First, let's talk about defining Corrective Exercise. Corrective Exercise is a system of training that uses corrective exercise strategies to help improve muscle imbalance and movement capabilities, and to help decrease the risk of injury. It is a term used to describe the systematic process of identifying a neuromusculoskeletal dysfunction, developing a plan of action, and implementing an integrative corrective strategy.
Corrective exercises identify incorrect movement patterns, as well as focusing on what muscles are weak and which are strong. It should be used for individuals who have muscle imbalances or who have come off an injury.
It basically prepares the individual to enter into more traditional forms of exercise.
So Why Is This So Important?
Because overtime, exercising incorrectly or habits could turn into chronic pain, injury or even postural problems. Now that you are fully aware of why it is necessary to incorporate these movements into your exercise routine, let me explain more about the Benefits of these movements.
Corrective Exercises can:
Help With Pain Reduction: The results can be immediate and huge. Although they may not be permanent, they can be reproduced by doing them daily at home.
Enable an individual to control the pain without the use of drugs, manipulation or surgery.
Enhance functional and athletic performance.
Help in decreasing further injuries from training and sports.
Help in detecting physical weaknesses and imbalances.
Help in differentiating between movement quality and compensations.
Help in detecting the cause-and-effect relationship to microtrauma.
Improve daily living activities.
Improve strength and flexibility.
Improve posture.
Reduce stress.
Give an overall sense of well being.
These benefits may seem like they are only for the individual who wants to improve overall health and fitness levels, but these are also very important for serious weight trainers and body building. When engaging in the same type of exercise over and over again, you WILL end up with muscle imbalances because all exercises don’t target all muscles. If you are only focusing on the main compound lifts or muscle growth, you are likely to be neglecting the small movers. This will not only cause pain and injury, but could very likely negate performance of other lifts.
So whether you are just starting your fitness journey and want to strengthen everything, or you’re an intense body builder and want to put on a large amount of muscle mass, these exercises NEED to be incorporated into your training program.
So make sure you do your corrective exercises on muscle groups that you tend to neglect and make sure you add in functional exercises to improve your daily living and overall fitness and stability! You may already be incorporating all of these things and not even know it, so keep it up!
Complex movements that include more than one muscle group generally will be a great functional exercise for daily living. Exercises that focus on one muscle are going to primarily focus on strengthening just that ONE muscle. Exercises that use light weight and are small movements are generally going to be Corrective Exercises to target small, neglected muscles that need strengthening as well. Bottom line...is to be sure you are doing a well-rounded exercise routine to fully reap all the benefits that exercise has to offer the body! It is AMAZING just how quickly muscle imbalances can occur, so be smart and take the time to warm up and target ALL muscles of the body during your workouts.
"Stay Healthy, Stay Fit and above all Stay Injury Free!"
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