What does a corrective exercise specialist do? Why is this important?
Corrective exercise specialists use current literature and training methodologies to improve how people move and to educate individuals on why functional training is paramount to moving freely and living a life that’s free of pain.

On the whole, we tend to work with clients whose main interests are staying functional as they age, and improving their sporting performance and ability to recover from injury, rather than those with appearance-focused goals.

What are the most common issues you see among clients?
The types of people I see most often have either been injured in a gym setting or have chronic injuries. The main issues I come across are poor breathing mechanics and poor movement quality – both of which can greatly affect how people perform daily tasks and can negatively affect how they train in the gym.

Injuries in the gym are very common because most people are unaware of their functional threshold – how hard they can work before they start to notice compensatory body movements that indicate that the exercise has become too much. For example, bicep curls can start off ok, but after a few reps the body starts to swing or the exerciser starts to shrug his or her shoulders. These are signs that it’s no longer just the biceps that are being used to lift the weight – the shoulders and other areas are now getting involved as well. Continually allowing the body to perform in this way ultimately creates issues elsewhere in the body.

Can gyms do more to help clients properly prepare their bodies for exercise?
Yes. In my opinion, education is the key. Gym management teams must continuously encourage staff to stay up to date with their training.

Client-centred approaches, as well as making trainers and gym instructors aware of fundamentals of human movement, can help many gym-goers stay injury free. Trainers should really focus on technique during activity and continually correct their clients as needed, to prevent future problems. Doing this will ultimately improve member retention and personal training revenue, as gym members will train more consistently if they’re injury-free.

How much of a difference can effective breathing make to athletic performance?
Studies have shown that most of us breathe incorrectly by breathing into our chests and neck region. In reality, we should use our diaphragms fully and pull our breath into our stomachs.

Breathing correctly ensures that more oxygen is released into the muscles and makes the nervous system less sensitive, which, in turn, encourages relaxation throughout the body.

Performance would be improved across the board just by changing to diaphragmatic breathing. By using the diaphragm as a stabilising muscle during exercise, core strength increases, allowing gym-goers to lift heavier, train harder and perform better overall.