Posture, Core, & Breathwork Breakdowns: Assessments

Assessments Section Break-Down

This section provides knowledge for assessing dysfunctional posture and breathing patterns, whether for yourself or a potential client. In the realms of physical therapy and rehabilitation, medical massage and Personal Training and Strength and Conditioning, the imbalances that you will be taught to assess for are commonly overlooked to the detriment of the client. As a result most rehabilitation and training programs deliver mediocre results, and some end with the client worse off than they started. Many clients end up bouncing from therapist to therapist hoping to get the results they expect to be delivered.

Whether you work as a massage therapist, manual therapist, acupuncturist, chiropractor or any type of hands-on therapist, you will need a well thought out rehabilitative program to provide long term relief. An arsenal of thorough assessments will set the foundation for your rehabilitative program. Remember, any therapy program is only as good as the assessments it has been built upon.

Using a combination of written and visual representations, the course instructs you how to interpret musculoskeletal imbalances caused by improper posture and provides you with the proper rehabilitative strategies to help restore your clients back to optimal health. You will become skilled at assessing for these imbalances and gain an awareness of the pathological dysfunction they elicit.

Assessments From The Feet and Ankles To The Cranio-Cervical Region

This section opens with a detailed explanation of how the assessments should be performed. Starting with the feet and ankles, the course identifies what to look for in someone with incorrect posture and dysfunctional patterns. Because our feet bear all of a person’s weight, this can have an enormous impact on your posture.

By taking photographs of the subject while doing a visual Plumb Line Assessment of a person, a professional can recognize issues caused by improper posture in a step-by-step manner and reveal them to the client.

Photographs are provided within the assessments section that depict both correct and incorrect postural alignment. This helps the professional recognize the imbalances they should be looking for when assessing their clients. Paired with these photos are descriptions of what is happening on musculoskeletal level. Using the pictures provided within the course, the professional will be able to detect whether someone needs correction or not.

The range of motion assessments in certain regions (such as the muscles in the shoulder) is a highly effective technique for detecting whether someone has full range of motion within the muscle group. With easy-to-follow instructions, the professional can assess an area’s level of tension.

Respiratory Assessments

After the posture assessments section, we move on to the respiratory assessments. The respiratory assessments can be conducted on yourself or your client. This section of the course looks at two phases of assessment to help unveil any potential issues. Using the guidelines provided, you can check to see if improper breathing patterns are present and where the restrictions in the rib cage are located. There is an entire video-based corrective program dedicated to releasing blockages or restrictions in the different parts of the rib cage.

The self-respiratory assessments come with comprehensive text and videos, which can be found in the Mechanics of Respiration section of the program. These sections explain the muscles that should be used in breathing and the muscles that are most likely being used improperly. Dozens of images and text are available covering the anatomy of the muscles involved in normal respiration and the muscles involved in faulty respiration, along with the specific movements of the rib cage during respiration.

The course explains inverted breathing patterns such as mouth and chest breathing in great detail, teaching the professional how improper breathing patterns can manifest.

Accompanying this is the motions of proper breathing (or belly breathing), showing the professional how to re-train the body to breathe in the ideal manner. There are several breath work technique videos available to teach about proper respiration and how to efficiently strengthen the breath.

Using his or her hands as a guide, the professional will be able to analyze breathing patterns and spot restrictions or excessive tension. Paired with the written content, the professional will learn which muscles require greater emphasis in the assessment process.

Once the assessments have been conducted, the professional is directed to balanced corrective programs specifically designed to correct the imbalances observed while conducting the assessments.

As in all the previous assessments, links to corrective exercises are provided within the course for the professional to mitigate each imbalance. Upon conclusion of the assessments section of the journey, the professional will be able to start the next segment of the course: Corrective Exercises, Mobilizations.