The Functional Athletics Difference

The Functional Athletics System of Training (FAST) incorporates health, function, fitness and performance.

Identifying and rid your body of plaguing injuries and pain
Get into better shape and looking better
Enhance your professional athletic career.

Every workout is professionally designed so that you become more athletic and less prone to injury.

Something Missing

Throughout my athletic career with Team Canada, I was fortunate to have great coaches with some of the best scientifically designed strength and conditioning programs available. I trained extremely hard, but kept getting minor injuries that lead to bigger problems as a result. After seeing some of the best Doctors, Chiropractors, Acupuncturist, and massage therapists, in Canada and the USA, and having undergone double Achilles surgery, I thought that there must be something missing.

I now believe the missing element has everything to do with structural alignment and that by not factoring this into my training all my hard work was actually working against me. As soon as I stopped focusing on the symptoms I was having and addressed the actual problem with an exercise therapy progression to realign my body, my pain went away, without drugs and I was back to training the right way.

How Is Your Alignment?

Take a quick look at yourself by standing relaxed in front of a mirror. Do you look like Mr. Bones? Are your shoulders level? Or is one higher than another? Do your feet point straight ahead? They should. Think about this as you read the next section.

Over the years I have worked thousands of clients and I believe the answer to most chronic or acute pain has a lot to do with postural alignment. How far your alignment deviates from "normal" or our original "blueprint" communicates how compensative we have become. This blueprint is defined in all anatomy books with the hip, knee and ankle joints being directly aligned vertically. The head sits evenly between the shoulders and the hips are level. With the side view, the head should sit directly over the shoulder joint and the shoulder, hip, knee and ankle joints should be vertically aligned. When the human body is in this position it is extremely durable and able to withstand a tremendous amount of physical activity without breaking


	down. The further you are away from this position the more prone you are to injury. The weight of the body is distributed evenly throughout the major joints of the body and both sides function together.

The Next Step

If you have discovered no alignment differences and are experiencing no pain symptoms then all you need is a balanced strength and conditioning program to make sure you stay that way. If however you don't look exactly like Mr. Bones and have current or past injuries then we need to address this before moving onto any training program.

After filling out a health assessment to help diagnose any issues you are having we can then design the proper progression to counter the dysfunction identified in your body. Using structural digital photos to identify muscular dysfunction, we will then construct a specific program designed to correct your structural alignment and change your compensative muscle memory patterns. When your structural alignment is in a better position you will be more durable and able to train at a higher level without the worry of injury.

Here at Functional Athletics we address the whole body, not just treat the symptom. Once your pain symptoms have been addressed and you are feeling better you can progress to the next step and start training hard again.

Pain Free Gains

With your structural alignment addressed you can now safely and productively begin your workout progression towards your goals. This is where you get to have fun again and workout pain free. Well, almost pain free. With all strength and conditioning training there is some muscular pain involved after a hard workout. This should only last a few days when you first start until your body adapts to the new demand you are placing on it. From here you are limited only by your imagination and goals.