Apples to Apples

Image courtesy of thomasvan.com

This past weekend I had the opportunity to retake a Muscle Activation Techniques™ Jumpstart class.  The last time I had taken one was in March 2011, a few months before I began the internship.  While some may see the Jumpstart courses as inferior to the internship for whatever reason (I say this because in my experience I have often seen specialists predominantly use the digital force application technique that is taught and developed in the internship over the positional isoangular contractions that are taught in the Jumpstarts when working on clients), I would suggest that there is enormous value for specialists to sitting through the Jumpstart courses.

The biggest thing for me that I was reminded of over the weekend was the importance of comparing apples to apples, meaning making sure the starting positions you are having the client set up in when assessing mobility are the same when comparing the right side to the left side.  If the client's hips are shifted slightly differently from one side to the other, the spinal position is different (ex: greater lordosis when assessing one side than the other), you allow the client to put their arms behind their head or change scapular position between assessing sides, or any of the numerous other reasons out there, you could be gathering tainted information, which may throw off which range you decide to test first.  Subsequently, you can see how this could take you down a road that you may not actually want to go down at that time.

This realization was great for me because with as much time as I have spent trying to improve the accuracy and quality of my digital force application, I had actually started to speed up my comparative assessments of mobility simply because I felt that I was able to see any possible asymmetries easier.  But I was not consistently disciplined in ensuring that the client was set up exactly the same in the first place, so the mobility assessments may not be giving me the information I thought they were.

If you haven't been to a Jumpstart course for a while or ever, I would highly suggest attending one.  It will only serve to enhance the skill that you have spent months/years developing and learning and may help improve the results your clients are getting from their sessions by having a more well-defined path to travel down regarding force application.

Click here for registration for the Jumpstart courses.

Are you making sure that you are comparing apples to apples when assessing mobility?

Inter­ested in find­ing out more? Check out the “Mus­cle Acti­va­tion Tech­niques™” page.

Inter­ested in set­ting up an assess­ment time or dis­cussing this sub­ject fur­ther? E-mail Char­lie at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

Your body.  Your training.

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