Athletic Director: Steve Kubisiak Email: skubisiak@bis.midco.net

NOTES: This website was initially created for my youth track program, Great Plains Track Club - 2004-2023 I have posted the 2022 and 2023 track meet pictures located above. Give me time to post other years, some track meets have up to 1000 pictures!

All coaches should have a vested interest in the athlete's health!

The Functional Movement Club is an Educational Resource to create safer athletic programs. The more you know, the more self-reliant you become. The focus should be on PREVENTING INJURIES. Functional Movement has been around since 1995 and The Egoscue Method has been around since 1971.

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." DL

When Emerson says, "nature always wears the colors of the spirit," he is expressing the idea that our perception of nature is influenced by our inner emotions and state of mind. In other words, the way we feel internally affects how we experience and interpret the natural world around us. For example, if we are feeling happy and content, we are more likely to notice the beauty and vibrancy in nature. The colors of flowers may appear brighter, the sun may seem warmer, and the overall atmosphere may feel more joyful. On the other hand, if we are feeling sad or upset, we might see nature as gloomy or dull. The same flowers that appeared vibrant before may now seem faded, and the sun may feel cold and distant. Emerson suggests that our emotional state acts as a lens through which we perceive and interact with nature. It is a reminder that our internal thoughts and feelings play a significant role in shaping our perception of the external world.

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right, decide on what you think is right and stick to it. — (George Eliot)

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” is a quote by Vincent Van Gogh. Some say that Van Gogh's quote suggests that life is meant to be lived, and that people should take risks and embrace challenges. It could also mean that without courage, people would not be able to discover their purpose, serve others, or leave their mark.

Van Gogh was known for his dedication to his craft, and some say he understood the importance of hard work and persistence. He believed that great achievements often come from many small steps over time, rather than one big leap.

Detachment can be a tricky concept to understand. The Law of Detachment – from my book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success – helps us realize that being detached doesn't mean you don't care, but rather that you are blissfully free from attachment to outcome. You set goals but don't cling to your idea of exactly how they should manifest, you act in accordance with your values but remain flexible about the fruits of those actions, and you treat people with loving kindness but resist the urge to control them.
When your happiness depends on anything outside your own Self, you are a slave to external circumstances. Detachment allows you to be happy for no reason – to take joy in the sheer fact of existence, the way a child is happy. This is true freedom.
Carry these 3 affirmations with you today to start living the Law of Detachment:

I allow myself and the people around me to be exactly as they are.
I do not try to force solutions to problems. I trust that if I remain present and open, a perfect solution will spontaneously emerge.
I embrace uncertainty as an essential ingredient of my experience. When I do not rigidly impose my idea of how things should be, I step into the field of infinite possibility. Depok Chopra

Don't Sacrifice Function for Fitness

Written by Brandon Bennett

When it comes to removing negatives, one of the hardest conversations you’ll have is when telling people they should stop training or exercising. Exercise and training have become a big part of people’s identities today. Telling people they need to temporarily put things on hold or implying that the bootcamp class or running club they’ve been participating in may have actually been eroding their production can be a touchy subject. If you don’t believe me, try telling an injured runner to stop running.

We often find people who have the illusion of fitness. They find or modify environments so they can move in isolated ways or participate in group training or endorphin-producing activities that may cloud their perception of dysfunction. They’re chasing more plates for an exercise or a faster time in a workout, but in their pursuit of fitness, they’re sacrificing function. Function and fitness should grow together—but giving up function to get fitness won’t let you keep fitness for very long.

For example, after ACL reconstruction, we’ve seen high school athletes trying to return to running who demonstrate single-leg balance measures four standard deviations below those of a 70-year-old adult. They’re good compensators and may be able to accomplish the act of running, but if we looked at them as 70-year-olds, we’d consider them unsafe to even take a walk for risk of falling.

Plenty of people can perform with a medical or functional problem by gritting through it or compensating around it, but suffering through activity shouldn’t be our standard operating system. That medical or functional problem might not improve and may actually get worse, creating even more problems.

The connection between exercise and health is so drilled into our brains that we continue to pursue fitness activities, believing they’ll improve health or function…even to our own detriment.

