Every time you work out, something important is happening beneath the surface. You are either building strength that supports your body, or you are adding strength to dysfunction. There really isn’t a neutral option. Modern life has quietly created a perfect storm for muscle imbalances and poor alignment. We sit for long periods of time, we work at computers, we look down at our phones, and we move far less variably than the human body was designed to.
All of these habits slowly pull the body out of alignment, leading to forward head posture, rounded shoulders, tight hips, weak glutes, and an underactive core. When the body is out of alignment, joints are forced to move in ways they were never designed to, and over time this leads to pain, breakdown, and premature wear and tear that often gets mislabeled as “just aging.”
The issue isn’t exercise itself— it’s how we exercise. Many people assume they need to do corrective exercises separately, see a physical therapist, and then go work out afterward. But in reality, you don’t need two different systems. You don’t need endless rehab before you’re “allowed” to strength train. What you need is a way of training that addresses the imbalances created by modern life. If your body is already misaligned and you load it with weight while moving in poor patterns, all you are doing is reinforcing those patterns. You are quite literally adding strength to dysfunction. Strength built on dysfunction doesn’t protect your joints; it accelerates breakdown.
One of the biggest problems today is that most people are extremely front-side dominant. The muscles on the backside of the body—the posterior chain—are weak, underused, and neglected. This includes the glutes, hamstrings, upper and mid-back muscles, and the deep stabilizing muscles of the core. When these muscles aren’t doing their job, other muscles and joints are forced to compensate. The knees, hips, shoulders, and low back end up absorbing forces they were never meant to handle. Over time, this shows up as poor posture, inefficient movement patterns, chronic aches and pains, and joints wearing down far sooner than they should.
When strength training is done correctly, it doesn’t just make you stronger—it actively pulls the body back into alignment. Functional, well-designed movements reinforce proper joint positioning, restore balance between opposing muscle groups, and retrain the body to move efficiently again. Instead of isolating muscles in ways that don’t translate to real life, this style of training works the body as an integrated system. It strengthens what is weak, supports what is overworked, and teaches the body how to move with control and stability.
This is why the way I strength train looks different from what most people are used to seeing. My movements are functional and inherently corrective. They are designed to address the muscles that modern life weakens and neglects, while improving posture, alignment, and joint integrity at the same time. My goal is to build strength that serves me both now and decades from now.
I want to be here for a good time and a long time. When joints wear out, it becomes harder to do the things you love—whether that’s exercising, traveling, playing with your kids, or simply moving through daily life without pain. While some aging is inevitable, poor alignment and dysfunctional movement dramatically speed up the wear-and-tear process. When the body is aligned, muscles do the work they are meant to do, joints share load properly, and movement feels stronger, smoother, and more resilient. That’s the kind of strength that doesn’t just change how you look— it protects your body for life.
