Movement Training Specialist

Joy Kenseth, Injury Rehabilitation

jenpoljacik — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:39:22 +0000

Chris Poljacik has been my personal trainer for the past 18 months. When we first started working together, I was in terrible shape. Having suffered a broken back in an automobile accident two months earlier, I was physically weak and had lost a lot of flexibility. To top things off, the accident aggravated an old knee injury and probably contributed as well to a new hip problem.

Even though my doctors had urged me to get into an exercise program, the seriousness of my injury made me very reluctant at first to do any type of exercise. But Chris soon put my fears to rest. He talked with me at length about my specific problems and goals and in several very helpful sessions showed me, with the aid of a model skeleton, how we could strengthen and reduce the pain in my lower back, hip, and knee. We started slowly with some stretching exercises. These were especially beneficial because they opened up my spine and made me much more flexible. Over the next eight months, Chris guided me through a variety of weight-bearing and stretching exercises targeting the muscles in my back and legs. The results were dramatic: the pain in my lower back and knee disappeared completely and overall I was much stronger. In recent months Chris has added new exercises to my routine to increase strength and improve flexibility. My hip is more stable than before and with the help of some extra tips from Chris–relating to how I stand and sit– I expect it will be back to normal fairly soon.

Working with Chris has been a tremendous boon for me. I’ve benefited not only from his impressive expertise as a movement specialist and his thoughtful attention to my specific problems but also from his positive and encouraging manner. Today, I am in better health than I was before my accident and for that I have to thank Chris Poljacik, one of RVC’s greatest treasures!

Joy Kenseth

MTS A BIG HIT IN HAMMILTON, ONTARIO

jenpoljacik — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:32:13 +0000

Dec, 5th and 6th Master Trainer and owner Chris Poljacik traveled to Hamiliton Ontario Canada to conduct a Movement Training Specialist Certification. The group Consisted of 17 trainers from 5 different clubs who were eager advance there functional training knowledge and business skills. The two day workshop was a huge hit that left the participants raving about there experience. A special thanks to Murray Middlemost who hosted the certification at his Ancaster location. The following Trainers will be added to the elite MTS training team.

Sean Walpole, Emily Stirling, Matt Stirling, Annette Walker, Simon Marini, EddieWarne, Kevin Misaac,Matt Banks, Vanessa Bill, Adam Morden, Pam Paone, Jeff Babister, Kerri Sherk

Thank you to all who participated we know you will forever be spreading the word of functional training and MTS!

Please contact us at info@mtspecialist.com if you are interested in hosting a certification at your club!

Rotator Cuff Rehab

jenpoljacik — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 01:30:46 +0000

Back in the game!

“On November 10th I injured my right shoulder during a tennis match: a torn rotator cuff, according to a DHMC orthopedic surgeon.

I worked with the DHMC re-hab staff for a month, and then I started working twice a week with Chris Poljacik, a Movement Training Specialist. Chris worked with me for five months, while he slowly added exercises to strengthen the area around the tear.
By early June my pain had diminished to where I was able to play golf, and I even began to play some low intensity tennis once again.

It has know been nearly nine months and I am pain free! I play golf five days per week and I play tennis each week with my regular group. I am still working weekly with Chris. He varies our workouts with strength training exercises that will keep my shoulder from re-injury and improve my total fitness. I can not emphasize enough the benefits of working with a personal trainer of Chris’s stature. His training and expertise in working with athletic-type injuries is a true asset to his clients.”

Antranig A. Boghosian

“When Andy came to me with a right rotator cuff tear, he had two goals: No surgery and a desire to get back to playing tennis and golf in the spring. I took him through a functional assessment in order to uncover the musculoskeletal imbalances that usually exist in such an injury. I also evaluated his tennis strokes to see his limitations there so that when Andy does return to playing, he will not re-injury his shoulder through a faulty movement pattern.

Based on these finding and continued re-evaluation, Andy and I developed a program that would treat his injury as well as condition him for tennis and golf.

