We were hosting the Myokinematic Restoration course from the Postural Restoration Institute at Endeavor this past weekend. Other than the learning experience in itself, it’s always fun to attend those events to connect with new people and hang out with like-minded people. The added bonus this time, since we were hosting the event, is that there was no traveling!
For those not familiar with the PRI concept, their basic philosophy is that the human body is asymmetrical because we have a heart on the left, liver on the right, larger diaphragm on the right, and more lobes in the right lung than the left, just to name a few things. These characteristics change the orientation of our spine, pelvis, ribcage, as well as our limbs.
I have taken 2 home study course from PRI before, but it was my first time attending a live event. I must say that the live event blows the home study course out of the water! Everything makes a lot more sense, and you have actual lab time to practice the assessments protocols and corrective techniques.
That being said, here are some take home points from the weekend:
- We need to stop thinking of muscles as singular plane movers. Most muscles, especially the ones around the hips, have a tri-planar component. For example, the adductor group has an influence on the hip in the frontal plane (adduction), but also in the sagital plane (flexion and extension), and the transverse plane (medial and lateral rotation). It’s not necessarily a prime mover in all 3 planes, but it clearly has an effect on the hips. It’s the same for many other muscles.
- All corrective strategies in the presence of an imbalance or a limitation start with proper positioning. No matter what the issue is (lack of hip rotation, lack of shoulder rotation, limited t-spine mobility, etc) you can’t know if that is truly the problem until you’ve repositioned your client in a neutral position. For example, the left pelvis could be forwardly rotated, which would restrict the internal rotation of the femur. So if you test the seated IR of your client and it seems restricted you might be tempted to just crank on the stretching. If the client is repositioned in a neutral alignment, and then you re-test him, you might find that the internal rotation deficit just disappeared. This is why repositioning is important before prescribing anything else.
- According to the PRI school of thoughts, everyone is asymmetrically built the same way. That doesn’t mean that everyone should be treated the same way. Why? Because not everybody compensates the same way. Assess, correct, re-assess and see if anything improved. If not, change your corrective strategy.
- The posterior fibers of the glute medius externally rotate the femur. The anterior fibers of the glute medius internally rotate the femur.
- The left AIC (anterior interior chain) is what is referred to as the most common compensation pattern. In a left AIC, the left pelvis is rotated forward, the left femur is externally rotated and abducted, the right femur is internally rotated and adducted, the weight is shifted on the right leg, and the lumbar spine is rotated to the right. Watch for these common findings in clients and athletes.
- The most common injuries in left AIC people that are non-pathological (with no ligament laxity) are: right SI joint pain/strain, hip bursitis, tibial stress fracture and shin splints, hip impingement syndrome (posterior on the left, anterior/medial on the right), pubalgia, hamstring pull (more common on the left), and anterior knee pain (more common on the right).
- The posterior hip capsule (mostly on the left side) often gets very stiff. It might often be problematic when trying to reposition the pelvis. Make sure to include a posterior capsule stretch in the corrective program if that is the case.
- People who live in extension (hyperextended back) have a hard time getting all their air out when breathing. That is mainly because the diaphragm is in a disadvantageous position to eccentrically contract (exhalation phase) properly. When breathing out the ribs should come down to allow optimal eccentric contraction of the diaphragm. With people in hyperextension this just doesn’t happen because their ribs are flared out in the front, and it becomes impossible for them to come down. If you have a hard time understanding what I’m trying to explain, check out the video below, and look at the movement of the diaphragm and the ribs during the exhalation phase.
All in all, this course was really good, and I learned a ton, even after taking the same home study course 2 years ago. I would highly recommend it to anyone involved in training, or rehab. It’s great information that will put you ahead of the curve!
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When assessing the active straight leg raise in the FMS, it’s not uncommon to find a side-to-side discrepancy. Usually, following the FMS correctives will clear this imbalance within a couple of sessions.
Even though you might think that simply stretching the hamstring on the “tight” side is the answer, a lot of times it’s not. Especially if you see the left side being the restricted one.
Let me explain.
If your pelvis is anteriorly rotated on one side, that puts your hamstring of that same side on constant stretch.
Notice on the left what happens to the hamstring when the pelvis is rotated forward. It puts it on a constant stretch versus the image on the right where the pelvis is in a more neutral position.
If you take a person with an anteriorly rotated pelvis through the ASLR, the side of the rotated pelvis will create the illusion that the ASLR is asymmetrical, and you might think that the hamstring on that side is tight when in fact it’s probably longer; it’s just on stretch right off the bat when doing the ASLR which will make the leg stop sooner and it will look restricted.
