The trend towards more functional exercise prescription has steadily grown the past few years, both in the realm of physical therapy and fitness training.
In fact, many health care professionals are discovering what strength and conditioning specialists have known and applied for years: To achieve optimum performance, specificity of function must be applied.
Specificity of training can be defined as conditioning the specific muscles, joint actions, neuromuscular movement patterns and associated energy systems involved in your sport or activity of choice.
Whether you are a competitive athlete or an injured mechanic, your individual needs and objectives can be met through closed-kinetic chain activity.
The closed-kinetic chain can be thought of as coordinated sequences of joint actions where the distal end of the chain is in fixed contact with a surface. An example of such an activity would be a squat, whereby the ankle, knee, and hip joints act in a synergistic, coordinated action to produce and apply force into the ground at the point of contact between the foot and the floor. Triple joint extension is achieved and the body is propulsed upwards until the leg and its associated joints are fully extended.
Compare this to an open chain exercise like the knee extension, which also involves the lower extremity. The only joint that is active during the knee extension is that of the knee with the force production contributed by the quadriceps muscle.
We leave it up to you to decide which exercise is more specific to the action of getting up out of a chair or climbing a staircase.
In closing, while closed kinetic chain activity may be the preferable choice, open chain exercises can also be functional in some situations. "There is no such thing as a right or wrong exercise, simply the application of that exercise to a specific individual's own unique circumstances, needs, and goals."
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