What Is Corrective Exercise — And Do You Actually Need It?

A lot of people think corrective exercise is something you only do after an injury usually with a physical therapist and a stack of resistance bands. If you're training consistently and nothing is actually hurt, it's easy to figure it doesn't apply to you. If you've got a muscle that's always tight, one side that feels different than the other, or an ache that keeps coming back, corrective exercise is just as useful for you as it is for someone coming off an injury because it deals with the things that tend to lead to injuries in the first place.

What Is Corrective Exercise?

The National Academy of Sports Medicine ("NASM") defines corrective exercise as "the systematic process of identifying a neuromusculoskeletal dysfunction," then building a plan of action and carrying out an integrated corrective strategy to fix it.¹ When a joint is stiff or a muscle isn't doing its job, your body still gets the movement done, it just uses other muscles to compensate thru the movement. That might be your low back helping out because your hips aren't stable, or your shoulder doing extra work because your upper back has gotten stiff from sitting at a desk. Over time, the muscles covering for the problem get tight, sore, and overworked.

At BBPS, corrective exercise is the foundation of our entire practice, and every plan follows the same three phases:

✅ Inhibit (: release the tissue(s) that's overworked thru soft tissue work in our clinic or using a lacrosse ball or foam roller at home

✅ Lengthen (mobilize): stretch and mobilize to get back the range that tissue has been holding you out of

✅ Activate the muscles that haven't been doing their job so your body completes the correct patterns using the correct muscles

If you're a desk worker with a cranky shoulder, your plan might include a lacrosse ball on the pec minor, thread the needle, and a prone Y raise. If your hips are tight, it might look like a lacrosse ball on the glutes, a chair stretch, and glute squeezes.

A 2024 review found that targeted exercise programs significantly improved forward head posture and rounded shoulders.² In another study, people with stiff hamstrings performed four weeks of stability training for the low back, pelvis, and hips, and their hamstrings

trended toward less stiffness even though the training wasn't focused on the hamstrings.³

How Corrective Exercise Helps You

When the right muscles are doing their job, the tight ones finally get a break and that's why the results actually last instead of wearing off a day or two after a session. It also means you're going after what's causing the problem instead of chasing the spot that hurts, since where you feel it usually isn't where it started. That's what lets you keep lifting, running, or doing whatever you enjoy without the same issue coming back every few weeks. And because every plan is kept simple enough to do correctly at home, you're not waiting on your next session to keep making progress.

Who Corrective Exercise Coaching Is For

Corrective exercise coaching in Nashville is for lifters, CrossFit athletes, and Hyrox competitors who are training hard and want to keep doing it without the same nagging issues slowing them down. It's also for people who spend most of their day at a desk and are dealing with the tight hips, a stiff upper back, and the sore shoulders that come with it.

If you have a muscle that always feels tight, one side that feels different than the other, or the same ache that keeps coming back no matter how you change your training, corrective exercise is worth looking into. You don't need to be injured to start, and it's a lot easier to address these things before they turn into an injury.

Want to find out what your body actually needs?

Explore our approach to corrective exercise → https://www.bigburdperformancesystems.com

Sources

¹ Lucett SC. The rationale for corrective exercise. In: Clark MA, Lucett SC, eds. NASM's Essentials of Corrective Exercise Training. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2011.

² Sepehri S, Sheikhhoseini R, Piri H, Sayyadi P. The effect of various therapeutic exercises on forward head posture, rounded shoulder, and hyperkyphosis among people with upper crossed syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Musculoskelet Disord. 2024;25(1):105. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10832142/

³ Kuszewski M, Gnat R, Saulicz E. Stability training of the lumbo-pelvo-hip complex influence stiffness of the hamstrings: a preliminary study. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2009;19(2):260-266. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2008.00793.x