A few weeks ago I traveled up to Suffern, NY to attend a Level 1 Functional Movement Screen (FMS) certification. The creators of the FMS – Gray Cook and Lee Burton – were teaching the course.
I’ve gone to a lot of fitness workshops after changing careers from finance to fitness. Attending the FMS workshop may be the single most important action I’ve taken in my fitness career so far. Needless to say, I’m kicking myself for not doing it 5 years ago, but I probably wouldn’t have appreciated its significance back then.
The Functional Movement Screen is a systematic approach to assessing movement to help identify dysfunctions before they cause injuries. The FMS is used by strength coaches, personal trainers, and medical professionals around the world.
Gray Cook is one of the most influential minds in the fitness industry. As the fitness world better understands the role of movement as the foundation of proper exercise, Gray Cook’s influence will only grow. He is an accomplished physical therapist and strength coach who has worked with many top professional teams in a variety of sports and even elite military groups like the U.S. Navy Seals.
Here are 10 things I learned from Gray Cook during (and before) the FMS workshop that I want to share with you:
1) As a coach, or clinician, always use a checklist
If you are a coach, or are getting evaluated by one, make sure a checklist, or standard operating procedure is used.
Especially for very experienced coaches, it can be tempting to discard protocol and arrive at decisions based on incomplete data.
This is a big mistake.
A systematic approach to assessing and analyzing a problem is far more reliable than making judgments by selectively gathering data. Creating a checklist ensures that no stone is left unturned so that your judgment is not based on a hunch, but quantifiable and factual evidence.
The greatest value, in my opinion, of the Functional Movement Screen is that it standardizes movement analysis. It’s a systematic approach that requires the completion of a checklist.
2) Analyze patterns, not parts first
It’s easy to break the body down into parts such as specific muscles, or joints. Given the body has many moving parts, assessing the body can quickly become overwhelming.
Instead of breaking down the body into its component parts, it’s a better approach to analyze movement first. Our body moves as one unit where all the parts are connected. If the body moves efficiently without pain, we don’t have to worry about over-analyzing all the parts.
If one of the movements is dysfunctional, we can continue assessing other related movements before worrying about the component parts. The underlying issue may not be a problem of a part being tight, or weak, but an underlying neurological (i.e. motor control) issue.
3) First move well, then move often
Focusing on movement efficiency (or moving well) should be a chief aim of a properly constructed strength and conditioning program.
Movement efficiency requires a combination of mobility (i.e. flexibility and range of motion within the joints) and stability (i.e. motor control and postural musculature).
Sequentially, achieving optimal fitness and athleticism looks like this:
Mobility => Stability => Strength => Power
The more mobile you are, the more potential you have to move well. When mobility is able to be controlled, then you get functional movement. Once you have functional movement, move as often as possible and challenge your body with strength and then power exercises.
4) Don’t add strength to dysfunction
Of all the things Gray Cook has said in his career, this may be the most famous in fitness circles. If you have a dysfunctional movement pattern, adding weight to that movement pattern will make the dysfunction worse.
For example, if your knees cave in during a squat because your glutes are weak and your inner thighs are tight, those problems will only worsen if you add weight.
While it’s a tough pill to swallow and may hurt the ego, laying off the weights to focus on flexibility and stability may be the best course of action to correct movement dysfunction and prevent future injury.
5) Previous injury is the #1 predictor of future injury
Have you ever sprained your ankle? Or maybe pulled a hamstring?
The probability is high that while you were recovering from those injuries, the way your body moved changed…in a not-so-good way.
For example, if you sprain your left ankle, several “compensations” may occur:
- You begin to put more pressure on your right foot vs. your injured left foot
- Your left hip becomes weaker relative to your right
- When you run, or squat in the gym, the asymmetry gets worse
- Your right hip becomes stiffer because it’s overworked
- And so on, and so on.
The body is one interconnected unit, so any compensation can cause a variety of problems throughout the entire chain. That’s part of the reason why previous injuries are the #1 predictor of future injury.
6) The hips are the powerhouse of the body
While the bench press may be a very popular measure of strength, the greatest power the body can produce comes from the hips.
In particular, the hip hinge (bending of the hips) is the most powerful lift. It’s a reason why most people can deadlift more weight than they squat. Hinging of the hips is less of a forward bend and more of a sitting back motion where the hips push behind the heels while the back remains straight and the knees stay slightly bent.
