Category: Principles of Function

Understanding Movement Dysfunction: Speed and Sequencing

Last Monday we talked about the first of the 3 keys to understanding movement dysfunction, ROM dysfunction.  Today is the second in the little series about movement dysfunction. I’m hoping to get through Speed dysfunction and Sequencing today. Movement Speed Dysfunction This is actually the one I think about the least, I’m not sure why,

System Flexibility

Amazing response to last weeks post ‘Muscles Working as Pumps and Springs’.   I definitely think we will be coming back to running again soon 🙂 Today we will be getting back to the principles of function and looking at ‘System Flexibility’. Following on closely behind 3D movement is system flexibility. They are related because

Understanding Movement Dysfunction

Understanding movement dysfunction is an ever illusive topic.  I can see myself in my 70′s still pondering the best ways to try and understand, categorise and screen for movement dysfunction (hopefully in a warm country!!).  However, striving for the best framework to assess and treat is something we all have to do, otherwise we would

Joints Feel

We’ve talked about the importance of understanding how Bones Move and 2 weeks ago we discussed some rehab strategies for Ankles.  So today we will talk about a key step in our thought process, Joints Feel.  On the surface of it, it’s really simple to understand what movement a joint has, i.e. there are 6 movements at

How Muscles Work!

I wanted to follow up on the rehab process we've been building the last few weeks, but perhaps take it away from the foot directly. So today we will have a look at a bit of the process behind the rehab and look at how muscles work and how to use this knowledge in your

Joint Relationships

When teaching the Physioblogger CPD course it is always really good to get through all of the principles of function and how we apply those in functional assessment and treatment.  One of the ones we talk about is ‘joint relationships’.  It seems obvious to say that joints are in a relationship with each other, but

Bones Move

When you are looking at the analysis of any movement pattern, the common starting point of looking at what the joints are doing that's where I used to start. However, if you want to get a deeper understanding of movement you need to take a few steps back. Here are the steps I see as

Subconsciously Driven Movement

One of my favourite subjects ever!! When you think about this is makes so much sense. I’ve mentioned the gap between exercise and function i.e. if they want to get back to football after a knee injury, they need to do more than knee extensions and hamstring curls. That’s an extreme example, so most will

5 Ways a Joint can Move

If there is one thing to learn on this blog that will help you assess and treat someone, it’s probably this. So simple, but SO important!! Learning that there are 5 ways a joint could move was as profound a thing as I’ve ever heard and something I hadn’t heard up to that point…and I

Working Out How a Joint Moves

We got stuck into some complex stuff last week, looking at Fryettes laws. So today I thought it would be nice to look behind some of the complexity at the underpinnings…how do you name a joint movement and how do you work out what is going on at a joint? It’s interesting that most of