Recently I was reading through the daily entries of blogs I follow and was reminded of a recommendation that’s always bugged me…don’t add strength to dysfunction. This is a statement often used by corrective exercise specialists and therapists to justify having athletes fix asymmetries and movement dysfunctions before doing significant strength work. The thought process behind it is logical….adding strength work to a dysfunctional system might just feed compensations and asymmetries and actually make the person MORE dysfunctional. The problem is, corrective exercises really do not provide the training stimulus necessary to be better at what an athlete is attempting to do and focusing on corrective exercises at the exclusion or limitation of strength / speed / fitness training will pose an altogether different problem: adding function to weakness (or at least adding function to detraining). What good is being symmetrical and having a high FMS score if you’re weak, slow and unfit? I’d suggest taking a little more moderate view and first address dysfunction, asymmetries and the like with the actual training and then when necessary, add in corrective exercises to be performed concurrently with the more demanding training that is necessary to actually perform in the sport at a high level without risk of injury (from poor physical preparation).