If you don’t know that, you might hammer the hamstring flexibility exercises and the corrective drills until you get a symmetrical result. But in fact, what you will have done is over lengthen and over stretch the hamstring on that side, while still having an asymmetrical pelvis, and THAT might cause further problem down the stretch.
And the reason why I mentioned the left side being more restricted than the right one, you may ask?
According to the PRI philosophy, every human being is asymmetrical in the same way because we are all built the same way; we all have a heart on the left and a liver on the right which affects the shape and the positioning of the diaphragms (yes, we have 2), and this impacts the orientation of the ribcage, the hips, and the shoulders. Because of that, you often find the left pelvis being anteriorly rotated and the right one being posteriorly rotated.
People are affected to different degrees with this asymmetry, but if you find a discrepancy in the ASLR with the left side being significantly more restricted than the right, make sure you further assess to make sure where the problem truly originates.
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With the rising popularity of Dr. Stuart McGill and his work on the lumbar spine in the health and fitness community, people have started to understand that excessive lumbar motion leads to injuries. The extent of his research (which he has been leading for years) have given all of us a better understanding of the spine, how it works, how it should move, and what leads to injuries.
This is a MUST read. Period.
Like many other things in the fitness business, it caused an overreaction. We started avoiding movement at the lumbar spine at any cost. We started to focus on the hips and the thoracic spine as the places to improve mobility, which I’m not going to say it’s a bad thing because that is exactly what most people need; more mobility in the t-spine and the hips.
This overreaction, though, caused us to ignore that there is a certain degree of movement that is normal to have at the lumbar spine.
As you can see in the chart, although the biggest potential for rotation is at the thoracic spine, the lumbar spine still have a couple of degrees of rotation. The same thing applies for flexion and extension.
To better understand the reason to why we actually need range of motion at the lumbar spine I’ll refer to the pendulum theory that Charlie Weingroff introduced a little while ago. To quote Charlie:
“So every joint has a core and it has a neutral that is decided just like a pendulum. It has to know that the stiffness properties allows it to go all the way to the left, right, front, back, etc., so it can rest with no effort in the middle, the position of optimal force transfer.
The clinical application is that the spine’s neutral is a function of full flexion, full extension, full side bending, and full rotation. Then and only then does the core have it’s premiere chance to do as little work as possible for segmental stabilization, and the phasic lumbar muscles can pick up the bracing slack to handle huge loads and force transfers.
If you don’t have yoga-ish mobility, the middle is always off-center, and the local stabilizers (of any joint system) aren’t triggered ideally via the brain getting “wrong” feedback from the joint receptors (…)”
What this means is simply that if your body doesn’t have a proper “neutral”, everything is going to be affected, compensation takes over, and injuries eventually happen.
Even if the goal should always be to lift weights and reinforce proper movement pattern with a perfectly neutral spine, it doesn’t mean that you’re body shouldn’t “own” that range of motion at the lumbar spine.
My personal story is a pretty interesting one in this regard. Since reading the work of Dr. McGill years ago I became a strong advocate in limiting motion at the lumbar spine. When I say I was doing everything with a neutral spine, I mean everything: sitting, brushing my teeth, tying my shoes, and even putting socks on in the morning! Have you ever tried putting socks on in the morning without allowing any sort of lumbar flexion? Trust me it’s not that easy! But I was doing it!
Not quite like this, but that far off!
I was also getting pretty strong for my height and my body structure, I was deadlifting a decent amount of weight and I never allowed myself to have anything less than perfect form on every single rep I was doing.
About 2 years ago, I started to get a little less zealous about the whole neutral spine thing in my everyday life. A couple of months later, I was brushing my teeth in the morning and as I was bending over to spit in the sink I felt a sharp pain go through my right lower back just above my right SI joint. A couple hours later, I couldn’t bend over at all, and I mean not at all. Even breaking at the hips slightly to grab a glass from the kitchen table was impossible. The pain started to go away after 3-4 days, but my back bothered me for a couple of weeks. And weirdly enough, a similar event happened about 8 months later.
It’s only when I learned about the SFMA, the pendulum theory and other philosophies along the same line that I realized that my lumbar spine wasn’t flexing at all, which was later confirmed to me by a good friend of mine who’s an enlightened physical therapist.
