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...

- ACL injuries do not always require immediate surgery. It is a major decision with many pros and cons.
- Surgery is not the only factor that needs to be considered, as the rehabilitation after surgery lasts a number of months and may take up to a year or longer to make a full recovery.
- Often the initial period post ACL reconstruction is one of the most important times for our patients and clients.
- One of the biggest problems is that often ACL rehabilitation can be too conservative, too long in protective braces, not enough flexibility and strength work, overprotective management plans.
- It is important to have objective testing criteria to measure the ACL reconstruction rehab journey from start to finish to make sure that your clients are working the right exercises, at the right intensity, at the right time to guarantee the best possible outcomes.
- At MAT, we teach the latest evidence-based tests that are essential for managing good ACL outcomes (weight bearing lunge test, start...

- Pain is a multifactorial experience from the brain in response to a threat. It’s supposed to help and inspire us to take action to remove ourselves from the threat.
- Our role as health and fitness professionals is obviously to decrease that threat and help people.
- What we need to do is help people understand pain to try and reduce the threat, and that’s where we can work on what people think through better pain education as well as work on what people can do to work towards what they can't do.
- One of the processes that we teach in the MAT Level 1 course is being able to identify what people can do through a strategic framework of assessments and 10 movement variables so we can progress towards what our patients and clients can't do.
- This is another form of Graded Exposure, gradually increasing the tolerance of our patients and clients to certain pain, movements or situations and is particularly applicable in chronic pain cases.
- Over time this approach builds other...

Are you using a “WOW” assessment? In this video, Andrew breaks down the importance of “WOW” assessment in answering the unknown and to determine the treatment:

- At MAT we believe a “WOW” assessment is an integral part in helping to engage your patients/clients better and really help push them forward to get amazing health and fitness outcomes.

- Patient expectation in health care continues to increase and this is something that needs to be managed adequately in order to improve patient buy-in.

- Often by selecting an objective test that reveals a tangible limitation or imbalance from side to side this can be a “WOW” moment that really illustrates the clinical story you are trying to educate the patient in front of you with.

- Pick your test based on your experience and the patient presentation. Some example of tests are Flexibility Tests (Eg: WBLT, Spinal Rotation on the MAT), Balance Tests (Eg: SEBT on the MAT), Strength Tests...

Is manual therapy dead? Do you still use it? In this video, Andrew breaks down the importance of using a one-on-one, hands on approach.

1. Manual therapy provides a really important start point to set us up for success.

2. Patient expectation is a huge aspect when it comes to delivering healthcare and usually manual therapy fulfils some of that expectations. 

3. Though there are many explanations for how manual therapy techniques might work (breaking up scar tissue, trigger point modulation etc) we can explain most results through the phenomenon of neural modulation. Neural modulation states that we use a new input to the neurological system to effect a new output in the sensory experience. 

4. Manual therapy is important in setting us up for success in terms of providing a window of opportunity by reducing a pain or sensitisation output to then allow us to establish better movement through improving strength, movement control, movement efficiency etc for the people that...

Do you work with running injuries or help running athletes? In this video, Andrew breaks down the Movement Assessment Technologies approach to managing runners.
1. Running is one of the most common activities that give rise to overuse injuries.
2. When the time for adaptation is too short or the volume of running is too high, an overuse injury can occur.
3. Running is notorious for its high-impact repetitive nature and the high amount of ground reaction force with each step, sometimes 2-3x bodyweight.
4. Many runners develop injuries because they lack the capacity to tolerate these forces or simply do not have enough strength to tolerate 2-3x bodyweight of running force.
5. At MAT we assess the capacity of runners using objective assessments from the literature such as the Weight Bearing Lunge Test, Star Excursion Balance Test, Hop Testing as well as other Strength testing protocols.
6. This allows us to identify limitations or imbalances in the way our patients or clients move so as to...