Does clinical testing tell us much about functional performance? The Thomas test.

One of the topics that regularly comes up in our courses is how relevant are more static/clinical tests to our everyday dynamic and function related movements. We have decided to address this in this blog.

We also have a special treat. A sneaky link to Cor-Kinetic founder Ben Cormack's new article in July's Sportex Medicine *Click Here*
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5 key steps for breaking into professional sport.

At Cor-Kinetic we often get asked how we are able to be involved with so many elite sports organisations. I was asked this question last week and made me stop for a moment to think about. I then decided to put some points down to help those looking to break into sport and fulfill some of their ambitions.
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The Cor-Kinetic "Movement Neuromatix"- A multifactoral approach to movement.

The ‘movement neuromatrix’ model is designed to show our movement as more than just the mechanical operation of bones, joints and muscles. All of the inputs we have listed in our model below have an affect on how our brain recognizes and responds to movement.
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Can functional movement be too much?

I thought I would have a bit of a Jerry Maguire moment with my latest blog post!

Over the last few months I have certainly gone through a period of change with regards to how I understand the human body. Anybody who regularly reads my blog may have sensed that! I have begun to appreciate the brain as the command centre for all that we do, moving away from a more functional/biomechanical approach I had previously. This has been facilitated by some pioneering characters around me who I am thankful to for opening my eyes, even if it can feel sometimes that they don't want others to come along for the ride! I have certainly suffered my own bouts of cognitive dissonance along the way.
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No motor learning attached to walking, really??

It would seem my previous blog has generated some discussion on whether walking is simply an innate skill or there is motor learning attached to the process. For me it quite simple, but hey I am a simple guy.

Firstly we must not confuse learning with being taught. No one teaches you how to walk. But it is a self-driven learning process.
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Muscle isolation? Is that how you learned to move?

This is just a quick blog that was inspired by taking my son to the park yesterday. It is more anecdotal than scientific but something that I wanted to get across.

My son is developing so fast at the moment and it is amazing to watch. He is now 16 months and the two biggest areas I see his development in are movement and speech. It got me thinking about how we correct peoples movement problems and teach them to move better.
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The brain, movement and pain! Part two.

In the first part of this 3 part series we looked at patterns and how the brain recognizes patterns of information to then be able to recall or auto-associate a response from stored memory.
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The brain, movement and pain! Part one.

The brain and its role in movement and pain is taking a much larger role in what we do at Cor-kinetic. Rather than just seeing the body as feeding back to the brain on a mechanical level we are starting to understand the brains active role in everything we do.
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Muscle activation – Are muscles simply reactors to bone and joint motion?

So I have seen various variations on Gary Gray’s view that muscles are reactors. I think this is spot on. Muscles ARE reactors.

I think what Gary meant by this was that generally we see muscles as concentric force producers. Actually during movement we tend to need to decelerate motion by eccentric contraction first. Think walking first we flex to attenuate gravity, ground reaction forces, mass and momentum before creating force to move. So we are reacting to forces acting on the body before we create concentric force.
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What does the word functional mean and does it matter??

What a great question. Firstly I am not really sure that there is a definitive answer so let me say sorry in advance.  The word functional seems to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people so lets look at the Cor-Kinetic interpretation.
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