I’ve been working on my lumbar flexion more recently and making sure my toe touch, as per the SFMA, stays intact and turns out my back has been feeling much better.
That doesn’t mean I’m doing silly stuff like stiff-legged deadlift with a rounded back, or crunches and sit-ups, but I’m doing isolated mobility exercises that don’t involve any type of loading to make sure that my pendulum is in the right “neutral” position.
Do you ever assess for lumbar range of motion? You might be surprised at what you’ll find.
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“Every non-traumatic (non-contact) injury is preventable”
I didn’t say it.
Shirley Sahrmann said it.
Other than contact-based injuries, all other injuries are preventable.
A lot of people believe that injuries happen because you did “something wrong”. Although they’re not completely wrong, that thing that you did wrong is not at the source of the injury.
Let me explain…
Injuries originate from something going wrong in your body, whether it’s a dysfunctional movement pattern, an asymmetry, a structural problem, or just an overuse of the tissues or the joints.
If you move like this, and end tearing your ACL it’s not because of ONE THING you did wrong
Any movement that you do that affects the area of dysfunction adds a little more stress to the joint or tissue in question, or often times on a different area of the body that’s trying to compensate for that said dysfunction. Every time you train, practice, play your sport or do any activity, it adds a little more insult to the joint or tissue in question.
As my good friend Kevin Neeld would say, you can think of it as drops of water in a bucket- the bucket being your injury threshold. If you’re carrying a dysfunction, any activity or movement is going to be another drop of water in the bucket. At the very moment you’re doing something wrong, or not moving the right way it’s not going to hurt you; just like one drop of water in a bucket won’t do anything. But what happens if you keep adding more and more drops of water over the weeks, months and even years? Well, depending on how big your bucket is (which is different for everyone), eventually water will spill. That’s when you cross the injury threshold and actually get hurt!
The dysfunction has been there the whole time, but because you didn’t do anything about it, wear and tear just accumulated until the joint or the tissue being stressed just gave out.
That’s why injury prevention strategies are so important. And that’s why assessing for limitations and asymmetries is even more important. You want to identify the potential issues early on.
You don’t want to just let the water drops accumulate until it’s too late.
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Being a strength and conditioning coach or a personal trainer requires many qualities. One of them is the ability to pay attention to details. When coaching exercises, there are many different body positions and subtleties in movements that one needs to be aware of. Just demoing the exercises and throwing a couple coaching cues up in the air is usually not enough to get the result we want from our athletes and clients.
A coach (or trainer) needs to be able to identify and understand the subtleties in the different movement patterns to be able to coach the exercises in the most optimal way possible. Here are some of the subtleties that a coach needs to be able to distinguish and correct (in no specific order):
1. Thoracic Spine Extension vs Thoraco-Lumbar (T-L) Junction Extension
I covered that in a previous blog post, but the “chest up” cue is not always interpreted the right way by the athlete or client. Basically what we want to see when calling “chest up” is an extension at the thoracic spine so that the athlete maintains a more neutral spine. Often times, the extension will come from the T-L junction which will put more stress on the lower back, will cause the anterior lower ribs to flare out and put the diaphragm in a less than optimal position. That pretty subtle substitution will too often go unnoticed if the athlete is wearing a loose shirt.
Barely noticeable T-L junction hyperextension because of a loose shirt
2. Hip Flexion Compensation
In most athletes the psoas ends up being the weakest hip flexor. The reason being that it is the only hip flexor effective above 90 degrees of hip flexion. In most athletic endeavors the hip ends up being flexed above 90 degrees rarely, if ever; that in turn causes a higher recruitment of the 2 other main hip flexors, the TFL and the rectus femoris, and the psoas ends up weak. It is a good idea to include psoas activation exercises in a training program to re-establish hip flexor strength in the end range of motion. When doing these drills, athletes will be tempted to compensate because they are pretty weak in that position. The seated psoas lift is one of my favorite psoas activation drill, but can be cheated pretty easily if not coached properly.
Often times, athletes will either lean back or hunch over to try to get the knee up as high as possible. But in both situations, you’re really avoiding the above 90 degrees end range of motion; the angle of the hip flexion will be less than 90, and therefore you’re not getting that psoas activation you’re going after.
Bad Form- Leaning back will prevent your hip flexion to be above 90 degrees
Bad Form- Rounding of the lower back will also avoid that end range of motion
The same problem can occur if you perform a standing psoas hold, or any other type of exercise of that nature.