In addition to the hinge, the hips can produce significant power rotationally. In sports, a powerful swing in baseball, or drive in golf is from rotational hip power.
It is not by coincidence that when doctors assess bone mineral density, measurements are taken from the hips and spine. Keeping your hips strong and powerful may lead to greater longevity.
7) Asymmetry is a big risk factor for injury
While excessive tightness, or weakness in the body is certainly not good, research shows that functional asymmetries between the right and left sides of the body are a much higher risk factor for injury.
If your right hip is tight, but your left hip is flexible, this asymmetry can lead to a cascade of problems throughout your entire body.
In a video I saw recently, Gray joked that he tells high school football players, “If you’re going to be tight, be tight on both sides. Then you’re just slow. If you’re tight on one side, your going to rip yourself in half.”
8) Infant development is key to understanding human movement
Most fitness professionals teach exercise from a standing position, but this is the opposite of how we learn to move as infants. The topic of infant development and its influence on exercise is easily worthy of a book.
As infants, we breathe, then grip, then roll, then crawl. Eventually, we sit, kneel, squat, then stand. So technically, we squat before we can stand.
This developmental sequence has important implications for how we should learn to exercise and how to correct dysfunctional movement patterns.
9) Your hamstrings are tight for a reason
If you have tight hamstrings, stretching them may have little effect on relieving tightness. If you stretch them today, they’ll be tight again tomorrow.
Why you may ask? Because something is causing the tightness.
So what is behind the tightness? What is driving it?
There are many possible reasons.
For example, if you have weak glutes (butt muscles), any activity from walking to squatting is going to require the hamstrings to work overtime. This will cause the hamstrings to shorten and remain flexed.
If you have a tight muscle, keep in mind it’s tight for a reason and simply stretching it may not fix the underlying cause.
10) If your knees hurt while you squat, it doesn’t mean squatting is bad for your knees
There is a lot of debate about squatting “below parallel”, which is when your hips drop below the plane of your knees. There are many doctors who believe this is bad for your knees. I’ve even done a video on how deep should you squat.
If you feel pain in your knees as you squat, you need to get your knees checked out ASAP. But that doesn’t mean squatting is bad, or squatting below parallel is bad. It’s not. It’s a very natural human movement and the knees experience more pressure at a 90 degree angle during the squat.
Gray Cook on Asymmetries
This video gives you a flavor of Gray Cook’s presentation style. I was basically mesmerized the entire weekend. I’m very grateful I was able to see him present in person:
I hope you gleaned some wisdom from these 10 topics as I did.
Which of the 10 is your favorite?
Great post I will be printing it. Two months ago the ortho trama team at UC Davis said the break in my knee was the worst they have seen. This is heaven sent timing wise. I have just started to walk and will work on this. Thank you Marc
Sounds great, Ron. Happy this article came at a good time.
Great article. This is the kind of person that I think I need to work with. I started a fitness plan probably 16 months ago, and I’ve stuck with it pretty well. I have found that I am very inflexible and I believe that is a major reason why I have trouble with some fitness movements. I became very frustrated with the squat, and it is a movement I still cannot complete correctly to this day. Not surprisingly, I see people at the gym all the time who have poor squat form. My major problem is that I lose my balance backwards as I descend. I squat with a box at the gym. I tried pretty aggressively to figure it out with my trainer, who I was working with last year, who suggested that I may not be activating certain muscles. He gave me some ideas on how to activate the posterior chain, including single-leg box squats and those exercises on the floor where you put your feet up on an object or ball and raise your pelvis (can’t think of what it’s called). Anyway, he suggested that I see Muscle Activation Techniques, who i met with, but I never had a formal eval because it was pricey and not a good option for me at the time. Any other ideas on how to approach this? I love your website by the way, I’ve watched the squat video and tried out some things. I believe one contributor is lack of flexibility in the calves also because it seems I can squat easier with plates underneath my heels, but then it feels like I’m taking my butt straight down.
@Scott – Squatting isn’t easy, so you are definitely not alone. In fact, I haven’t even done any heavy barbell squats in the last couple of months because I’m working through an asymmetry myself.
