At Athletic Pursuit, we believe strength should enhance—not limit—human movement. Strength training should build capability, freedom, and balance, not dysfunction.

More and more people are learning the benefits of strength training, and it’s helping people develop stronger and healthier bodies.

However, strength training without correct technique and without addressing mobility issues is a suboptimal way of training. It can lead to dysfunction, chronic asymmetries, and bad movement mechanics—resulting in injury and poor posture.

When I first gained an understanding of functional movement early in my strength & conditioning training, I discovered that my background in sports—and my zero experience with biomechanically focused strength training—had led me to develop significant asymmetries. In exercises like lunges, I could feel pain and imbalance; my bench press felt uneven, and my squat pattern was clearly asymmetrical—I could feel myself pushing unevenly through the ground. I even failed quite significantly in a screening tool called the Functional Movement Screen.

I never found bodybuilding attractive, as I always liked the idea of being functional—whether that meant fighting, being good at a sport, or staying flexible. So I stayed clear of repetitive, isolated weight training.

Since then, I’ve been on a mission to understand why I had pain, stiffness, and couldn’t perform functional movement patterns very well. Along the way, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of the body—how to train to optimise natural movement and become strong and powerful without being bulky or dysfunctional.

Through 4 years of seeing what the literature says and a further five years and work experience and CPD courses, I’ve debunked many of my own misconceptions about strength training and applied these insights to my coaching—to help my clients achieve results they might not have reached otherwise, due to limited exposure to different training modalities.

The body is a pulley and lever system. When an area of that system goes unused, the body tightens to adapt to the demands of daily life. Strength training allows us to work this pulley and lever system and present it with the movements we might have neglected through sport or lifestyle.

And when I say pulley and lever system, all I mean is joints and the muscles that pull on those joints to create movement.

Our training programs are designed to exercise all joints in their entirety—never neglecting any joint or movement our bodies are designed to perform, which often happens when focusing on only one sport or activity.

This keeps the joints lubricated and functioning optimally and, as a by-product, doesn’t neglect any muscles either. Training every muscle also stimulates the brain in its entirety, as the neuromuscular system connects the brain to every muscle—so exercising all these pathways allows the brain to perform optimally and keeps cognitive function sharp, resistant to decline, atrophy, and even degeneration.

Mobility screens allow us to assess this pulley and lever system—to see how our lifestyle up to this point has affected it.

Our workout sessions aim to target this system, strengthen neglected areas, and restore alignment and strength. Simple range-of-motion tests can reveal tightness or imbalances, and from there, we gradually expose the body to different exercises to reprogram it to move freely and perform at its best again.

At Athletic Pursuit, we train the body to move the way it was designed—strong, balanced, and free.