3. Full Hip Extension Compensation
The complete hip extension is definitely something important in many different exercises that are part of a training program. An incomplete hip extension can expose some pretty serious problem going on around the hips. Whether the problem is caused by a hip flexor restriction, a lack of glute activation or just poor coaching, this is a problem that a coach needs to be aware of to be able to prevent injuries with his athletes. This is another movement that can be very subtle and if you don’t pay attention to it can be missed altogether. The incomplete hip extension can present in a wide variety of different movements, with posterior chain exercises (deadlift variations, pullthrough, slideboard hamstring curls, etc) being some of the most important ones. An athlete not being able to finish his movement at the top with full hip extension will usually compensate with a hyperextension at the lower back.
Again, if no attention to details are paid during a deadlift (or just from coaching from different angle) this is something that can easily be missed.
4. Scapular Protraction vs Elbow Extension
This is something even more subtle. The correct technique for pressing exercises is to keep the scapulae packed back together. If unable to get a full elbow extension, the athlete might compensate by protracting the shoulder blades to get the end range of motion at the top.
Good Form- The shoulder blades stay packed back while getting full elbow extension
Bad Form- Protracted shoulders compensating for incomplete elbow extension
The biggest problem I see with this compensation pattern is for the following reps; if you’ve lost your packed scapulae position, when going for the next rep your shoulders are not going to be in a stable position to press a heavy weight anymore. That can in turn have deleterious effects on the shoulders.
5. Feet Position
This is one that will go unnoticed more often than not. One of the main reasons is that the shoes your athletes are wearing might simply hide what’s going on at the foot and ankle. During lower body exercises like squats, deadlifts, lunges and the like a lot can happen at the foot that might be detrimental to an athlete’s health because it will either cause problems further up the chain, or it might be in itself the result of a problem going on somewhere else. An overpronation, or a loss of the arch of the foot are good examples.
Relatively neutral feet in the bottom of the squat
Feet overpronating at the bottom of the squat
In this last picture, it is easy to realize that it is something that be completely missed when the athlete is wearing shoes. (As a side note, I am not necessarily recommending that people squat without shoes on, but it clearly reveals a problem that might have otherwise been missed.)
This is really just a quick list of some of the most subtle body positions and compensated movement patterns you can see in athletes and clients. Paying careful attention to details is such an important part of a coach or a trainer’s job because in the end, it plays an extremely important part of the injury prevention component of an effective training program.
I’ve had a couple people come up to me recently with a nagging shoulder pain. One of them was one of the baseball pitchers that I train during the summer who’s now in College. He’s had a nagging pain in his throwing shoulder for the past couple of months that’s preventing him from pitching at the same intensity as he used to, and now he’s freaking out because the baseball season is starting in a couple of weeks. The second is a good friend of mine who’s into the Crossfit thing and he was telling me one of his shoulder has been bothering him for a little bit. They both had pain in their shoulder with either the shoulder clearing test from the FMS (baseball player) or the empty can test (Crossfit guy).
The Empty Can Test
A quick assessment of their range of motion around the shoulder showed an internal rotation deficit in the painful shoulder for both of them. Shoulder extension wasn’t too bad in both cases and t-spine ROM was lacking a little bit in the Crossfit guy.
Instead of cranking on their range of motion and possibly forcing something that’s not there (and possibly originates somewhere else), I gave them 2 simple breathing exercises that I learned from the Postural Restoration Institute to re-establish proper diaphragm function, as well as ribs, thorax and scapulae positioning. I also gave my Crossfit buddy a t-spine mobility and scapular stabilizer drill do to because his posture was not great.
The positioning of the diaphragm can affect all the surrounding structures
After only 5 minutes, both of them had an increased internal rotation range of motion in the painful shoulder; and I did absolutely no stretching or soft-tissue work whatsoever. And even more importantly, their shoulder pain wasn’t there anymore with neither the FMS shoulder clearing test or the empty can test!
This is how important proper breathing patterns and diaphragm function are. It can affect the way your shoulder, your pelvis and everything around them is positioned. Before forcing range of motion and hammering the soft-tissue work, make sure your athletes and clients are breathing right!
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I recently came across the Baby GetUp through my good friend Dr. Perry Nickelston. When I heard him talk about it, what he used it for and the benefits from this exercise I was thinking to myself: “Hey I’m gonna give it a shot; it sounds like a nice corrective exercise to include in a training program to help develop proper muscle sequencing and reinforce a good fundamental movement pattern”. The Baby GetUp can indeed help you in that regard, but HOLLY SH*T I wasn’t expecting what I was about to experience! I wouldn’t even say it was hard; I literally couldn’t even do it!!
