If you're not assessing, you're guessing. Movement pattern assessments will help you discover deficient areas in mobility and stability. Finding inefficiencies will help you get stronger, lift longer, and stay healthier. It's a nonnegotiable of any advanced lifter.
If you identify a lack of internal rotation in your shoulders, then work on it. Your bench press may go up significantly. If you identify that your hips are lacking mobility, then work on them. Your squat will improve, and your knee pain will go away.
Here are a few examples of movement pattern assessments. Score yourself.
Use this pattern to assess the shoulder's external rotation, flexion, and abduction. It also gives us a glimpse of scapular and thoracic mobility.
What to look for:
Use this pattern to assess internal rotation and extension.
What to look for:
Use this to test normal flexion in the hips and spine. This test gives us a general glimpse of hip function and posterior chain flexibility.
What to look for:
Use this one to test for normal extension in the shoulders, hips, and spine.
What to look for:
Use this to assess bilateral, symmetric mobility and stability of the hips, knees, ankles, and core.
What to look for:
Do this to see your ability to hinge at the hips in isolation while maintaining a neutral spine. It's different than a squat. With a squat, we have a knee bend and hip bend. Hip hinge just focuses on the hip joint itself.
What to look for:
Do this to test lateral stability and simulate dynamic deceleration with balance.
What to look for:
Acceptable/Functional: Movement is good enough to allow you to be cleared for activity without an increase in injury risk.
Unacceptable/Dysfunctional: Movements are dysfunctional, and you may be at risk for injury unless movement patterns are improved.
Painful: Movements produce pain. Currently injured regions require additional, more advanced movement and physical assessment by a qualified provider.
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