Check Your Alignment

I just spent a great weekend with Mike Robertson trying to enhance my assessment and movement hacking skills. Movement is a critical component of my work, so I want to be the best at it that I can be, that means learning from the best in the industry.

If no one here has heard of Mike, I highly recommend him as a coach. He’s one of the best in the industry. He has a solid, research backed, foundational knowledge, but more impressively he knows how to apply that all in real world applications. Mike is a great coach.

He and his business partner—physical therapist Bill Hartman, also a great coach—own Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training (I-FAST) in Indianapolis, Indiana. They were nominated this year by Men’s Health Magazine, to be one of the top ten best training facility in the United States.

They even offer online coaching — no koachable yet, but surely soon… — which could be hugely beneficial to some of you reading this, especially if you’ve got any kind of pain or have had difficulty hitting your goals. If you don’t have a great coach already, definitely take a look. Online coaching can be remarkably effective and inexpensive to personal training options at your local gym.

These guys specialize in fixing the smallest details and transforming them into huge results, whether it’s fat-loss or improving your movement mechanics. It had a been a while since I’ve had a good coach take a look at my posture and biomechanics but it was a great refresher for what I personally need to work on at the gym going forward.

Also, another reminder that just about everybody needs a coach from time to time, even me.

This day came down mostly to alignment. It had been a while since I had gone through a complete assessment, but I’m glad I did, I should do it more often. Why is it so important? Well, Shirley Sahrmann —a great physical therapist— has been quoted as saying, “ideal alignment facilitates optimal movement.”

I couldn’t agree more, a good analogy I’ve found (car reference) would be one of a cars alignment. If the alignment is off, you see excessive wear on a certain part of the tires. You may also pull the car to the left or the right. Left unchecked, that poor alignment means you need to change the tires out more quickly than if you had kept the alignment in check. The poor alignment also limits the amount of power transferred from your engine to the pavement and decreases your fuel efficiency.

In your body’s case, poor alignment creates a higher wear and tear on your joints which can lead to injuries, general aches and pains and inefficient movement patterns, over time. Inefficient movement patterns are not as effective as they could be and lead to energy leaks in the chain reaction of a movement. These energy leaks mean you are losing a transfer of power to the ground or your opponent or the weight you’re trying to move. You’ll also need more fuel to run the same distance as someone with better efficiency.

This means checking everything, from the feet/ankles to the neck and wrists, especially finding your neutral spinal position.

If you can, get your alignment checked by a coach, clean up your weak links and improve your performance across the board. Improved performance makes weight loss that much easier.