It was a pleasure to work with Andy; for he did the work that it takes to make a program like this successful. He showed that with the right program and the right effort can accomplish any goal.

Andy is the perfect example of what a Movement Training Specialist can successfully treat. An MTS trainer specializes in both injury rehabilitation and sport conditioning. This example showcases that personal training is not just about weight loss anymore. As a Movement Training Specialist I have successfully treated hundreds of clients like Andy. Not only do they needed to recover from their injuries but also want to return to their sport moving better, feeling better and performing better.”

Chris Poljacik

Movement Training Specialist

Marathon Success!

admin — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:06:34 +0000

This spring I ran my first marathon. I have been a long distance runner since I was 15 years old had attempted to train for the full marathon distance of 26.2 miles on multiple occasions but had never succeeded because chronic nagging injuries interrupted my training causing me to take months at a time off of running.

This winter, in the three months preceding the marathon I worked with Jen. Over the first 10 weeks she helped me to build strength and power which complimented my running and helped to prevent me from over training. Knowing that my left hamstring was prone to overuse injury, we also worked to strengthen the supporting muscles in my gluteus medius and minimus to help prevent injury. In the last few weeks prior to race day I began to have pain in my left calf, deep in the soleus muscle and tight peroneal muscles that added to the problem. It seemed to me likely that this could become an injury that would prevent me from running again. Jen and Chris worked together to evaluate my stride and analyze the mobility and movement patterns in my legs from my core to my hips to my knees, ankles and feet. Chris isolated each joint and the muscle groups that worked with it to help determine where my weaknesses were, where the muscles necessary to land a successful stride and absorb the impact of three times my body weight with each step, were not working in concert. Jen was then able to use this information to design functional exercises that continued to build strength, flexibility and endurance and challenged me but also helped recruit muscles that I was underutilizing in an attempt to train my me to move through each stride more optimally and thus to counteract some of the undue stress I was putting on my calf.

On race day I was still unsure of how my calf was going to hold up over 26.2 miles. But after the firs big hill at 7 miles I was feeling great and was confident that my calf would not prevent me from finishing this race. So I was able to settle in and “enjoy” the experience that I had waited years to be able to have. And just under 4 hours later I finished with a respectable time for a first marathon. And now? I’m looking forward a second one next year . . . .

Liza Lokich M.D.

By Vince Delmonte - Edge Fitness Business Consultant

admin — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:05:58 +0000

Are you ready to take your training skills to the next level? Get results from your “toughest” clients? Build a massive waiting list? Improve your client’s mobility and function better than your local physical therapist? Are you ready to be a fitness professional that is described as the “complete package?”

Just recently, I traveled to New Hampshire to visit the Edge’s flagship club, the River Valley Club, and was able to meet one of their famous Master Trainers, Chris Poljacik. I was accompanied by 2-time, World Junior Bodybuilding Champions Matt Stirling and his fiancée Emily Ramsden, also a World Bodybuiling Champion, and we were equally blown away by our experience and coaching session with Chris. Chris has been a student of the world famous, Gary Gray, a leading expert on designing truly functional exercise programs for all client types. Chris invested over $15,000 during his mentorship with Gary and is now offering a certification program for Edge PFP clients - that’s you! Emily, Matt and I have already reserved our spots to be the first to get the Movement Training Specialist Certification.

Chris took us through a collection of functional training exercises to strengthen and lengthen the entire kinetic chain - from dynamic balance training, core drills, functional spinal stabilization drills and his world famous “lunge matrix” performed all three planes of movement for all ability levels. Within 15 minutes, Chris had identified misalignments in my body that have been causing 4 years of lower back pain and conservative lifting. It’s been over a week since doing his drills and exercises, and my back is STILL pain free. Matt and Emily both had similar experiences and we giggled like little kids after he wowed us with this experience!

