Welcome to the
SPC Blog
We share actionable advice about pain management, injury, strength training, exercise, rehab, and how to make healthcare work for you.
The 6 Functional Exercises Tested During a Movement Assessment
A mistake in exercise programming that our team encounters is a heavy emphasis on variety in exercise, instead of movement pattern mastery. Our team does not focus on an endless array of exercises. The focus is on building depth in foundational movement patterns. These patterns make up every movement you perform when lifting. If these foundational movements are missing, advanced exercises will be wasted on poor form. You need to own the basic movements first. During the movement assessment, the 6 foundational movement patterns are assessed with 6 functional exercises from each movement pattern category. The movement assessment is where our strength coaches determine what may cause issues in your program: accountability, rehab standard, location/time, coaching need, and comfort level. The 6 functional exercises help
The 8 Reasons All HHP Clients Go Through a Movement Assessment
The Smith Performance Center team wants to be the best in the world at helping clients who want to maintain an active lifestyle. If you search the internet, this seems like a simple problem to solve. Just do this exercise or make sure to have protein after a workout. Problem solved. This has not been our experience. There is an entire area of research devoted to what behaviors keep people moving and what makes them stop. Keeping people active is not simple and there are numerous reasons why a person will stop. The purpose of the movement assessment is to figure out issues that will stop you from moving. There are clues in your history, how you move, how you hurt, and how you think
The 5 Patient Responses That Should Impact Your Physical Therapist’s Strategy
In a session, the first rule as a practitioner is to make sure we do not lie to ourselves about what’s happening, and lying to ourselves is the easiest thing to do. We can lie to ourselves when we make errors in reasoning due to a plethora of cognitive pitfalls like confirmation or optimism bias, overconfidence, or mistaken availability heuristics. This can ruin the chances of a great outcome if I only search for facts that confirm my dominant theory, or if I want the patient to have a great response so I ignore portions of the medical history that would lead me to a think of worse prognosis. These cognitive errors ‘help’ me to lie to myself. One solution is to get very clear
4 Ways Individuals With Heel Pain Can Make Their Pain Go Away
Why is your heel pain not getting better? Heel pain is a common, painful foot condition leading internet searches for “cures to heel pain” or “treatments for plantar fasciitis.” The pain resolves with time if the cause of symptoms is removed, but up to 10% of individuals with heel pain do not get better. These chronic sufferers try everything to get rid of the pain including plantar fascia releases, injections, and pain medications. The causes of heel pain are numerous, ranging from plantar tendinopathies like the flexor digitorum brevis, nerve involvement with tarsal tunnel syndromes or lateral plantar nerve, low back referrals, and double crush syndrome to fat pad injuries. The answer is not more stretching and new orthotics. If you are stuck with heel
5 Treatment Options to Reduce Knee Pain without Surgery, Injections, or Drugs
We treat intractable knee pain on a daily basis. Our process is called the PT Solutions Treatment Hierarchy. The treatment hierarchy allows our team to support the diagnosis, reduce pain, and create a clear home plan. Building a treatment framework is a critical component of the plan and it changes based on the key sign, the structural diagnosis, and the trigger management plan. For example, a person with an anterior horn meniscus lesion, we would first normalize painful end range extension of the knee. Once passive extension is pain free, we would start to load their leg with the activity that normally hurts, providing them an exercise like terminal knee extension with the band that will keep their knee extension pain free. Finally we would
The Dynamic Recursive Model of Long Term Development: A key principle in our strength training and physical therapy methodology
Why Do We Focus on Long-Term Development in Strength Training? Activity brings benefits and risks. Every step, competition, or practice is an exposure that impacts the body. The questions – how do I get better and how do I stay healthy – are part of a dynamic and constantly changing system (Figure 1). We can model that system to show how the activity, like running or playing football, impacts your next exposure. The Basics If you are a runner, you need to run. If you want to get stronger, you need to lift. If you want to be a great triathlete, you need to swim, bike, and run. If you want to shoot well during a basketball game, you have to shoot over and over.
