Top 7 Concepts A Sports Clinician Must Master To Improve Efficiency and Outcomes In Your Patients And Become The Go-To Expert
The biggest mistake I see a lot of clinicians and coaches make in the field is failing to fully grasp what systems they are impacting with the particular intervention they use with clients.
So many people search for a magic exercise, magic manual therapy intervention, etc. They cling to these treatments and hold it close to them, most likely because they had experienced some success with it before. It's very easy to remember our times of success with clients and get carried away assuming it was just one thing that made that individual better. When in reality it was probably a combination of things that all accumulated to a successful treatment. Sometimes this success happens quickly. Other times it can be a gradual progression. There are certainly times in which you will fail or need to refer out as well.
A solid clinician knows where their client's potential for success is currently, and where your time in the clinic or gym is most efficiently spent over the course of days, weeks, months, years.
How do we make sure we are performing the proper intervention at the proper time? The answer is knowing what systems you can influence, why they can be influenced, and how to better influence them.
What systems can we influence?
Concept #1: Cardiovascular – This system is essential for getting oxygen and nutrients to areas of need. It helps clear waste and byproducts. As a result, this system can play a major role in recoverability. Recoverability is needed for continual performance improvement but also injury reduction for athletes and general population alike.
Concept #2: Respiratory – Many people make the mistake of clumping the cardiovascular system and respiratory system together. They very much influence each other. However, they are two separate systems. As it is very possible that the respiratory system may be the weak link that needs to be addressed as opposed to the cardiovascular, and vice versa. Your interventions to address the two will have similarities but still very in both application and intent. The respiratory system is responsible for daily changes in parasympathetic and sympathetic activity. Breathing will change in response to stress. It will also have a direct impact on regulation of pH balances, which when off can throw a bunch of other systems into problems.
Concept #3: Locomotor – Ahhh, finally the system we all like to talk about. Within the locomotor system there are subsets of qualities that we can influence which include: Active control, sensory motor awareness, and variability/rigidity.
Now ask yourself: What are my treatment goals for a particular individual based upon the training needed to address limitations in the above systems?
Concept #4: Build Capacity – This address aerobic conditioning first as part of general physical preparedness then moves toward sports specific or task specific energy conditioning afterwards. Training individuals in this way enhances repeatability and recoverability.
Concept #5: Build Strength – It sounds cliché to say that strength is your body's armor and building more strength will improve resilience to injury. This is certainly true, as getting strong often makes playing your sport or completing a daily task easier. However, there is always a point of diminishing returns. Which is why strength is important, but it's not the only thing.
Concept #6: Motor Learning – You've probably heard the saying “coordinated athletes are the best athletes”. While this is true to a degree, remember it's just one aspect. I've seen many coordinated athletes get bullied around by strong athletes. The dominate athlete will have both, in addition to other qualities we have discussed. Motor learning is important for body awareness, spatial awareness, and efficiency of movement. These things are all obviously very important for an athlete. It's just as important for you general population as well as often these qualities decrease with age and inactivity.
Concept #7: Sensory – This can mean many things. Many people think that the sensory system just relates to the skin and the only way to influence it is through hands on manual therapy techniques. This is obviously one possibility and it certainly can be effective if used in the proper situation under the right context. However sensation can be influenced through movement via change in pressure and tension within the system of joints, muscles, ligaments, tendons. This can be used to provide a stimulus to change perception of movement and reduce CNS threat/protection methods.
Now how to put it all together?
These are the systems and methods you as a sports clinician or strength coach can start to better influence your athletes and clients. Knowing how and when to address each of these qualities now becomes important to understand and will be your goal in future learning and personal experience/reflection within your clinic or gym.
If you would like a road map on how we do this at Sports Rehab Expert, then I suggest you take our SRE "Fast Track Course" and expedite your learning to a whole new level of success!
