How do you measure your health? I mean, how do you really quantify it to make it a useable number?
At the hospital, nurses measure your heart rate and blood pressure before the doctor will even see you, and will check those numbers repeatedly if you’re admitted. If these two numbers deviate from “normal,” it’s indicative of a potential problem.
A physical is the culmination of numbers based on doctor assessment. Being deemed healthy by their standards basically clears you as currently not in need of medical intervention. Painful movement is referred out to specialists who look deeper at the problem after imaging is done. The imaging is interpreted and written into a report that accompanies the imaging sent back to the specialist and they recommend a course of action that may or may not include surgery. Dizzy yet? The point is, somewhere in that mix decisions need to made. The ruling out process necessitates an exploration of all other possible causes before surgery is considered, and ruling out is what all of the best non-medical practitioners do; because they’d prefer you avoid the steel slab, and so does your insurance company.
But out of network services are expensive, and most people see expenses like personal training as a luxury. But would they feel the same way about parting with hard earned money if the program offered actually worked?
Think of muscles as the body’s “software” and the bones as the body’s “hardware.” The software runs all the bells and whistles we buy them for and the hardware runs unbeknownst to us. We know faulty software can, and will, interfere with the body’s hardware. This is why medical interventions should mark the end point of a rigorous assessment process that weeds out any and all contributors to cumulative injury; a process set into motion as soon as the body moves with faulty software.
But let’s say the injured body moved perfectly before the injury event. Both cases, cumulative or blunt force, need careful examination post-rehabilitation (physical therapy), to make sure these areas are re-recognized by the brain as not just moveable upon command in a safe place, but usable in a crisis situation. Too often the injured area never experiences re-inclusion. It’s protected by the brain even years after the green-light was given to re-engage in exercise post physical therapy.
But doctors top the hierarchy and people like to get to the person “most qualified” to fix our painful movement conditions. Surgery can be very effective, but that’s not necessarily what the re-injury rates are telling us. And even if the end stage intervention works at relieving pain, it doesn’t necessarily mean the software will run as it once did. As a matter of fact, we know it won’t.
According to sciencedaily.com:
Young male athletes are at greatest risk of shoulder joint instability injuries and recurrences.
In one study, the rate of athletes re-injuring their shoulder was higher in patients younger than 23 years of age (72 percent) than patients older than 30 years of age (27 percent).
Young athletes between the ages of 15 to 20 years of age who were treated non-surgically had an injury recurrence rate of 87 percent.
Arthritis of the shoulder occurred in up to 40 percent of athletes with recurring shoulder instability injuries.
That’s why we need a premise that stays within the confines of evidence-based practice, and that premise needs to address the growing re-injury rates. There seems to be a missing “next step” that addresses the power loss associated with even the slightest body trauma (workouts included). This is why we’ve seen the concussion protocol develop stricter standards once science proved even one concussion can lead to traumatic brain injury.
Doctors prescribe exercise more than any other treatment method, save sleep, for keeping a sedentary populace vibrant. But we need better ways of proving our course of action is correct. That’s achieved by holding all those involved in your healthcare accountable to the changes we want to see.
It’s important to note that while exercise is always on the list of “appropriate medical interventions” for several health issues including obesity and mental health, trauma-weary brains have difficulty interpreting exercise as anything other than another beating. This is why assessment remains our only means of measuring the diminished movement capacity and the resultant diminished function that accompanies movement compensation. These bodies move defensively, having lost accelerative ability, and can only speed toward plateau and the dreaded halt to progress that leads most people to quit or re-injure.
I’ve spent my life trying to attach standards to movement health the same way medicine follows established standards when it comes to internal health. My research has led me to develop the R.A.M.P. Method (Restore-Align-Maintain-Progress), and I’m thrilled to share it so you can change your life and the lives of your clients.
In this text I will follow the rules set forth by Shirley Sahrmann, author of Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes, who tells us:
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“The loss of precise movement can begin a cycle of events that induces changes in tissues that progress from mictrotrauma to macrotrauma.”
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“Because the trunk provides the support for the limbs and their muscular attachments, its alignment affects all other body segments. Faulty alignment of the head, cervical spine, and shoulders cannot be corrected without correcting the alignment of the trunk and pelvic girdle. The alignment of the hips, knees, and joints of the ankles, feet, as well as the distribution of forces exerted on these joints, are also greatly affected by the alignment of the trunk and pelvis.”
