What is the FMS system?

Today in our society we spend more on fitness and health club membership than we ever have. We have more training programs, workouts and diets than ever before. We have more clubs and “gyms” with more TVs than ever before.  We get injured; take more pills and the occurrence of lifestyle-related conditions like Type II diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity are higher than ever before. Why? What is wrong with us? We want more of the best and the biggest but we don’t want to have to do the basics. People today are working harder than ever to become stronger and healthier. We want more flexibility, more power and more endurance. But at what cost? What good are all the high-intensity programs, fitness fads and trends going to do for you as an individual or athlete if you can’t move properly? It’s just putting fitness on dysfunction.

Individuals and athletes jump into advanced fitness and performance programs where they simply train around a pre-existing problem or avoid training their weaknesses. This creates and reinforces poor movement patterns and motor control that leave the door open to injury; limiting durability, performance and results.

You don’t get better by working on your strengths and ignoring your weaknesses!

Whether it is for general fitness or increasing athletic performance, no program or exercise tool that an individual or athlete will ever use will truly help them reach their potential without first addressing their fundamental weaknesses. Training programs need to be designed and individualized with the focus of finding and correcting an individual’s weaknesses and limitations. These weaknesses can be found by looking at basic, functional movement patterns. Isolating individual weaknesses allows coaches, therapists and trainers to devise strength and conditioning programs designed to turn limitations into strengths, helping individuals to improve performance and durability.

Too many individuals and athletes enter into intense training programs without first identifying their weak links, forcing their body to compensate during activity and exercise. These compensations cause inefficient movement patterns which move the involved joints in an unnatural manner and place unbalanced stress upon the body. Compensatory movements lead to micro-trauma, creating pain, leading to dysfunction, pathology and injury.

Quality vs. Quantity – when compromised the body will always sacrifice quality over quantity of movement.

The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) and Corrective Exercise System (CES) is a process of objectively observing an individual’s or athlete’s fundamental movement patterns to identify, rate and rank, and ultimately correct their weaknesses and limitations. Strengthening these weak links, taking the kinks out of the kinetic chain, gives individuals and athletes greater movement efficiency, improves performance and durability.

The FMS System includes the FMS, CES and Reactive Neuromuscular Training (RNT). The goal of screening fundamental movements is to:

• Identify at risk individuals attempting to begin, maintain or increase their activity level
• Aid in program design by systematically using corrective exercise to normalize or improve the efficiency of fundamental movement patterns and motor programming
• Aid in the creation of a successful strength and conditioning program for improved health, fitness or performance through all stages of program design: assessment, design, implementation, and evaluation.
• Provide systematic tool to monitor progress and movement pattern development in the presences of changing fitness and performance levels
• Create a functional movement baseline which will allow rating and ranking movement for statistical observation