As someone who takes care about how my body moves and with the time I spend on corrective exercises I wasn’t expecting to be slapped in the face by the Baby GetUp like I did! The name of the exercise itself suggest an easier version of the Turkish GetUp. A ‘regression’ of the Turkish GetUp would be a better term, because it might look simpler, but it doesn’t mean it’s easier. This is the video from Dr. Perry that demonstrate the Baby GetUp:
You’re probably telling yourself it really doesn’t look that hard. And you’ll most likely be able to perform it more easily than I did, but I’m sure you’ll be surprised by the level of difficulty of the exercise on AT LEAST one side of your body.
In fact, this is a great way to identify asymmetries from side to side in inner core muscle sequencing. When trying the Baby GetUp, make sure that you’re not cheating by reaching with your neck, getting your top leg off the floor and holding your breathe in. This should be a movement pattern that feels (or becomes) ‘nice and smooth’ to perform. It is a fundamental movement pattern, and if you don’t own it, your setting yourself up for compensation movement patterns, and injury in the long run.
I know what I’m gonna be working on in the next couple of weeks!
For an in depth look at the Baby GetUp, check out Perry’s original article on his website HERE.
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I blogged quite a bit recently about the importance of breathing patterns in posture, muscle tone, optimal movement patterns, injury prevention and cardiovascular functions. If breathing patterns aren’t optimal, it’s important to train them, or re-train them to make sure your diaphragm functions optimally for all of the reasons above. Efficient breathing pattern means an adequate use of your diaphragm muscles (yes, you have two), and them functioning optimally is of utmost importance.
But do you know how to identify faulty breathing patterns in the first place?
There are many different ways to assess breathing patterns, some more advanced than others. Here are simple ways to identify faulty breathing patterns:
1. Neck muscles’ hypertonicity. When someone has faulty breathing habits, he will tend to “breathe more through his chest than through his belly”. Breathing through your chest will make your shoulders go up and down every time you breathe and it will put a lot of stress on your neck muscles. If you have a client who present with hypertonic neck muscles, it might be because of faulty breathing pattern. This tension in those neck muscles can also lead to pretty severe headaches, as well.
Hypertonic sternocleidomastoid. Could be the sign of a chest breather
2. Shoulder protraction. As I just mentioned in the previous point, a chest breather will put a lot of strain on his neck and shoulder muscles as well. Assessing the resting posture of the shoulders, as well as how they move when the person breathe (looking for significant up and down motion) can help identify faulty breathing patterns. A chest breather will have his shoulders sitting higher (sort of shrugged up) and protracted because of the use of the wrong muscles to breathe.
Posture looks better on the right. But both present with protracted shoulders which could be sign of faulty breathing patterns.
3. Rib flare. This is a really easy thing to identify: simply put the client on his back, ask him to pull his shirt up a little bit, and notice the position of his lower ribs. If they are flaring out it is most definitely a sign of faulty breathing pattern.
This is a rib flare.
……not to be confused with a Rick Flair.
4. Hyperextension at the thoraco-lumbar (T-L) junction. This one goes hand-in-hand with the previous point on the rib flare. If there is indeed a rib flare, chances are that there will also be a hyperextension at the T-L junction. This can be caused by a faulty breathing pattern, as well as a lack of appropriate thoracic spine mobility. People often compensate for a lack of t-spine extension with hyperextension at the T-L segment.
Notice the T-L junction hyperextension
This is some of the stuff that I got from Dr. Jeff Cubos’ presentation in Muscle Imbalances Revealed – Upper Body. That is a resource with great information, and if you’re interested in learning more about breathing patterns, how to assess for them and how to re-train them properly. You can get it by clicking on the link below:
I’ve been blogging quite a bit recently about the FMS and the importance of screening for dysfunctional movement patterns, and fixing them. As I’ve mentioned before, the FMS is probably the easiest tool in that regard because it gives an easy-to-follow, step-by-step assessment where you can easily score your athletes and fix the faulty movement pattern by applying the appropriate corrective exercises. After a week or two of corrective strategies, you re-screen and see if they improved.
But what if the corrections don’t fix your athlete or client? There might be a couple different reasons for that. The 3 most common would be:
Inappropriate corrective exercise selection
Incorrect or faulty performance of the corrective exercises
Incorrect scoring from the evaluator of the athlete or client
These should be the top 3 reasons to be considered if a movement pattern doesn’t improve. Sometimes however, the athlete will be screened correctly, given the right corrective exercises and they’ll perform them properly, but the assessment result will still tell you that the movement pattern didn’t improve. How is that possible?