I have found dropping down into a squat position with your butt as close to the ground as possible while keeping your torso as upright as possible has helped me a lot. I probably drop into this deep squat position at least once per day as it’s a very natural movement. I’ve found my hip flexibility has improved and I feel more stable in the position. I have also found that if I warm up thoroughly so that I have a sweat and my muscles are very warm, squatting is much easier. It takes more than dynamic stretching to really loosen up my muscles enough to do a deep squat.
The good news is that the more you practice it, the easier it should get. Doing a dynamic stretch circuit every day, holding a deep squat while keeping your torso upright, and generally adding foam rolling can make a big difference.
Thanks for the kind words regarding my site and good luck!
Scott, regarding your flexibility. Find yourself a good Fascial Stretch Therapist. You will be amazed at how complimentary this system of stretching is to your workouts and well being.
I am a Certified Fascial Stretch Specialist and both physically and to my practice it has been a game changer. Learn more on the website I provided.
Step 3 seems the most important to me (layperson) – if I’m not doing the exercises/movement correctly, I will be eventually I will damage myself. Everything else builds from there
Strength and muscle is great to have, but mobility is much more important.
Without full articulation of the joints and a flexible spine, injuries are around the corner, as well as an unhappy old age.
My 2 cents.
-Joe
Marc, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for this priceless amount of information. You basically saved us all the premium it would cost to glean valuable information from this incredible resource, as well as saving us from continuing to make costly, injurious mistakes in our fitness regimens.
Gosh, it is all so illuminating that it’s hard to list favorites, but I think mine are numbers 2, 3, and 9. It is a very common assumption, even among highly experienced fitness professionals, that tightness is best alleviated by its opposite: flexibility (therefore, stretching). The idea that tightness is produced by weakness and/or asymmetry is CRITICALLY important. Not even my chiropractor realized this and instructed me to stretch for pain relief in my left gluteus medius, but somehow I intuited that my weak QL and tight left biceps femoris had created a chain reaction of chronic pain, and when I strengthened my QL and erectors (as well as abs) and corrected the biceps femoris by stretching it in addition, voila, the pain magically disappeared. By the way, I didn’t have the experience in strength training to do this . . . so I used ashtanga yoga because it naturally corrects hemispheric asymmetries. Then, I continued with my strength training so I wouldn’t commit Gray’s mistake # 4.
Number 2 is especially key because we (and definitely me) tend to compartmentalize muscular movement, often forgetting that it is made possible at the most basic cellular level by motor units that, when not used, are lost, and which can be destroyed by modern activities and diseases.
What a truly beneficial article, Marc. Did I say thank you?
Thanks for the comment! It really is amazing how the body works and how working on the software of the body can improve the hardware.
Love the part about your hips being the powerhouse. Also, hips tend to be a problem…tightness from sitting.
What are some good hip mobility and hip strengthening exercises?
Good point about the hips. They tend to be among the stiffest joints that can cause the most pain and dysfunction in the body. For hip strength, deadlifts and varitions (you can still do deadlifts without doing traditional barbell deadlifts), kettlebell swings, cleans (either with barbell, or DB’s) are a few that come to mind. Most squatting movement also require hip strength as well.
In terms of hip flexibility, there really are a ton of different exercises. I just came back from a Yoga class and we must have done 10 Yoga poses that helped open up the hips. A few that are my favorite:
1) Deep bodyweight squats where you hold the position and try to keep your torso upright, legs a bit wider than shoulder width apart
2) Frog Stretch – you may not want to do this one in the gym, a bit awkward!
3) Pidgeon Yoga Pose, or even Ankle to Knee Pose
Hope these help!
See “Stretch to Win” Core Four stretches for opening the hips. I have all my athletes do them. Reference book Stretch to Win by Chris and Ann Frederick or their other newly released book Fascial Stretch Therapy by Chris and Ann Frederick.
Hi Julie! I wanted to expand on Marc’s excellent advice to your question. Our culture involves a lot of sitting — computer work, driving, eating — so just about everybody has super-tight hips. The tightest muscles are the hip flexors (iliacus and psoas major) since sitting keeps them in a prolonged shortened position. The first pose Marc referred to is Malasana, or Garland Pose, if you want to look it up. Others that target the flexors are:
1. Agnistambhasana (Fire Log Pose)
2. Sphinx Pose
3. Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose)
4. Baddha Konasana (Bound Angle Pose)
Thanks for adding those tips, Russella!
