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This alters the landscape of the health club itself both in terms of how it’s positioned and how it’s perceived by the members who use it and their friends. Clubs are becoming regarded as health facilities as well as training facilities. It is too simplistic to categorize members as fit and healthy or unfit and unhealthy. All member’s lay somewhere between the two points of illness and wellness to varying degrees. Most people have problems even when they’re training, so advice is needed from their PTs on a wider variety of issues including some that migrate towards the medical.

This evolving role will likely increase further as the credit crunch escalates. This is predicted to result in people being even less likely to want to spend extra money on seeing a healthcare professional for what they perceive to be a ‘niggle’ and not want to go to the expense or inconvenience of seeing anyone other than their PT who they are already paying. We must be careful here that we don’t develop ‘jacks-of-all-trades’ who know only enough to be dangerous, but with the new methods of screening coming up like biomechanical and functional screening, there is much personal trainers can do to help while retaining their professional identity and not crossing medical boundaries by becoming ‘pseudo-therapists’.

The body is an integrated system, each of its component parts link together to provide coordinated movement as we move in our daily lives. Functional training helps us prepare for these tasks and engrains the correct movement patterns that our brains are familiar with rather than training ‘muscles’ as we used to do. Functional training has its origins in rehabilitation and has been around for 40 years or more. In this time we have established that it can help your client’s performance and preparation for their common tasks, and maybe also reduce their risk of injury.

Over the time that functional training has been around in rehabilitation, we have found that biomechanical screening is a critical precursor to functional screening and functional training, otherwise the foundations for the movement patterns can be flawed. We have also found that although clients may cosmetically move well, intrinsically the body can be working hard to compensate for flaws in the system that functional screening doesn’t pick up.

As the functional concepts start to move from the medical to the fitness arenas, it is important to recognize that the biomechanical screening must move across too. Functional and biomechanical screening and training are very important aspects of an overall conditioning programme for any sport or activity and are complimentary in every way. For example, there are many people who pass a functional screen, yet fail a biomechanical screen. They detect different factors, both of which are important to the Personal Trainer.

Specifically we need to develop our understanding into the biomechanics of specific joints, like the pelvis, spine, shoulder and knee as well nerve biomechanics. Once we understand these principles and how to screen our clients with them in mind, we can prescribe very precise exercises that relate specifically to their problems and goals. Once these biomechanical issues have been resolved then functional training or any other form of training you may wish to perform has more chance of being successful and there is less risk of your members becoming injured.

This concept has been pioneered by Martin Haines, Biomechanics Coach over the last 20 years and is based upon the evidence of test results of over 4,000 people ranging from Olympic athletes, Formula 1 racing drivers and professional sportspeople, down in activity levels, to sedentary people. This work has been complimented by other researchers such as Gracovetsky, Twomey, Taylor, Janda and Bogduk to provide a simple system that PT’s can learn to use for their clients’ and provide corrective exercises at a biomechanical level. This may sound complicated, but the beauty of the system is that it is both simple and timely and the results for members, PT’s and Clubs has been astonishing. Members feel that they move more freely and achieve their results quicker with less discomfort, and they can be very vocal about their astonishment. PTs learn the missing link in their exercise prescription and they begin to understand the limitations of postural assessments, core stability training and other training modalities and why, when used in isolation, they can be less effective. Clubs see a drop in their attrition rates; the Holy Grail for Health Clubs – don’t give up, there is a solution. In one small chain of clubs attrition rates fell from the industry standard 30% to less than 10% within a year by using the Biomechanics Coaching System.

Martin and his team at Intelligent Training Systems™ have developed a range of unique courses that qualify Fitness Instructors, Personal Trainers and therapists as Biomechanics Trainers and Biomechanics Coaches; and they are the only organization in the world that can do so. In fact they are now establishing international distributors as the demand is so great.

Biomechanics Coaching is set to become the next big thing in the fitness industry as it benefits everyone from the club owner, to the member to the PT. There are over 100 in the UK already and more innovative and exciting PTs are joining this elite band each day.