One thing to consider is the recruitment patterns during high threshold activities. Let me explain…
A dysfunctional movement pattern may arise from a mobility (or flexibility) problem, a stability problem, or a motor control dysfunction. In any of these cases your body has engrained some motor patterns when you move, whether it is when you run, jump, walk, lift weights, etc. The functional movement assessment will allow to get rid of those compensation patterns.
Anyone surprised that I found this image on a Crossfit website?
But if you keep pushing your body to the limit (high threshold activities) while trying to correct a dysfunctional movement pattern, you might be wasting your time. Your body will always follow the path of least resistance when confronted to a high threshold or max effort activity, which is where the dysfunction will keep being encouraged. If you’re trying to re-train a movement pattern, it’s not a good idea to train in that max effort zone, especially with conflicting movement patterns. You’re not giving your body a chance to adjust and get used to the new movement pattern you’re trying to improve. Your body will always get back to what’s easier when facing a high demand task.
That’s why it’s smart, even necessary, to back off the training intensity for a little bit while you re-train a correct movement pattern. After a week or two you can start reinforcing that new, more efficient movement pattern with lifting exercises and progressive loads, and higher demand activities, because let’s face it: your body will keep facing high threshold demands in training, sports and in everyday life. But it is important to gradually return to that point if you want to maintain the effect of the corrective work you’ve been doing. It doesn’t mean discontinuing all activities and training to focus solely on corrective exercises. It just means to avoid conflicting movement patterns (someone should avoid heavy squatting for a while if he’s trying to correct his deep squat pattern, or avoid max effort bench pressing if trying to improve shoulder mobility). It’s just about being smart about it, and knowing what exercises or activities could impair your corrective strategy efforts, and lowering the intensity or removing them from your routine for a couple of weeks while you fix your dysfunctional movement patterns.
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I’m referring to movement assessment as one that assesses the way to body moves and how you can use such an assessment to identify possible injury risk factors. The Functional Movement Screen is probably one of the most popular ones out there, and for a reason. It is a system that has been proven very effective. You test a movement pattern; if it’s dysfunctional or asymmetrical, you give the corrective drills. And then you retest. Simple enough, right? And if implemented the right way it is an invaluable tool that works to reduce the incidence of injuries, plain and simple.
But other than just screening movement patterns to help prevent injuries, the FMS might be seen in a bigger picture of the health and performance continuum…or should I say ‘should be seen’. I don’t think that many people in the strength and conditioning and athletic training community even know about the FMS. A couple of pro teams and colleges have actually started using it in different teams, but that’s about it.
Let me explain what I’m talking about when I say the FMS should be included in the bigger picture. The basic evaluation in pretty much any setting whether you’re dealing with pro athletes or just recreational athletes, is the physical. Everyone needs to pass a physical before engaging in an activity, and athletes usually need to get at least one every year to make sure they don’t have physical or physiological restrictions that could limit their performance or be dangerous to their health (e.g. cardiovascular problems, respiratory problems, joint problems, etc).
There is also another type of evaluation that usually goes on with athletes of different levels, and it’s the performance testing. Teams want to collect measurements of strength, speed, power and conditioning levels of their athletes (e.g. lifting tests, jumping tests, sprint tests, etc). And this is understandable because it is a good way to determine the level of fitness of each player on the team, and it can also serve as a basis of comparison between players.
But when you think of each step of the evaluation process, you can clearly find holes in that continuum. Athletes first get a physical to clear any disease or incapacitating condition, and then….right on to the performance testing. Is it me or there is something between the two that’s clearly missing? If you think about it for a second, wouldn’t it make sense to assess the way an athlete move before throwing him under the bus with max intensity performance tests? What if an athlete has major knee valgus during knee flexion? It is a position that puts your knees at risk for a serious injury…and we’re going to throw him under a 405 pounds bar to attempt a max squat, without any consideration for the very high risk of injury related to the way this athlete moves?
Perfect.
Including movement based assessments in the health/performance evaluation protocol only makes sense to me. But it shouldn’t be limited to a couple individuals who know the FMS and are willing to implement it on their own; it should become a staple, a part of the process, just like the physical and just like the performance tests.
The problem then becomes: how do we go about this?
Food for thought.
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