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Jake Harcoff

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February 7, 2025

The True Meaning of Functional Training: Moving with Purpose

At AIM Athletic, our approach to small group personal training, personal training, and active rehabilitation is built around the idea that functional training is more than just lifting weights or performing isolated movements. It’s about ensuring that your body moves efficiently through space, adapting to the demands of daily life, sport, and recovery. This is why we prioritize human locomotion, the foundation of movement, when designing our training programs.

In our small group personal training sessions, we emphasize exercises that enhance relative joint motion, ensuring that every member improves their ability to move fluidly and efficiently. Whether it’s strength work, mobility drills, or gait-focused exercises, the goal is to create a training environment where movement quality comes first. With the right exercise progressions and movement cues, members can improve stability, strength, and coordination, all of which translate directly into better movement patterns in and out of the gym.

For personal training, we take a more individualized approach, assessing each person’s movement patterns to identify restrictions or inefficiencies. If a joint isn’t moving properly within the gait cycle, it can lead to compensations elsewhere, limiting performance and increasing injury risk. By addressing these issues through targeted exercises and mobility work, we help members not just get stronger but move with better control and efficiency. This makes a huge difference whether you’re an athlete looking to enhance performance or someone wanting to stay active and pain free.

Active rehabilitation at AIM Athletic follows the same principles. Whether recovering from an injury or working through movement restrictions, restoring proper joint motion is key to returning to full function. Many injuries and chronic pain conditions stem from poor movement mechanics. By retraining the body to move correctly, focusing on phases of gait, weight distribution, and joint coordination, we help our members rebuild their movement capacity, reduce discomfort, and regain confidence in their bodies.

Everything we do at AIM Athletic ties back to the big picture of movement. Strength, mobility, and control all play a role in how well you function, whether you’re in a rehab setting, a training session, or just going about your day. By ensuring that each joint moves as it should and contributes to the overall system, we create a foundation that supports not only performance but long term health and resilience.

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