You won't read this. So send it to a colleague who will.

Beating a point to near-death. Consider this our Thursday Rant.

Yes, we won't let this go, and, you should not either.

We highlight the word ADAPTIVE below, because it is the key to all of this.

"The observed postural responses could be viewed as an ADAPTIVE process to cope with an unilateral alteration in the hip neuromuscular function induced by the fatiguing exercise for controlling bipedal stance. The increase in CoP displacements observed under the non-fatigued leg in the fatigue condition could reflect enhanced exploratory "testing of the ground" movements with sensors of the non-fatigued leg's feet, providing supplementary somatosensory inputs to the central nervous system to preserve/facilitate postural control in condition of altered neuromuscular function of the dominant leg's hip abductors induced by the fatiguing exercise."-*Vuillerme N1, Sporbert C, Pinsault N.

When one prescribes or chooses a corrective exercise for a client, one based sheerly on what is visualized as an "apparently" faulty movement pattern or aberrant screen, one is making many assumptions. Assumptions that are likely not entirely correct (we are being kind, most assumptions made based on partial fragmented information are incorrect to a high degree).

Here is comes again, . . . . what you SEE and TEST in your client's movement is not what is wrong with them most of the time. What you see is how your client is ADAPTING to the variables they can engage, avoiding the ones that are painful or perceived as unstable, or finding ways around immobility and as the article as quote above suggests. This was a basic tenet of Karel Lewit's and Janda's work to not focusing on the area of pain, rather to seek out the root cause, we are just saying it in a different manner.

Continuing, we also adapt around fatigue which can take place even in everyday tasks and how we move around our world, yes, even in our gait. Yes, you are seeing a client's best attempts, ones that are likely deeply rooted and now their new norm, their baseline to base all other patterns off of. Their attempts can be based off of immobility, instability (true or functional), lack of skill, proprioceptive deficits, fatigue (lack of baseline endurance), lack of strength or power. For some clients, forget challenging screens that really test them, heck, we find some athletes do not even have the requisite baseline endurance or strength in a few primary fundamental patterns of which they have built more robust patterns atop of. We all to often read about "robustness" of a skill and pattern and interpret it as a good thing. Robustness can also be build atop of a bad pattern of movement, atop of poor stability patterns.

Thus, asking a client to change that ADAPTIVE norm, based off of what you visualize, based on the working parts available to them, without rooting out the cause, is asking them to compensate around their new norm base of compensation. When done this way, we are merely giving our client armor to their dysfunction, faulty robustness if you will. We are in fact moving further from the remedy. To correctly play this multi-layered game of helping people, one has to examine the client, not just put them through screens and assessments that show us (and them) what they can and cannot do.

There is an awful lot of armchair doctoring going on out there, thankfully it all comes from a good place in the heart's of many good folk. We have so many people come in to see us who have problems and a list of corrective exercises that have been prescribed to them, exercises that clearly have been based off of correcting what is seen in their screens and movements. We discuss their workout patterns, their activities, and hear about how they are attempting to build up their bodies for the apparent good. But all to often, with a client in front of us in pain, we hear the clues that the problem is being exercised around. Meaning, building robustness on top of a dysfunctional base somewhere in their system. Many of these people have been given these exercises as part of their corrective work and strengthening programs at their place (gym, box, trainer, coach etc). Many times there was no in depth hands on examination coupled with screens and gait to root out the cause of why they are moving the aberrant way that they are. We all must commit ourselves to a complete process for our clients. Screens and tests and exercises are not enough. Please read yesterdays post if you have not already, we make our point once again in a video case.

To close this post, we fully acknowledge regularly that we are on the same bus to the same temple of higher wisdom as everyone else that reads these kinds of posts. We write to share, but we write to learn, to dive deeper into our thoughts, to challenge our biases and rooted assumptions through thought experiments, challenging thoughts and old ways that get us into troubled automated patterns of approaching all things. Again, we write to learn. And, part of that learning is accepting our limitations and hearing from others who are wiser in other areas than us, so, please comment and add insight below if you wish. Debates are good, for us all.  Pull up a chair, grab a pint, join us around the hearth for some gab.

Shawn Allen, . . .  the other gait guy.    www.doctorallen.co    &    www.shawnallen.net

"One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having to come to grips with it. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. So I use writing as a learning tool. " - Hunter S. Thompson

*Postural adaptation to unilateral hip muscle fatigue during human bipedal standing.

Gait Posture. 2009 Jul;30(1):122-5. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2009.03.004. Epub 2009 Apr 28.

Vuillerme N1, Sporbert C, Pinsault N.