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Sports Movement Screen

 

Improve Performance & Prevent Injury

The sports movement screen makes use of typical athletic patterns such as the squat, lunge, etc. to first see if the general movement is completed well, and if not identify what is restricting the athlete from performing it well. An athlete can not be expected to perform to the best of their ability if they cannot complete these basic movement.

An example is not being able to do the squat correctly because there is restricted mobility somewhere, such as the right ankle not bending enough due to an old achilles injury that was not rehabilitated properly. This could for example prevent a football player from getting properly down into a 3-point stance on the line and accelerating with full force.

The same holds true with respect to injury risk. Most athletes have incredible strength & power, but without adequate mobility about the joints an athlete's strengths make them susceptible to repeated muscle strains. Coordination is very important too as certain muscles need to turn on quickly & at the right time to stabilize a joint, otherwise that joint is vulnerable to sprain, such as an ACL tear, or joint degeneration common in knee pain.

Sports Movement Screen Overview

There are several popular methods for evaluating athletes' mobility, coordination, & movement patterns which can predict injury risk or a hindrance to sports performance.

As the word 'screen' indicates each test will tell what general movement pattern is most dysfunctional in an athlete, but it then important to specifically identify what that barrier is in the kinetic chain, especially if pain is involved in a movement an orthopaedic assessment by the doctor is recommended.

If there is no pain present, but dysfunction revealed in the screen then specific corrective exercises are designed for the athlete to addess these issues. This typically consists of movement & mobility exercises integrated into a sports conditioning program.

This video demonstrates one common method of sports movement screening, the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) to identify areas where an athlete's movement patrerns are altered raising injury risk.

 

TAG Health Services is your sport injury, sports injury, sport injuries care provider for Collingwood, Blue Mountain, Wasaga Beach, Thornbury, Meaford, Stayner, Nottawa