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“Repeated movements and sustained postures associated with everyday activities that are performed for many hours each day may eventually induce changes in the components of the movement system. The inevitable result is the development of movement impairments, tissue stress, microtrauma, and eventually macrotrauma.”
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“Often the programs designed to strengthen abdominal muscles will, in fact, contribute to muscle imbalances and pain syndromes. The most important aspect of abdominal performance is obtaining the control that is necessary to (1) appropriately stabilize the spine, (2) maintain optimal alignment and movement relationships between the pelvis and spine, and (3) prevent excessive stress and compensatory motions of the pelvis during movements of the extremities.”
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“It is difficult to develop exercise programs that will provide stability of the spine, prevent compensatory motions, and improve the strength and control of the trunk musculature without causing undesirable compressive or shear forces or without contributing to malalignment of the spine.”
Dr. Peter McGill’s clinical work remains our only means of testing theory in a lab setting. His research helps us realize that most spinal injury is cumulative in nature and impossible to pin on one specific movement event. For example, “I threw my back out picking up a penny.”
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“Because the culminating event is falsely presumed to be the cause, prevention efforts are focused on that event. This misdirection of efforts fails to deal with the real cause of the cumulative trauma.”
He also provides us with concrete evidence our isolationist approaches to exercise offer little to the brain, our most important resource for eliciting system-wide change:
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“Slow and isolationist approaches typical of bodybuilding do not offer a rich proprioceptive environment providing variable motion, balance, force production, and direction challenges involving the full linkage.”
He is also known as The Man Who Killed Crunches when he measured the compressive force placed on the spine with every rep.
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“Each sit-up produces low back compression levels close to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) action limit, and repeatedly compressing the spine to levels higher than the NIOSH action limit has been shown to increase the risk of back disorders. Thus, reaching a conclusion over the role of fitness from the published literature has been obscured by ill-chosen exercises. Increased fitness does have support, but the way in which fitness is increased appears to be critical.”
Florence Kendall and associates lay the groundwork for established movement standards in Muscles Testing And Function With Posture And Pain:
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“The term weak back, as frequently used in connection with low back pain, mistakenly suggests a weakness of the low back muscles. The feeling of weakness that occurs with a painful back is associated with the faulty alignment the body assumes, and it is often caused by weakness of the abdominal muscles.”
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“For overuse injuries such as tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, swimmer’s shoulder, repetitive strain injury from excessive keyboard use, or pushups done to excess, appropriate treatment depends, in part, on the specificity provided by manual muscle testing.”
Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains, used un-embalmed dissections to develop newer ways of looking at the body that transcends the idea that the body moves “mechanically” and confirms the connectedness theory was correct all along.
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“The muscle-bone concept presented in standard anatomical description gives a purely mechanical model of movement. It separates movement into discrete functions, failing to give a picture of the seamless integration seen in a living body. When one part moves, the body as a whole responds. Functionally, the only tissue that can mediate such a responsiveness is the connective tissue.”
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“We need to remind ourselves once again at this point that muscle never really attaches to bone. Muscle cells are caught within the fascial web like fish within a net. Their movement pulls on the fascia, the fascia is attached to the periosteum, the periosteum pulls on the bone.”
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“Our body distributes strain—especially sustained long-term strain—within itself in an attempt to equalize forces on the tissues. It is clinically clear that release in one part of the body can produce changes at some distance from the intervention, though the mechanism is not always evident.”
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“If you kick a ball, about the most interesting way you can analyze the result is in terms of the mechanical laws of force and motion. The coefficients of inertia, gravity, and friction are sufficient to determine its reaction to your kick and the ball’s final resting place. But if you kick a large dog, such a mechanical analysis of vectors and resultant forces may not prove as salient as the reaction of the dog as a whole. Analyzing individual muscles biomechanically likewise yields an incomplete picture of human movement experience.”
I’ve chosen this particular list of mentors because the information each presents overlaps and compliments the others. Not one stands in opposition with the other as to what constitutes movement health. It is my solemn wish to someday garner blessings from my predecessors, as I only offer this research as a next step to what they’ve already laid out. I’ve expounded on their work to show you how to use exercise as the best way to maintain a lifelong love affair with thrill seeking.
I’ve built upon the teachings of my mentors in an attempt to offer a new way to train the body. I also consider the brain’s point of view, and whether or not that point of view allies with the brain’s job to navigate us through a treacherous world unharmed.
The R.A.M.P Method follows the rules and regulations of movement as set forth by highly respected clinicians in the field of soft tissue manipulation. I make every attempt to program by their standards so you walk away with a useful new premise and a technique to match.
