If you are interested in functional movement screening or rehabilitation progressions for yourself or others please contact our office.

In his book, Movement, Gray Cook wrote, "If movement is dysfunctional, all things built on that dysfunction might be flawed, compromised or predisposed to risk even if disguised by acceptable levels of skill or performance.  Poor movement patterns demonstrate increased injury risk with activity, but good movement patterns don't guarantee reduced injury risk.  Once fundamental movement is managed, other factors like strength, endurance, coordination and acquisition of skill also play a role in prevention.  Movement comes first."

The screening tests he details in Movement are also available on the web in outline.  They permit us to identify and rate fundamental problems and recheck later to determine whether our corrections were effective before moving foreword in our training.  Injuries can be prevented and performance enhanced by correcting dysfunction.

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(Two of my favorite sources of evidence based prevention and rehabilitation planning are: Effective Functional Progressions in Sport Rehabilitation by Todd Ellenbecker and Movement Functional Movement Systems: Screening, Assessment and Corrective Strategies by Gray Cook.  Although I find both valuable, I recommend Ellenbecker's book to most DCs, PTs and trainers as it covers more useful material and costs less.)

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Movement screening goes beyond just looking at range of motion and strength in that effective movement requires motor control including "...stability, balance, postural control, coordination and perception". One of the main causes of movement dysfunction is compensation. Compensation is a basic function in life. If we are unable to perform an activity normally, we try another strategy to get the job done. This serves us well when we have no other options. The problem arises when we compensate for weakness or lack of skill that should be trained or developed as a base or properly rehabilitated.

An example I frequently encounter in my office is a pattern resulting from a previous low back pain incident.  Low back pain inhibits the deep abdominal and deep low back stabilizer muscles while tightening and shortening the hip flexors and erector spinae muscles.  When the hip flexors are tight the gluteus muscles are weakened.  Once low back pain has created this compensatory imbalance it often fails to correct itself.  As you can imagine, you would not be able to run your fastest with that compensation and you might well develop overuse problems such as tendinitis at the hip or knee.  You can see a lot of these types of problems when observing the running form of others on the training team.

Another source of dysfunction is actually due to training.  Many sport movements are not symmetrical as in throwing, bowling or a golf swing.  This necessarily produces an imbalance and if there is no corrective training it creates a potential for performance loss or injury.

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