Rehabilitation

While training athletes in a progressive manner is what we are known for, we also spend a lot of time with both injured and healthy athletes trying to further joint stability. Joints are compromised when restricted or when the muscles protecting and surrounding them are not strong enough. Muscle injuries also occur, and after being diagnosed with what the deficiency is, we take the proper strength and flexibility measures to rehabilitate the athlete.

We provide a balance of proper warm-ups and running drills to balance the kinetic chain. We also focus on balance drills which challenge the stabilizer muscles. These are the muscles that support the joints. Proper muscular balance is key to minimizing injuries. Where many athletes have weak hamstrings, for example, this is often due to a weak core (abdominal/lower back) or an in-balance of hamstring to quadriceps strength ratio. We would then work on the deficient areas to create a more ideal muscular balance.

Our treadmill training also works on the rehabilitation portion as well. A large percent of injuries can be prevented or corrected with just correcting the athletes proper running form. The treadmill workouts train all components necessary to improve and strengthen deficiencies. We often see athletes, with past knee injuries that still bother them, begin to work on the treadmill and through time their aches and pains minimize while their athletic performance maximizes.

Strength

It’s hard to be a great athlete without strength. Our strength program is quite different than the traditional or “old school” program. The strength realm has been a slowly evolving philosophy. In the past most coaches have taught their athletes to bench, squat, snatch, and dead-lift extreme amounts of weights. This is partly why none of us as adults have any backs or knees left. We believe that you need to be strong, but you also need to maintain range of motion and flexibility. At F5 we do a lot of unilateral movements in multi planer actions. This means we do drills with primarily dumbbells using more than one isolated muscle many times in a sport specific manner.

Most athletes need to do a precise movement like throw a football with only inches of space, shoot a basketball at 20 feet away, hit a baseball in less than 1/3 of a second, kick a soccer ball within inches of the goal tender and so forth. These are precision movements that require “stabilizer” muscles. Not the big barbell bench press muscles, but the smaller and more important muscles that are never utilized in a barbell exercise.

Our strength exercises mainly consist of bands, dumbbells, stability balls, balance devices, cable machines, med balls and occasionally a traditional piece.

Muscular balance is often overlooked in strength training. We believe that both sides of the body should be worked equally, thus creating muscular balance. This helps prevent a lot of injuries.