Whether you are a Chiropractor, Physical Therapist or Fitness Professional, one of the most important tools you have is your ability to assess human movement. From the overhead squat to the step up, each of us probably has our favorite, or go-to, assessment techniques that we perform on all patients or clients.
As we consider the most appropriate assessment techniques for demonstrating instability or compensation patterns, how much do we consider function?
As we look closer at the movement assessments that we perform daily, I challenge you to consider how functional each assessment really is to your patient or client’s activities of daily living (ADLs) and/or occupation.
One movement assessment that I perform more than any other technique is the walking gait assessment. I believe the walking gait assessment to be the most functional of all assessments – and it can reveal the instability and compensation patterns that patients and clients are performing 8,000 times a day! A squat assessment can demonstrate dysfunction in joint mobility and stability but can it assess the way the body will react to impact forces and how efficiently load will be transferred? No.
Most injuries that we see, whether they are in the foot, the knee or the lower back, are related to stability and control as it relates to impact forces and energy transfer.
This means, that as we consider movement assessments, we must also consider an assessment technique that is more dynamic and transferrable to the most common activity we do everyday – walking!
Workshop Outline: |
Join EBFA in our newest workshop – Foot Strike & Functional Movement: Human Gait Assessment – and learn the basics of the human gait cycle, walking gait assessment and corrective exercise programming.
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