No matter if your clients are with you to improve their health, fitness, or productivity in a given activity or sport, your responsibility is to protect the integrity of all of them. When someone scores below the acceptable thresholds on the movement screens, if the conversation doesn’t address pushing pause on exercises or activities that jeopardize that integrity, then you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Of course, telling adults they aren’t allowed to do something works about as well as it does for teenagers. If you’re continuously telling them “You can’t do this. You can’t do that” and don’t allow them to work out or participate as they envision, they’re going to go find someone who will tell them what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. You need to communicate that having a movement pattern or body part that’s painful, dysfunctional, or asymmetrical doesn’t mean they need to scrap their fitness plans—just the fitness that’s counterproductive.

I often ask patients and clients, “Can you commit to temporarily not working on your fitness while we work on other things that may have a bigger influence? Can we put your fitness goals aside for a bit, hit a corrective strategy for a week or two, and then come back and reassess?” If you’ve done the work on the frontend to gain buy-in of the process, asking those questions and vetting the potentially counterproductive exercise or activity choices will be less painful. Guiding clients and patients through that experience can produce massive change with no added stress because better perception drives better behavior in both the short and long terms. Education is best invested once better awareness is in place, because once awareness is set, protective behaviors should be clear, simple, and actionable. The conversation moves from one of “You shouldn’t” to “Why would you?”

All content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.

Screenings will be offered by request only. Athlete must by attending Bismarck Public of Private Schools and must be in middle school or high school.

Steve will put you thru a 15-minute FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENT SCREEN to help you see how well you move within yourself and locate your weakest link(s). Ideally, the screen should be done by your coach, this is the person that will be training you throughout your sports season. The screen is meant for coaches to evaluate your movement. But they need knowledge in the screen and tools to help prevent injuries. Athletes should be screened every 6-12 months by their COACH. Your body will change as you mature and change after an injury. It helps the assistant coaches if the head coach is educated in screening and injury prevention! The FMS and its tools should also be integrated in all physical education programs (K-12). After the screen, the coach should recommend injury prevention strategies.

Seven different movements will be done which takes about 15 minutes. After the screen, we will discuss the benefits of Self-Limiting Movements. If you have any weak links, you will have to decide if you want to load those movement patterns with weights or with increased running miles. Anyone can screen you, so it is the person screening you that makes a difference. Different screeners will see different movement problems, thus give different advice (i.e. exercises, precautions, etc.) after the screen. It is best to work with someone who has coached many youths at the K-12 level. The screen can be applied to any age group.

There isn't a lack of exercise options to improve a person's movement and performance. The difficulty is figuring out which exercise or activity will help the person the quickest, which will help save valuable time during the process.

This is why performing a good screen and assessment up front, will help direct you to which activity will be the most appropriate. Figuring out if a person's problem is mobility or stability will make it easier for you to pick the best exercise.

Setting that initial baseline will allow you to go back and recheck, giving you the feedback you need to determine if the exercise improved the problem.

$15/SCREEN. A Registration/Waiver Form (print off below) will need to be signed by a parent. Ideally, a group of 5-10 would be beneficial. Each person can learn from each other's screen.

Steve has purchased, read, and studied the textbook, MOVEMENT: FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENT SYSTEMS, Screening-Assessment-Corrective Strategies. By Gray Cook with Dr. Lee Burton, Dr. Kyle Kiesel, Dr. Greg Rose & Milo F. Bryant. This covers FMS and SFMA information. Steve has a minor in coaching and a masters in Exercise Science.

Location: To Be Determined by convenience for the group, only a small area is needed. If you would like to be screened, contact Steve.

Contact: skubisiak@bis.midco.net

FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENT SCREENING: THE USE OF FUNDAMENTAL MOVEMENTS AS AN ASSESSMENT OF FUNCTION ‐ PART 1 - PMC (nih.gov)

FUNCTIONAL MOVEMENT SCREENING: THE USE OF FUNDAMENTAL MOVEMENTS AS AN ASSESSMENT OF FUNCTION‐PART 2 - PMC (nih.gov)

QUESTION/ANSWER

1. Can a person screen themselves? Yes, absolutely. It may be harder to see what issues you have and what to do and not what to do with the screening information.