The 6 Functional Exercises Tested During a Movement Assessment
A mistake in exercise programming that our team encounters is a heavy emphasis on variety in exercise, instead of movement pattern mastery. Our team does not focus on an endless array of exercises. The focus is on building depth in foundational movement patterns. These patterns make up every movement you perform when lifting. If these foundational movements are missing, advanced exercises will be wasted on poor form. You need to own the basic movements first. During the movement assessment, the 6 foundational movement patterns are assessed with 6 functional exercises from each movement pattern category. The movement assessment is where our strength coaches determine what may cause issues in your program: accountability, rehab standard, location/time, coaching need, and comfort level. The 6 functional exercises help
The 8 Reasons All HHP Clients Go Through a Movement Assessment
The Smith Performance Center team wants to be the best in the world at helping clients who want to maintain an active lifestyle. If you search the internet, this seems like a simple problem to solve. Just do this exercise or make sure to have protein after a workout. Problem solved. This has not been our experience. There is an entire area of research devoted to what behaviors keep people moving and what makes them stop. Keeping people active is not simple and there are numerous reasons why a person will stop. The purpose of the movement assessment is to figure out issues that will stop you from moving. There are clues in your history, how you move, how you hurt, and how you think
The 5 Patient Responses That Should Impact Your Physical Therapist’s Strategy
In a session, the first rule as a practitioner is to make sure we do not lie to ourselves about what’s happening, and lying to ourselves is the easiest thing to do. We can lie to ourselves when we make errors in reasoning due to a plethora of cognitive pitfalls like confirmation or optimism bias, overconfidence, or mistaken availability heuristics. This can ruin the chances of a great outcome if I only search for facts that confirm my dominant theory, or if I want the patient to have a great response so I ignore portions of the medical history that would lead me to a think of worse prognosis. These cognitive errors ‘help’ me to lie to myself. One solution is to get very clear
4 Ways Individuals With Heel Pain Can Make Their Pain Go Away
Why is your heel pain not getting better? Heel pain is a common, painful foot condition leading internet searches for “cures to heel pain” or “treatments for plantar fasciitis.” The pain resolves with time if the cause of symptoms is removed, but up to 10% of individuals with heel pain do not get better. These chronic sufferers try everything to get rid of the pain including plantar fascia releases, injections, and pain medications. The causes of heel pain are numerous, ranging from plantar tendinopathies like the flexor digitorum brevis, nerve involvement with tarsal tunnel syndromes or lateral plantar nerve, low back referrals, and double crush syndrome to fat pad injuries. The answer is not more stretching and new orthotics. If you are stuck with heel
5 Treatment Options to Reduce Knee Pain without Surgery, Injections, or Drugs
We treat intractable knee pain on a daily basis. Our process is called the PT Solutions Treatment Hierarchy. The treatment hierarchy allows our team to support the diagnosis, reduce pain, and create a clear home plan. Building a treatment framework is a critical component of the plan and it changes based on the key sign, the structural diagnosis, and the trigger management plan. For example, a person with an anterior horn meniscus lesion, we would first normalize painful end range extension of the knee. Once passive extension is pain free, we would start to load their leg with the activity that normally hurts, providing them an exercise like terminal knee extension with the band that will keep their knee extension pain free. Finally we would
The Dynamic Recursive Model of Long Term Development: A key principle in our strength training and physical therapy methodology
Why Do We Focus on Long-Term Development in Strength Training? Activity brings benefits and risks. Every step, competition, or practice is an exposure that impacts the body. The questions – how do I get better and how do I stay healthy – are part of a dynamic and constantly changing system (Figure 1). We can model that system to show how the activity, like running or playing football, impacts your next exposure. The Basics If you are a runner, you need to run. If you want to get stronger, you need to lift. If you want to be a great triathlete, you need to swim, bike, and run. If you want to shoot well during a basketball game, you have to shoot over and over.
