What is a movement screen and why do we use it?

The Functional Movement Screen is a tool created by physical therapist Gray Cook to assesses functional and dysfunctional movement patterns.

Functional movement is healthy movement.  When someone is able to move in a healthy/functional way, they greatly reduce their risk of injury while increasing their efficiency of movement.  [efficiency: maximum productivity with minimum wasted energy] When someone is unable to move in a functional way, they increase their risk of injury and decrease their movement efficiency.  The greater the dysfunction, the greater the risk.

The body desires efficiency and balance in all things internal and external.  If an imbalance is present the body will react in an attempt to restore balance.  IE: if we get too cold, we shiver in an attempt to raise our body temperature.  If we get too hot, we sweat to cool ourselves down.

The same is true at the muscular level.  If we spend most of our day sitting, our body will adapt accordingly.  If you’re sitting now, take a minute to observe your posture starting at the ankles and working your way up.  If you’re a habitual abuser of the sit, this is the position your body is most adapted to and where it will try to remain regardless of whether you’re sitting or standing, walking, or running.

The worst thing that can happen at this point, is to accept this as a normal fact of life.  There are too many people that give up on the activities they love because their bodies no longer like to move.  The only place they feel good is in a chair or on the couch.  Yikes!  A large majority of the dysfunction we see in a movement screen comes from the fact that we, as a society, have an abusive relationship with the sit.

The movement screen allows us to be proactive with injury prevention.

Our goal is not to diagnose injuries, but rather to assess good or faulty movement patterns and then, based on the results, introduce exercises that help restore healthy movement.

What we’re looking for is symmetry or balance in the body in regard to strength, mobility and stability as well as overall movement that meets the given standards for the screen.

Take the deep squat for example, starting from the top and working our way down.  Functional amounts of strength, mobility and stability throughout the body means that upon squatting a person will be able to maintain extended arms over their head, they will be able to send their butt back and down into a below parallel squat while maintaining an upright torso, their knees will track over their toes, and their feet will remain planted firmly on the floor.  Any deviation from this shows some degree of dysfunction in the body.

Based on a person’s results they would then be given a score from 0 to 3, with 0 given when a movement causes pain and 3 given when the movement is solid from top to bottom.  If they score a 1, they’ll be given corrective exercises to restore function.  A 2 is a passing score, though corrective exercises are still recommended to continue to improve their movement.  Within this scoring system, special attention is given to asymmetries, as Cook believes that asymmetries have the most direct link to injuries.

Next week, we’ll be looking at some corrective exercises for those of you that scored 1’s on any of your movements today.  And then we will be serving up 3-5 minutes of the corrective exercises during your daily warm-up and/or second-helpings.  So get stoked about that bit of goodness because, I’m going to go ahead and say it since we’re all thinking it, corrective movements are badass.

[photo by: betsy watters]