A few weeks ago, the O.B. Training coaches had the opportunity to speak during the physical education classes at New Hartford High School. Ryan and I being alumni of New Hartford thought this would be a great opportunity for current students to see what past students are doing now.
Coach Ryan, Christina and Jax present to the students at New Hartford
As a way to make the presentation engaging and interactive for students, we brought The Functional Movement Screen. This screen goes through 7 basic movement patterns and addresses asymmetries within the body.
By having the students perform these movements, it gave us an opportunity to go through some common mistakes that many athletes bring into the gym. Often times students that are new to weight training are unsupervised or just copying something they’ve seen in a magazine. This can result in major mistakes when it comes to movement quality and these mistakes can lead to serious injury.
A New Hartford student demonstrates the inline lunge movement patter from the Functional Movement Screen
The beauty of the Functional Movement Screen is its’ ability to objectively look at and score the movement quality for a population of athletes. This score allows our coaches to measure the potential risk for future injury.
It is important to instill the idea of health and physical fitness at a young age. It is our job to ensure that they are doing the exercises correctly through proper movement patterns while maintaining adequate mobility. No matter if we are an athlete or non-athlete, we all need to move well.
It was a pleasure for me and Ryan to head back to our old stomping ground and show coach Will where many of our athletes are coming from.