FRC, what is it?

As many of you know, in January I decided to attend a couple clinics to further
my knowledge in the health and fitness field. Now that I have had some time to
let all that information settle and actually start putting some of it into practice,
I wanted to share with you what I have done.

The first conference I attended was called Functional Anatomy Seminars,
where I got certified as a Functional Range Conditioning Mobility Specialist,
or FRCms for short. Okay so you're thinking so what do all those letters really
mean though. Great question!

Developed by Dr. Andreo Spina, is a system for joint health and mobility training
based on scientific principles and research. Mobility refers to the amount of usable
motion (or Range Of Motion) that one possesses across a particular articulation
(joint). The more mobile a person is, the more they are able to maximize their
movement safely, efficiently, and effectively. While improving mobility, the FRC
system also acts to safeguard your joints so that movement can be executed
safely while you are building strength, or participating in your preferred sport or
activity. Lastly, these training principles help improve the function of your nervous
system by training your body to accept loads through the entire range of motion
of a joint. This leads to a reduction of pain and injury, increased joint health and
longevity, as well as an increased ability to move freely and easily.

Still confused? Let me see if I can break it down more. First this course looks at the
difference between what we know and call flexibility and mobility and shows us the
true difference. We also learned what the difference between these two terms means,
and what happens when there is inequality between the two.

Let me start with flexibility. Flexibility is defined as how much your joints can BE
moved through a certain range of motion. Meaning for example laying on your
back, how far can you use a stretching strap or partner to stretch your hamstring
muscle. This does not equate to how far you can actively lift your leg while lying
on your back, that is mobility (more on that later). What Dr. Spina found that
the more flexibility people had compared to mobility, the more injuries and pain
they reported. In most training programs we were taught to stretch to increase
muscular length and that that would in effect allow people to participate in activities
with less pain or injury. This has actually been found to be false.
  
Here is an example of how using the FRS system can help you. Let's use the squat
as an example. In order to do a squat you have to be able to dorsiflex your ankles
(bring the top of your foot closer to your shin), and be able to flex your knees and hips.
Most of the time we can do a little bit of each of those motions enough to make the
squat look good. So you are going along adding more weight to your squat and you get
to a point where all of a sudden you start getting knee, or ankle or even back pain,
or you feel like you just can't get any deeper in your squat. Many times we just keep
pushing through thinking oh I'll get through this if I just push hard enough. Now by
implementing some FRC techniques we would step back and see first what type of
squatting you want to do. Then based on the squat you want to do, look at your mobility
and see if you have all the prerequisites for the movement, then start training the
movement(s).

The movements we would train are ankle dorsiflexion, knee flexion and rotation, and
hip flexion and rotation. To do this we would start by assessing each of those joints
mobility through the use of CARs (Controlled Articular Rotations). After some time
practicing the CARs we would add in some resisted PAILS and RAILS (these
techniques will be discussed in a later blog), then finish with more CARs to see how
much the PAILs and Rails affected your mobility. Once the joints in question are
working in the correct capacity needed to perform your squat is achieved then you
can go back to your loaded squats and give it another try.

There is obviously a lot more to this as I simplified it a lot for the sake of this post. I hope
you found this blog post helpful, and I know some of you have already experienced a
few of these techniques with me. I will continue to implement these new techniques with
all those who need them. If you have any questions on this system, or are interested in
doing an entire hour of mobility training please feel free to reach out to me. I'm always
here for you.