Perspective

Physicians, Physical Therapists, Certified Medical Exercise Specialists, Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Chiropractors, Strength and Conditioning Specialists, and Orthopedic Exercise Specialists can all benefit from learning and applying this dynamic science-based approach.

The One Day Live and On-Line Courses contain valuable and useful information and skills that will immediately contribute to your current competencies. The entire data collection and thinking process is encapsulated and delivered in the Muscle System Specialist Course. Available to be delivered LIVE! and On-Line.

The Muscle System Specialist process returns the practitioner back to applying natural field science methodologies for making observations of a client’s uniquely expressed motor control under conditions, and away from heavy reliance on protocols and algorithms. It is a Complex-Systems Thinking Model. The Complex-Systems approach combines both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and includes the sampling sets and documentation for collecting and corroborating simple, salient, and cost-effective data to guide decision-making for the unique individual situation presented to you. The client becomes an N-1 study.

natural science (n):
a branch of science that deals with the physical world, e.g., physics, chemistry, geology, and biology, the branch of knowledge that deals with the study of the physical world.

–Google Dictionary

“The natural sciences field encompasses many disciplines that deal with the study of processes that occur in nature. It includes the physical and biological sciences, mathematics and environmental sciences. The natural sciences differ from the social sciences, which focus on the study of human behavior and society. Natural sciences students often concentrate in a single discipline within the field to qualify for careers as physicists, chemists, geologists or other specialized scientific positions.”

–Study.com

The Muscle System Specialist Process begins with a fundamental recognition that, as scientist-practitioners, we cannot necessarily change a patient/client subjective sensation of pain, as pain is a word to describe a subjective experience with often difficult to determine causal reasons. (There are scope of practice issues to consider here.) Modern scientific notions of pain seem to point in the direction that pain is a conclusion of the nervous system based on its current information, which is comprised of a multitude of converging psycho-emotional and physiological factors. The patient/client is the only one who can ultimately alter, or reinterpret, their subjective somatic experience.

Diminished control over one’s bio-motor function may lead, or contribute, to unwanted physical and emotional sensations. It is important to recognize not only that higher quality motor control is required to survive and thrive, but that an individual’s subjective assessment of their own movement quality must be understood by both the individual and practitioner – or the individual risks producing potentially unpleasant sensory feedback due to lower quality motor control. Improving movement quality across all of the degrees of freedom that an individual structurally possesses is a potent way to improve their subjective somatic experience.

The practitioner-client interaction is recognized as a social transaction where the client’s reported subjective experience takes on greater import in decision-making. The objective data is imbued with meaning when framed within the subjective needs and goals of the client. This is of course reflected in the Bio-Psycho-Social, Evidence Based Medicine Models, and Expected Utility Theory. This is why the initial sales process is so fundamental to not just establishing the professional relationship, but also informing the practitioner of the fundamental objectives of that relationship, which are both emotional and physical.

As a primarily qualitative approach, balanced against quantification, the focus is on individualized data collection, analysis, interpretation, and intervention concerning the quality of movement, as concluded by both the practitioner and client’s input. Instead of fixating on the location of reported pain (or other undesirable sensation), you will learn how to identify aspects of the motor system where movement quality is concluded to be low. Instead of trying to force a protocol to your specific patient/client, “treat” the specified location of the unwanted sensation, you learn how to collect data regarding the motor system and interpret it, so you can make reasoned decisions based in real time and on individualized information to develop unique exercises to serve your client’s needs and desires.

The focus on reaching for a “no pain” goal for each session is minimized – if not eliminated – as you learn how to create a process of improving motion quality, position stability, and force tolerance assessed across the intensity and volume continuum. Improved motion quality, positional stability, and an increase in a person’s ability to generate and tolerate the forces placed on, and created within, their body may result in your client’s nervous system not concluding “pain“ for the information existing within it. The sessions become more about empowering the client – and creating experiences that keep the client motivated – to exercise across the lifespan, which we have termed “prohabilitation.“