2. Can anyone become a Certified FMS Member? Literally anyone can become certified in the FMS Certification Courses. This is all done at home online. Just sign up and take the courses. They can last up to seven hours. After the course study, you take the at home online test. You have as long as you want so you will pass. You will then have access to articles. A background in Exercise Science is very helpful or PT. Unfortunately, very few if any coaches have an appropriate background to understand the FMS and its benefits!

The FMS courses are $599 and are for healthcare and fitness/coach professionals. You need to have a good understanding of movement of the body, as well as a good understanding of the FMS course to be able to pass the exam. You can learn about our FMS courses here: https://www.funtionalmovement.com/system/fms

You are given 3 opportunities to pass the exams. You start from the beginning with a different exam each time. If you don't pass after 3 attempts, there is an option to email us and pay $50 to receive 3 additional test attempts.

The all-new FMS Corrective Strategies series explores our functional approach to identifying and correcting movement dysfunctions. The initial patterns explored include the Hip Hinge Pattern, Balance Patterns, Rotation Patterns, Upper Body Patterns, and the Squat Pattern.

Each course incorporates whiteboard talks that detail the differences between how the FMS assessments and screens - SFMA, FMS, and Symmio - consider the pattern in question. Gray’s selected exercises follow the hierarchy of developmental postures: Supported, Suspended, Stacked, and Standing. The exercises are also structured by the ABCs principle: Awareness, Breathing, and Control, and they use Reactive Neuromuscular Training (RNT) to engage motor learning,

or as Gray says, “motor-remembering.”

Learn more about movement by watching the videos below.

Maximize your Chops and Lifts by following this expert instruction on how to perform the exercise properly and vary your setup for targeting specific problem areas with precision. Chop and Lift corrective exercises have been a FMS staple for years - with good reason. Lee Burton covers the important considerations in selecting and performing variations of the Chop and Lift. Proper half-kneeling setup is key and aligning yourself with a board (around 4”) will help with consistency. Both knees should be bent at 90 degrees, with the front knee aligned over the ankle and the back knee aligned under the hip, shoulder and ear. The back toe should be in line with its leg and pointed if the goals are improved hip stability and core stability. There should be no spinal flexion or extension. Use the Functional Movement Screen to determine if you need to focus on half-kneeling or tall-kneeling exercises, for example: lunge asymmetry points to half-kneeling whereas squat problems point to the symmetry of tall kneeling. Common mistakes are not performing distinct pull and push movements and working toward the wrong knee: chop to the down knee and lift to the up knee. To vary the effectiveness of the exercise, you can alter your angle from the source of resistance: Start at 45 degrees, 90 degrees over your shoulder provides core engagement and works the anterior structures and 90 toward the resistance works the posterior structures. Hand position also matters, with a narrow grip providing more work for the upper body (PNF patterns) and a wide grip maximizing core engagement.

The Motor Control Flow is a practical starting point for individuals who need to correct balance and stability problems. In this case, Lee Burton shows an asymmetry on the Motor Control Screen (MCS). It works great as a warm-up or cool-down addition to existing programming. Gray Cook explains how a path differs from an exercise by providing an obstacle course that often includes struggles and minimal coaching resulting in awareness of movement imbalances and asymmetries. The Motor Control Flow is a three-station progression using a half-foam roll. The A (Awareness) station is a flat-back on-beam exploration of rotational stability and stride. The B (Breathing) station is a crawl-to-kneel pattern that syncs the breath while working the extremes of horizontal-to-vertical postures. The C (Control) station is a kneeling stride that syncs the breath with full body and oppositional movement. Functional Movement Systems’ Movement Flows are quick movement progressions that serve as starting points and gather information on where you stand in relation to your health and wellness goals. Before we can correct our movement through exercise and activity, we need to reinstall an awareness of what it feels like to move authentically. The Movement Flows are deceptively simple screening and corrective tools that will work in many situations, especially when used in conjunction with the Functional Movement Screen. If the flow cannot be completed, the individual has found an area that needs correction and should work there until the flow feels natural. If the flow can be completed, the individual should practice, paying greater attention to asymmetries and sticking points and continue as long as they feel and see benefits.

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