Introduction
Workout accountability apps and personal training apps have been a growing trend in recent years. These can vary from step counters, yoga, cycling, HIIT training, and others. At first glance, these may seem like the best workout apps because they provide some type of benefit to the consumer, but the reality is that the benefit is typically short-lived or isolated and acquired at the expense of exacerbating a dysfunction in another area of the body.
Functional Patterns addresses the shortcomings of the Planet Fitness app while providing a more effective and sustainable path to better health than even the best workout apps. In this article, we will discuss how this is done and why it matters.
The Danger of Following Trends
When looking for help living a pain-free healthy life, it is easy to fall prey to growing trends. For example, searching “best workout apps”, downloading the Planet Fitness app, then hammering out a strength and cardio workout may seem harmless but it can, in fact, do much more harm than good in the long run.
The reasons for this can be plentiful, but let’s say that a person lacks lumbar stability. Having that person arbitrarily do burpees or plyometric box jumps would more than likely cause excessive jarring and compression in the lumbar spine, thus negating any positive gains in cardiovascular improvement.
In another example, a person follows a 20-minute yoga session but cannot maintain a good standing posture because they lack good core, glute, and thoracic extension connectivity. While they may argue that they gained some sort of spiritual or mental improvement, this is simply not quantifiable and is essentially putting the cart before the horse.
Contrary to popular belief, big movements are actually an accumulation of smaller movements connected in different parts of the body. Functional Patterns builds a solid foundation in these smaller movements with a focus on integration, allowing a person to perform more complex movements over time.
Unlike the previous examples, Functional Patterns improvements last because they focus on training the body as a whole system rather than focusing on symptoms and pains that pop up along the way. These are quantifiable through before-and-after posture and gait cycle analysis. As the saying goes, “We cannot manage what we cannot measure.”
(Visible changes made in posture)
Can the best workout apps replace a personal trainer?
Correcting poor posture and inefficient movement is a lot more involved than what any of the best free workout apps can account for. Even the organized workouts presented on the Planet Fitness app provide no specific corrections unique to a person’s individual imbalances. Doing these workouts will more than likely exacerbate a dysfunction and create even stronger imbalances as one progresses through them.
No matter how optimistic the intent of an app or even a trainer is, it’s how they address the problem and the results they achieve that matter most. Functional Patterns practitioners apply the blueprint to training clients that respect the way in which humans have evolved to move: stand, walk, run, and throw.
Our methodology provides a measured approach that starts with the most fundamental concepts in mind and then gradually builds without skipping steps, making a person’s progress sustainable while allowing for the ever-increasing complexity of movement without the pain that usually accompanies traditional training practices.
Conclusion
A workout accountability app/ personal training app leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to a person’s overall wellness and points to a key question not being asked enough in today’s society, “Why am I doing this”?” With most folks, the answer is usually backward; they are training habitually rather than intentionally. They lack the self-awareness to truly understand what isn’t positioned or moving correctly and therefore have no meaningful way of addressing it.
At Functional Patterns, it’s more than merely implementing a new movement protocol. It addresses the underlying behaviors, habits, and addictions that contribute to self-esteem, anxiety, and other health-related issues, causing a person to underperform and be riddled with pain. To better understand how this is done, check out our method.
