Functional Range Conditioning (FRC) is prevalent in the fitness, rehab, and sports medicine world. Its popularity is here to stay as it has many practical uses for anyone looking to enhance their range of motion and more. FRC helps you increase mobility, build strength, and prevent injury over time.
What is Functional Range Conditioning?
Functional Range Conditioning, also known as FRC, is a form of mobility and joint control training. This training helps to improve your range of motion within your shoulders, neck, hips, hamstrings, low back, and more. The goal is to prevent injury to your body and develop longevity for healthy joints over time. The importance behind FRC is to create proper mobility and strength to allow you to get through the day with no pain or tension.
Functional Range Conditioning works by expanding your range of motion while teaching your central nervous system to control the newly acquired ranges. Maintaining strong joints through a more excellent range of motion creates better communication between your brain and the movements of your body.
Mobility refers to the amount of active, usable motion that you possess. The more mobile your body is, the more it can maximize its movement potential safely and effectively. It is the difference between being flexible and stretching to specific passive ranges versus having actual control into those end ranges of motion. By training mobility, you can capture only passive ranges of motion and make them active and usable. This mobility training — in turn — enhances the load-bearing capacity of your joints and its ability to withstand the forces of everyday activity and sport.
What are the Major Benefits of Functional Range Conditioning?
There are many benefits to Functional Range Conditioning, and you can maximize all such advantages. These benefits include mobility, flexibility, joint health, longevity, strength, injury prevention, rehabilitation, and enhanced performance.
Mobility and Flexibility
Functional Range Conditioning is a versatile and highly safe method that can improve your mobility and flexibility. Aside from teaching your body to recognize and control the newly-introduced ranges of motion, what FRC aims to achieve is to develop your strength, power, and coordination.
Joint Health and Longevity
FRC helps develop your mobility, all articular connective tissue components are strengthened, and neurological control of said tissues is enhanced. These are many factors known to enhance joint health, prevent injury, and improve longevity. FRC has therefore been safely and effectively utilized to preserve your movement and function, optimize joint health, and slow the progression of the degenerative process.
Build Strength
Functional Range Conditioning can help build strength. Instead of just becoming more flexible and reaching more extensive ranges of motion or larger angles in stretches, FRC helps you build control and strength in new ranges of motion. This control and strength can allow you to squat with more depth and weight, keep proper form, and stay injury-free as you press more weight overhead.
Injury Prevention
Utilization of Functional Range Conditioning is not limited to performance enhancement. Many of the techniques inherent to FRC training are developed for utilization for injury rehabilitation and prevention of your body.
Rehabilitation and Performance Enhancement
Functional Range Conditioning’s versatile nature makes its application suitable to many in need of rehabilitation with rehabilitative style exercises and treatments. The results create greater ranges of motion which later become vital to enhancing your future agility. When your agile is enhanced, you can more effectively function in all life and physical activities.
Who Can Benefit Most from FRC?
Overall, everyone can benefit from Functional Range Conditioning Why? Because everyone moves. Injury is not limited to just athletes, and functional movements are not just limited to athletes either. It is essential for everyone every day. As movement specialists and experts are to make sure you are utilizing your body to its fullest potential. After all, you are capable of movement, and this one body you have needs to be taken care of to reach your optimal wellness.
Athletes Benefit from FRC
As an athlete, every movement requires a particular pre-requisite. For example, getting down into a deep squat requires a certain level of ankle mobility. If you lack ankle mobility, this creates compromise or compensation from the knee, hip, or lower back. FRC gave you the tools and thought process to get the correct pre-requisite before adding weight to your squats.
Start Your Functional Range Conditioning Journey with an Optimal Movement Assessment
Muscle stiffness, body pains, posture issues, and injuries can all occur for multiple reasons. Still, Functional Range Conditioning can be a step in the right direction to more significant movement and optimal wellness. Our Boulder and Longmont mobility therapists can help you find a better range of motion by starting with a movement assessment.
At Optimal Wellness, our Optimal Movement Assessment is used to identify imbalances and asymmetries which could result in injury. With the assessment, your movement specialist can begin to create a customized program using FRC training techniques to address your body’s needs to begin optimizing health.
Book Your Mobility Session in Boulder or Longmont Today
Learn more about the benefits of mobility therapy and other massage services to promote overall wellness at our two Colorado locations in Boulder and Longmont. At Optimal Wellness, we offer various wellness services to help you perform at your best and improve your quality of life. Learn more about our mobility services on our website or book your appointment with our skilled Colorado massage therapist to get on the road to optimal wellness.
Our team of professionals is the perfect choice for you if you are looking for safe and effective massages that will help you feel more recovered even after one session. If that is something you are looking for, contact us right away and book a session now.
