OCEAN BEACH – There’s a new fitness startup in Ocean Beach focused on getting people out of chronic pain through posture and biomechanical correction.
There are now two fitness modalities sharing space and cross-pollinating one another next door to Mike Hess Brewing at 4895 Voltaire St.
They are the 5-MeO-JJ martial arts school and San Diego Biomechanics. Both facilities, owned by 5-MeO-JJ, are practicing a relatively new and cutting-edge fitness methodology called Functional Patterns.
FP maintains there is a disconnect between modern fitness practices and natural human movement. The goal of FP is to teach people proper posture and alignment to promote efficient movement and prevent physical injuries.
“One side is focused on jiu-jitsu and martial arts, and the other side is focused on personal training,” said Lauren Powell, a certified Functional Patterns human foundations practitioner and a trainer in San Diego Biomechanics, which is offering classes and one-to-one fitness training based on FP methods.
Trainers in both fitness disciplines say FP has worked for them with noticeable results.
“It’s using your understanding of the body in teaching it to move and hold itself in the way that’s its intended to move and hold itself,” noted FP trainer Talia Morrison about biomechanics. She added FP is “based on learning how to stand, walk, run, and throw. We are orienting people in their posture, in their movement, whether it’s corrective or dynamic movement, to improve how they stand, walk, run and throw. That then helps movement in every other arena of life.”
Powell, who has scoliosis (spinal curvature), said FP methodology training the past five years has made a huge difference for her. She’s seen it help others, too.
“We get a lot of people who know something is wrong in their body, that they’ve got some sort of asymmetry or dysfunction that’s causing them chronic pain,” she said. “Like me, they have a whole lifetime with some level of chronic pain that becomes the baseline.
“They’ve tried physical therapy, chiropractic, massage, yoga, everything. They’ve been told there’s no correction. Then they found FP and started finding some results in getting out of pain. We’re here to show an alternative.”
“You have to experience it (FP) to understand it,” said SD Biomechanics trainer Hayley Marlier. “After a session, you feel better, whether that’s feeling calmer or aligned. Overall, I just feel like this practice feels much more intuitive and natural than what you’re seeing out in the (fitness) industry right now.”
Morrison said the FP process begins with a 1 ½ hour assessment of an individual’s physical condition, which leads trainers to school them in how to make their bodies “create the change” naturally that they want, rather than “relying on external pressure and support to create what we see as short-term change.”
In utilizing the FP methodology, Morrison said trainers also use photographs and videos to document and show how clients’ bodies have become misaligned.
Two members of 5-MeO-JJ, Geoff Kercher and Josh Amaro, said they have benefited from incorporating FP methodology in their physical training.
“They’re intimately intertwined,” said Kercher of how FP complements martial arts. “I probably wouldn’t have believed it, but it (FP) teaches you how to control your body the way that you want to. It’s taught me how to create the right tensions in the body, the right posture, the right mechanics. It’s two sides of the same coin.”
“You pick up bad habits,” agreed Amaro. “As you get older, parts of your body disengage, stop working, because we don’t consciously try to use those parts. I try to use some of those (FP) principles in the way I teach martial arts. I started realizing that some of the things I was doing in martial arts were helping to amplify my dysfunctions.”
Amaro addressed how he first got interested in trying FP to overcome injuries. He spoke of the incident that convinced him to try FP before nearly canceling out of his initial assessment.
“When I went to tie my shoes, my back gave out,” he said. “But something told me to just stick with it. My trainer had me do a few exercises and my back re-engaged right then and there.”
How does biomechanics help with martial arts training? “Number one is longevity,” replied Kercher. “It’s also helped me be more resilient. It’s helped me engage more power in my movements. I’m springier. It’s helped me with every aspect.”
Would you advise others to try FP? “Absolutely,” answered Amaro. “In 2017-18, I had given up on martial arts because all of my injuries were getting worse. I had to stop. A whole year went by when I was just doing FP, and then I said, ‘I’m going to try it (martial arts) again.”
Using FP, Amaro concluded: “You will see immediate relief. But the actual results, where you get stronger, faster, and regain your athletic abilities, take a while. You have to apply yourself.”
