Is it possible to have too much flexibility?

Often has health and fitness professionals we encounter people with pain, stiffness, and tightness.

One of the go-to techniques is to give our patients or clients stretching or mobility exercises to address this, but what about those clients that have too much flexibility.

Flexibility like everything we work with needs to be in the goldilocks zone...just right.

Too little flexibility can result in difficulty expressing movement effectively. Too much flexibility can result in an individual who might not have the strength and control to look after this range of motion effectively.

That's why at Movement Assessment Technologies we use the latest evidence-based testing on The MAT to measure our patients and clients in how they move so that we know exactly whether they need more flexibility, more strength, more balance etc to be able to feel better, move better or perform better.

Make sure you're not guessing with the people you work with....

Here we have an ACL reconstruction rehabilitation case performing anterior hop testing for the first time approximately 12 weeks post-surgery.

As we can see massive discrepancies from side to side which is particularly amplified following a running fatigue protocol to make these test findings more authentic.

Want to know a simple trick to get down to the root cause of every patient and clients complaint?

5 Whys is an interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a problem by repeating the question "Why?". Each answer forms the basis of the next question.

When used with our patients and clients it moves us away from the symptoms and toward the physical and behavioral issues that we need to address to help individuals achieve their goals.

The Star Excursion Balance Test has been one of our favourite tests at Movement Assessment Technologies for a long time. It's a major reason why we developed The MAT in the first place to make the use of this test easy and accessible to professionals around the world.

Other variations of reaching tests are found in the literature to assess trunk and upper limb function. These include the Star Excursion Sitting Test as described by López-Plaza et al 2018 in their research using this test to assess trunk and postural control while sitting.

Their findings:
The SEST is a reliable field protocol to measure postural control. It provides trunk postural control measures with reduced influence of the lower-limbs which may be useful when wanting to isolate the trunk or working with individuals with lower limb pain or injury.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29783068

Are you using the latest evidence-based testing with your patients and clients? Do you set baselines, track their...

At the Movement Assessment Technologies we always assess movement function top to toe, especially the big toe.

Often as health and fitness professionals, we neglect the importance of proper foot and toe function. These are areas hidden away in our shoes that just provide something for us to stand on.

The foot itself is similar in structure and just as complicated as our hands. We spend the majority of our day covering them in rigid, sensory deprivation chambers called shoes which could be comparative to wearing mittens on your hands. Ask yourself how dexterous your hands would be in this scenario. It makes sense then that feet can be such a common location for dysfunction. 

This is particularly true for the big toe which doesn't receive the adequate extension stress it needs to perform its job as the driver of the foot's windlass mechanism and act efficiently as the last part of the body to touch the ground in walking.

If you have a patient or...

At the Movement Assessment Technologies, we are big believers that when it comes to upright function against gravity and ground reaction force there is no such thing at Antagonist and Agonist muscles. Just Synergists, that is the whole body working together to achieve the movement goal.

The following study by Rand and Ohtsuki (2000; Gait and Posture) looking at lateral movement in the all important Frontal Plane of motion using a visual stimulus condition-open maneuver (STO), visual stimulus condition-cross maneuver (STC), self-initiated condition-open maneuver (SFO), and self-initiated condition-cross maneuver (SFC). The subjects also performed a condition of straight running (CON) and a condition of running modification to stop (STF) as control conditions.

EMG signals were recorded from them. vastus medialis (VM), m. gastrocnemius (lateralis) (G), m. gluteus medius (anterior portion) (GM) and m. sartorius (SAR).

As demonstrated by the following picture the...

The following picture shows intradiscal pressure as a percentage of standing in many common positions adopted in the gym and activities of daily living.

At the Movement Assessment Technologies, we always want to consider how starting position and load variables can influence stress throughout the kinematic system. This is particularly important for patients or clients suffering from discogenic pathology as we try to rehabilitate and condition them in spite of there symptoms. The key is understanding how these variables load and unload certain structures creating advantage and disadvantage.

If you would like to learn more on how changing position can change movement check out some of the Movement Assessment Technologies learning opportunities at: https://www.matassessment.com/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11450876

This picture may be a bit confronting for some of our female followers (maybe some of the guys too).

The feet are sometimes described as the switch that turn on the rest of the body particularly in upright function. Often how they operate under ground reaction force is key in determining how successful the rest of the lower limb can be in function.

As we can see high heels position the foot anatomy in an incredibly abnormal position. Not only are metatarsal phalangeal joints put under extreme extension stress, the talo crural joint is held in a plantar flexed position limiting it's ability to dorsi flex and inhibiting the posterior shank muscles from being able to perform their role in eccentrically decelerating the lower limb in contact with the ground potentiating greater stress up the chain

Functional training can divide many trainers and S&C professionals. Some will believe it has it's place while other may think it's a waste of time that not only doesn't get any results, but often make you look stupid too.

At the MAT assessment group we know there is no such thing as stupid movements, just poorly allocated ones.

This graph shows the inverse relationship between load and instability. Load amplifies the effects of gravity and provides resistance to stimulate increased strength capacity in movement. Instability (doesn't mean just bosu ball, can mean single leg, angular variations etc) creates a different environment in which we pattern movement, usually making our ability to apply load through the ground more of a challenge. As load increases so does our need to have a more stable ability to load through the ground against resistance. The more stability we take away the less load we will be able to successfully control and transform. Each position on...