This is really informative. I’m currently in physical therapy for a lower left back injury sustained while running, and surprise, surprise the back strain was the symptom, not the cause. The cause was my left hip (point #6), which is substantially weaker than my right (point #7). Great read for how to remain un-injured for my future races. thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing, Janet! Happy to hear you figured out the root cause of the problem.
Number 3 is my favourite as it’s the preventative tip. It’s always been my philosophy to ‘get the choreography right’ before increasing the weight. Be sure you are confident in the sequence of moves, so they become second nature. It’s then less to think about when you add weight.
The body is analogous to the sort of mobile that goes over a baby’s crib. There are many degrees of freedom. When unaffected, it hangs balanced and still. Remove one part of it and the whole thing goes out of balance. An injury to one part of the body affects the way the rest of the body moves.
Mobility – Stability – Strength – Power. I like that!
They’re all relevant though!
Tip 4 all the way. This article is well-timed – I’ve been slowly building strength around the knees for the last couple of months with a focus on correct posture and form. I’ll be paying a lot more attention to the little imbalances during my workouts from now on. Great article, Marc!
Hi Marc;
Once again you outdid yourself with the interesting topic, research and your presentation of same.The significance of Asymmetry in the approach to good health and working out is what I considered new and extremely interesting. I feel it might be a key to not only recovering from injuries but also preventing them…..and of course a contribution to maintaining good physical conditioning.
Best regards to all,
Vic
j
Thanks, Vic! Hope all is well.
This is amazing information. Thank you for sharing this with us. The part about injuries is especially important at any age but more so for the beginning athlete be it male or female.
Marc, thank you so much for sharing your 1K FMS course. I fully agree with Nos. 5 & 9 and not new to no. 5) as I suffered left knee injury and compensated with the right. It takes more then 5 months to heal.
I learn a lot thru your sharing. Thank you very much!!
Great article! Thanks Marc, I hadn’t heard of FMS.
I’ve recently started taking my health more seriously after many years of sports injuries, car accidents, surgeries, being sedentary, working very long hours behind a computer screen… so #5 is my favourite.
After experiencing discouraging knee and ankle pains from working out and running,
I discovered integrative neurosomatic therapy (from a YouTube video with Randy Clark), and have had tremendous insights into my body’s asymmetry by having a ‘postural distortion’ assessment done. A whole body approach. Checklist, checked!
I now have a much better understanding of my body, and have specific exercises and stretches to help correct my posture, and to hopefully avoid pain and missed workouts.
10) If your knees hurt while you squat, it doesn’t mean squatting is generally bad for your knee.
I’ve had many problems with my knees that bike riding, swimming, hiking, walking none was helping and knees were slowly getting worse. The thing that really helped me was, at age 49 to 50 I started doing something I never had before, Gymnastic Diving. Somersaults, flying back flips, gainers, multi-axis rotations and doubles just to name a few, has made my knees feel years younger and now I don’t need a cane to get around.
Wow, that’s an awesome success story. Thanks for sharing.
Its a good article that you have delivered and i learn many things from this specially hip muscle.
Hola Marc,
Thank you for the information, it’s great! Its making me think about the cause of my lower back pain. I found that opening up my hips with some yoga exercises helped, but I don’t do those every day. I guees I will have to pay more attention to other movements that I am doing that may be causing this unbalanced in my body. I don’t want to injure my it.
Thank you!
Lucero
Good overview of the FMS system and why it’s important. I’m FMS Level 1 Cert. and we use it to screen employees at work (Police, Firefighters) about 50% of them score at risk for injury on FMS and these are people already in professions whose very job tasks put them at high risk for injury.
Back / Hip and shoulder problems are epidemic among this population with constant employees on “light duty” status. We initiated FMS three years ago in hopes to combat and offset the number of on the job injuries. It’s been an uphill battle as most public safety workouts encompass running or body building and little else.
To my knowledge and internet search we are the only Public Safety Department in the USA resorting to FMS.
Thanks for the comment and good for you for incorporating the FMS. Documenting and keeping track of injuries etc. as you implement the FMS is a really smart idea. Creating a well-rounded workout routine could go a long way to help these people. The notion of functional training is still amorphous to the public, but hopefully we can do our part to help educate others about sound movement-based training.
I agree, the Perform Better summits and seminars are fantastic. I definitely plan on attending more in the future.