What is Stability Training?

Your muscles can be classified into a number of groups. With regards to stability training, we are concerned with the Global Stabiliser and Mobiliser groups. Put simply, the mobilisers are concerned with movements such as lifting a weight or moving your legs on a bicycle, whilst stabilisers are concerned with assisting or counteracting those movements in a controlled or stable manner. Where stabilising muscles are weak, you will find an area of uncontrolled movement and this can lead to injury or a loss of performance due to energy being wasted in unwanted movements.

Areas can become weak due to injury, bad posture, undertraining certain muscle groups, overtraining other muscle groups, or dominance in one particular sport/discipline without cross training to balance out.

If you are unable to control certain movements, then you have the potential for injury if you are adding weight, increasing speed or impact or training for a long period of time. Injury may not be directly related to the site of uncontrolled movement as weak areas often lead to a knock-on effect in corresponding sites of the body. Identifying areas of uncontrolled movement and re-training can help to prevent future injury.

Uncontrolled movements can affect your performance in a sport or discipline. For example, if you cannot maintain control of your spine position when swimming, you are likely to be wasting energy by "snaking" from side to side as you swim instead of swimming in a straight line. Your arm muscles will be partly employed to drag your body back to the centre line instead of being entirely devoted to a forward movement.

Areas of Uncontrolled Movement

The areas that are assessed for uncontrolled movement are:

• Spine
• Hips
• Lower Leg and Foot
• Shoulders

Each area is assessed for the ability to control flexion, extension, rotation, tilt and side bend.

Benefits of re-training

Identifying and raising your awareness of weak areas, followed by re-training exercises can help to reduce the risk of injury occurrence or re-occurrence, optimise your performance in a sport or discipline, improve weak areas of multi-sport activities such as triathlons and reduce the need for expensive orthotics and manipulative devices.

What sort of training is involved?

Uncontrolled movement may occur at high or low threshold, therefore assessment will identify which areas need training at which level. Low threshold re-training exercises are low impact activities that focus on concentration, balance and skill, isolating areas of the body and learning to move them in a controlled manner without affecting adjoining areas. These activities can usually be done at home with minimal kit requirements. High threshold re-training exercises will introduce additional weight or speed, again requiring you to isolate areas of the body and learning to move them against a resistance or at speed without affecting adjoining areas.

As with most fitness training, exercises can be adapted to suit your ability or progressed as you improve until you can maintain full control of each area under a range of circumstances.

Re-training activities are designed to be functional and ultimately cross over into your sport/discipline or basic daily activities.

How does training affect my current activities?

Re-training exercises are in addition to your normal fitness training routine. They can be fitted into a warm up or cool down or done as a separate session. Many of the re-training exercises can be done at home. Some of the exercises will be a cardiovascular or muscular challenge, but if you are involved with a training schedule for a specific event or goal, you will most likely want to do other training to keep up with your target. If you currently lift heavy weights, you may want to drop the amount of weight you lift temporarily whilst you focus on re-training uncontrolled movements. The re-training exercises will help to improve your form and technique and ultimately allow you to lift heavier weights more safely. Whilst this type of training is an additional demand on your time, you may find that overall it is worthwhile for the performance benefits and the time saved on injury breaks.

Posture Control

Deviations from the norm in your posture can be caused by injury, laziness, undertraining, bad habits, fashion, your working environment or the sort of physical activity you do. Over time, "bad posture" can lead to injury - for example slipping a disc when lifting a heavy weight, underperformance in a sport or physical activity, impaired function in daily tasks, fatigue, headache, strains and can also have a negative effect on your appearance.

Good posture can make a difference to your confidence, mood, appearance and the way others perceive you. It can also improve your function in daily tasks and physical performance.

Just like assessing uncontrolled movements, posture assessment looks at the spine, shoulders, hips and foot position. Using mirrors, photography and proprioception (the use of contact to allow the brain to recognise the body's position) Angela can help to improve your posture whilst providing exercises to strengthen the areas made weaker by postural deviations and to stretch the areas that need it.

Physiotherapy

Many of the theories and re-training methods used in improving posture and movement control are based around physiotherapy techniques. However, Angela is not a qualified physiotherapist and will refer you to an appropriate practitioner if your situation requires it. If you have had a recent injury or are in pain when taking part in physical activity, you should first see your GP and may be referred to a physiotherapist. Re-training and posture correction is appropriate for those without current injury, or those who have recovered from an injury enough to no longer require a physiotherapist. This sort of training can be very beneficial to those who have completed a course of physiotherapy and are ready to resume normal physical activity but wish to do so with consideration to correct form and preventing future injury re-occurrance.

 

 

What is your posture like?

How do we assess uncontrolled movement?

What sort of retraining is involved?

Case Study - Re-training after a spinal fracture

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raphaelite Health and Fitness is the trading name of Angela Marie Keen
07759651189
info@raphaelite.co.uk