What is corrective exercise?
Corrective exercise in a nutshell is reteaching your body to move how it was always meant to.
Humans, like any other form of life, are really good at adapting. Most of the time we don’t even realize it, whether we’re adapting to a new phase of life or slowly getting stronger so that those 50lb dumbbells are eventually light weight. The body will adapt to keep us alive but it will also adapt to make things easier. The brain is actually pretty lazy, if it can find an easier way to do something it will. These adaptations can sometimes be a detriment to us in the long run. Imagine you’re the brain: your human has an office job and sits there for about 9 hours a day. After that they usually sit on the couch to watch tv and unwind for about 3 hours until they head to bed. They may go on a walk, be up around the house doing chores or maybe even go to the gym a couple times a week. That means that sitting equates to at least 12 hours of the day (75% of waking hours). As the brain you’re going to get real comfortable in that sitting position: move the neck and head forward to see the screen better and keep the hips tight so they’re more comfortable in the seated position. Makes sense right?
These adaptations can stem from a few different causes. The most common ones are: injury/ pain and environment. We already spoke on environment in the last paragraph. Your environment and the stimulus you put on your body will cause it to adapt to make life easier/ more efficient. That can be positions your body is in regularly (example: sitting or laying down) or movement patterns that you do regularly (walking or playing sports). Injuries are another reason your body might be forced to change. Tissue can get torn, inflamed, or weak, forcing the body to do what it can to keep moving and stay alive. Take a sprained ankle for example. To avoid further injuring the area the body develops a limp. The limp causes your other leg to do more of the work which may lead to hip. Knee or back issues due to the imbalance. The sprained ankle might heal but the imbalance may still be there.
Corrective exercise is used to directly counter these unwanted adaptations the body has saddled us with and get the body moving how it was always meant to.
