Course and new patient Paul update!!
Its been a little longer than I would have liked since my last post. I have been flat-out however!! I ran my first course last weekend and had a great turn out of over 20 including 8 GIFT fellows both past and current!!
Always great to be around passionate and intelligent people who were there to learn and not just to make themselves look cleverer than everybody else. I myself selfishly probably learned the most from those guys and I was the one taking the course!!! Hopefully I imparted some of my experiences on those guys too. The mark of a good teacher not being how much you know but how much of your knowledge your students know.
I think I may run the next one on the assessment process and strategies. The feedback was that this could be a popular and useful course for the AFS community. Let me know if you are interested!
It's great to have started off the year so well. A wonderful course. An audio symposium upcoming on PTonthenNET and being asked to talk at some international conferences. All exciting stuff but pretty tiring organising it all and having lots of clients to deal with.
An update on my last post: My client Paul was displaying some right foot problems and also definite capsular tightness on the right hip. My strategy for the foot was although it was pretty flat I wanted to see if I could get some load and explode out of it through FMR before I decided to go down and orthosis route.
Although it was at endish range I think sometimes the talus can get stuck in a position and needs to move to drive proprioceptive info in the system. This really needs to be hands on I find motion does not tend to free them as effectively (although follow up with motion)
Although in this scenario success in eversion maybe driving the dysfunction, a small load to explode strategy can create some positive reactions in supinating the foot. I created a load on and off weight bearing and also unload mechanics to the foot tissue. This had a positive impact instantly and also seemed to have some carryover to the next time I saw Paul.
I hit the hip capsule in a non weight bearing positions to minimise the elastic mechanisms of the hip muscles. Then created 3d motion and finally got some movement going to create strength and stability. It all worked pretty well and Paul's stiff spinal motion was noticeably altered by a change in hip motion. I finished by driving hands on FMR of type 2 spinal motion to the right that Paul noticeably lacked and also a little upper cervical type one with left rotation where Paul was also limited and again gave some lightly loaded motion after.
I find that when presented with an excessive arm swing during gait analysis sometimes driving spinal and scapula motion (both hands on and off) is not enough. A little cervical driver possibly at the same time really creates proprioceptively authentic information to the scapula and can have some great results. The neck can really lock down when presented with a spine fixed in a position and can need a little help to free up!!
Paul was a little surprised at how quickly he could notice a significant difference after seeking more traditional help previously. This is the power of AFS people!!!
Until next time.
Ben C
