ASSESSING THE BODY AND HOW IT MOVES AS A WHOLE:

 

Firstly we need to understand which parts of the body aren’t working together.  Then we need to establish the imbalances created as a result of some muscles being dominant (overly relied upon) and some being weak (avoiding being used).

 

MUSCLE ACTIVATION AND NEURAL EDUCATION:

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I work on the premise that your nervous system doesn’t remember isolated muscle contractions but instead entire movement patterns.  Most conditioning work is limited as it trains muscles in isolation, with the hope that the muscle will somehow integrate back into the system it is supposed to function within when the body begins to move.  Another mistake is that training is done mostly in linear patterns (front to back/side to side), yet most of the body’s movements are diagonal or spiral (walking, running, kicking or throwing).  If the nervous system hasn’t been trained to co-ordinate muscles in a movement pattern, how is it suddenly going to manage to do this?  We have to teach it to incorporate the muscles in the sequence and movements they are required for.

 

This course covers the following key elements:

1. Functional movement patterns, what are they and how are they developed?

2. How the inner unit (core) functions, what it is made up of and how it works together and then integrates with body movement.

3. Assessment of posture and how this affects movement patterns:

   • The importance of a good breathing pattern

   • Pelvic alignment and how it affects posture.

   • How to activate deep stabilisers and correctly integrate the inner unit (core). 

   • Glute and hip function assessment.

   • How to unpack all the assessment info and create a conditioning strategy for your client.

 

A large portion of the course will be practical and we will spend most of the time getting to grips with the various assessment techniques and how this provides the information required to design effective conditioning programmes for your clients.