If one of the movements is dysfunctional, we can continue assessing other related movements before worrying about the component parts. The underlying issue may not be a problem of a part being tight, or weak, but an underlying neurological (i.e. motor control) issue. 3) First move well, then move often Especially for very experienced coaches, it can be tempting to discard protocol and arrive at decisions based on incomplete data. Move more efficiently and achieve real gains in performance with the Athletic Body in Balance book and DVD.

After you clean up your active straight leg raise and shoulder mobility, shoot for cleaning up rotary stability, as this is a true test of “soft core” function.

4) Don’t add strength to dysfunction

Interested in hearing more from Gray Cook on understanding and implementing the Functional Movement Screen?

Programs are carried out the same way, no matter what happens. Systems have a way of breaking things down and telling us “if this, then than” and “if that, then this”. Use systems instead of programs to get what you want in your clients training programs.

5) Previous injury is the #1 predictor of future injury

If you have an issue with your active straight leg raise or shoulder mobility, you don’t have the right to go anywhere else in a corrective strategy. Don’t worry about your squat, clean up the active straight leg raise and shoulder mobility FIRST! I think movement could be a good recovery biomarker. If somebody’s got an 18 on the movement screen and we beat on them for three days and it becomes a 12, this might not be a good day to go heavy even though the schedule says the guy should go heavy. I would love to start seeing information like heart rate variability and breathing efficiency on that movement counterpoint. The FMS seeks to predict injury from a behavioral standpoint. That behavior is measured by your ability to move through certain patterns. Gray Cook is a physical therapist, lecturer, author, and instructor. He founded Functional Movement Systems which promotes the concept of movement screening and assessment. Gray has been a seminal figure in how we think about and quantify movement, and how we communicate the language of movement. We get into the state of children’s health and what’s missing from global agreement about movement after a child passes the 21 month old mark. We also get some great takeaways about free play and how a half foam roller can change everything. If you leave out one of the seven tests because of your own bias, your data will be flawed and you won’t get the same result. There are seven tests for a reason. They are all important!

The Functional Movement Screen is a systematic approach to assessing movement to help identify dysfunctions before they cause injuries. The FMS is used by strength coaches, personal trainers, and medical professionals around the world. If the Functional Movement Screen had no scoring system whatsoever and all it did was identify people who have pain with movement (before movement is imposed through sport or activity), I still think it has great value. Corrective exercise is probably the best remedy for movement pattern dysfunction, but it is not the best preventive measure. If we constructed and taught better exercise techniques, we could help prevent much of the need for corrective exercises and reserve corrective concepts to situations where rehabilitation and post-rehabilitation are necessary.

You’re pain free when you’re not squatting, but how about when you are squatting, because that position is going to occur in our training program 300 times before Saturday?” This book by Gray Cook had some really good insights on Movement and the human body. I'm not sure that I agree with all of them, but his success in real world coaching speaks louder than words. Unfortunately, this is a terribly written book. Gray will defend that by saying that he is not teaching a program, but a model and a way of thinking. But the writing is repetitive, the structure of the book is jumbled, the use of technical terminology carelessly intermingled with casual language. The book is unclear and the reader walks away with pithy sayings instead of a mode. With a good editor and a rewrite, this book would be 40% shorter and a real gem in the fitness industry. Scott – Squatting isn’t easy, so you are definitely not alone. In fact, I haven’t even done any heavy barbell squats in the last couple of months because I’m working through an asymmetry myself. This book is not simply about the anatomy of moving structures. Rather, it serves a broader purpose to help the reader understand authentic human movement, and how the brain and body create and learn movement patterns. Our modern dysfunctions are a product of our isolated and incomplete approaches to exercise imposed on our sedentary lifestyles. The neglect occurred the minute we started to train partial movement patterns instead of whole movement patterns, the minute we focused on quantity maximums and did not set a quality minimum. One might argue we need progressions, but breaking down movement patterns into isolated muscle training is not as effective as following a developmental progression.