Honestly, after this experience, I would never work with another trainer if they did not possess the same level of “movement specialty” as Chris has and was ready, no joke, to drop a few thousand dollars of my own money on working with Chris for the next few months. No other physical therapist has ever been able to help me like Chris did.

Here’s the best news. The Edge is bringing Chris Poljacik to Canada in the near future so you can be the FIRST in the entire fitness industry to get certified to teach Gary Gray’s functional training system. This will be a mandatory requirement for any Edge trainer to achieve master trainer status, and will truly take your fitness business to a whole new level.

Principals of Lifting

jenpoljacik — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:46:22 +0000

THE PRINCIPLES OF LIFTING
By Logan Schwartz
The history of weight training has changed dynamically with the advent of Applied Functional Science. Traditional weight training basically had two main objectives. Athletes lifted to either increase muscle mass, i.e. hypertrophy, or they trained to increase strength. The theory was that the more force an athlete could produce, the more powerfully that athlete could run, jump, and move. Two questions arose from this thought process. Why does the athlete need to increase his/her muscle mass? Will strength attained with traditional lifting carry over to the movements used in the athlete’s sport? One can see that this traditional approach puts emphasis on creating adaptations to the muscular system. Human function is driven by not only the muscular system, but the skeletal and the nervous systems as well. The neuromusculoskeletal system is our vehicle for movement; therefore strength training and all training must integrate all three simultaneously. The most important system to be trained may in fact be the nervous system, especially the proprioceptors in order to develop functional strength that can be taken advantage of during human movement. Functional strength must be trained with the thought of what movements need to be strengthened, what the joints are doing during those movements, what proprioceptors are being turned on, and how are the muscles reacting to the motion and the forces of mass, momentum, and ground reaction. Studying how the human body actually functions will lead us to a strategy to increase strength for every movement performed in sport and in life. “Functional Lifting” can be defined as Function combined with the influence tweak of Load. Any movement of the human body can be loaded in one plane, two planes, or all three planes to create an environment where the neuromusculoskeletal system has to deal with that load. The transformation of the deceleration of the load to the acceleration creates functional strength. Deciding what plane or planes to load depends on what Transformation Zone (TZ) or what chain reaction you want to create. Choosing how much load and what tool to use to create the load can be a difficult dilemma. A safe logical progression is to first control individual bodyweight loads before adding artificial external loads. There are many principles that need to be examined when designing a “Functional Lifting” program. After the specific movements and TZ’s that need to be strengthened are identified, the environment for training should be considered. If human function is upright and takes advantage of authentic drivers such
as gravity, ground reaction, mass, and momentum, our lifting program should be identical. The body should be upright and not artificially stabilized or movement controlled with machines or other equipment. The amount of physiological load can be achieved many different ways. Heavier loads will force the body to move slower, while lighter loads will allow a quicker, more explosive chain reaction. These two different approaches will create different transformation aspects for the neuromusculoskeletal system. Loads and speeds should be functionally consistent with the demands of the athlete’s sport. So what does “Functional Lifting” look like? It can be specific to the exact task as Gary Gray
demonstrates in the technique section of this newsletter or generally applied using any of the 3D Matrices. For example, the 3D Lunge Matrix can easily be loaded symmetrically or asymmetrically in the sagittal plane with a simple pair of dumbbells. The 3D Lunge Matrix can be performed while driving the dumbbells to ankle height in the TZ of the lunge, and then to overhead during the acceleration out of the lunge. The TZ for the dumbbell drive can then be tweaked from ankle-overhead to knee-shoulder. This
will allow for a quicker transformation out of the lunges to create a different physiological reaction. This same matrix can be further tweaked by changing the plane of loading. A medicine ball can be driven in the transverse plane (same side rotation of the lunging foot) to force the body to handle not only gravity, but increased rotational momentum.“Functional Lifting” strategies are infinite because human function is infinite. The thought process of examining human function, then deciding what type of load to enhance that function, is consistent with the principles of Applied Functional Science.