration) and cardiovascular responses 2. Biomechanical — direction(s) of force application, length of the lever(s) used, positional relationship to the gravity vector, range of motion, joint degrees of freedom and muscle ﬁber orientation 3. Neurological — processing of proprioceptive information from the periphery (skin, joints, muscles/tendons, eyes and inner ear), muscle activation patterns, which includes the timing, amount and rate of muscle activation and the interplay between any required movements with existing motor programs It is critical to consider the Movement Triad with each and every exercise we provide our client or athlete. A familiar trap for health and ﬁtness professionals to fall into is emphasizing the component of the Movement Triad with which they have the greatest level of training, experience and comfort. Doing so can have adverse effects on the outcome of the exercise and can be potentially dangerous to the client or athlete. For example, the health and ﬁtness professional with an exercise physiology degree that specializes in clients with weight loss goals may view exercise design in terms of energy expenditure and substrate utilization. In doing so, they pay little attention to the mechanical stresses occurring or the repetition of sub-optimal movement strategies during the exercise session. The likelihood of this client developing musculoskeletal issues becomes greater when the emphasis is on only one component of the Movement Triad. Corrective exercises must take full advantage of the Movement Triad in the same way to produce the desired changes we seek with our clients. In fact, with corrective exercises, utilizing the components of the Movement Triad may be more important as we ask the client’s body to produce unfamiliar, novel movements. Some of the fundamental objectives with corrective exercise might include improving ﬂexibility within speciﬁc muscle groups, improving strength within speciﬁc muscles groups and improving stability around speciﬁc joints. Using these objectives, we can consider as an example the client who has the common postural deviation of rounded shoulders with thoracic ﬂexion. This client would need to improve ﬂexibility of the chest and anterior shoulder girdle musculature and would also need to improve strength and stability of the thoracic extensors, rhomboids and middle and inferior trapezius. Let’s look at how we can apply the Movement Triad to this example: PHYSIOLOGICAL Flexibility: Muscles have viscoelastic properties. The joints require the production of synovium to move smoothly with reduced friction. If heat is not generated in the tissue prior to stretching, the viscous properties of the muscle tissue will be resistive to lengthening, and the articulating surfaces of the joints may not move optimally due to higher degrees of friction. ➤ JUNE-JULY2008 · WWW.FIT-PRO.COM 31 http://WWW.FIT-PRO.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Personal Fitness Professional - June 2008

Personal Fitness Professional - June 2008 Contents Letter From the Editor, Writers To Franchise Or Not To Franchise? Current Controversies Insuring Success Case Study Exercise Spotlights Raising Rates Through Better Session Design Mark Your Calendar The Perfect Ad The Movement Triad Exercise Spotlights Product Profile New on the Market Spotlight: Brian Boyle

Personal Fitness Professional - June 2008

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