Targeting Muscle Synergies to Optimise Movement Retraining for The Low Back and Hip

COURSE INTRODUCTION: 

This module develops clinicians’ ability to exert the greatest change on their patients’ movement, chance of recurrence and function by focusing upon muscle synergies of the low back and hip. 

Literature is increasingly identifying the relationship between muscle synergies and altered movement quality in the presence of pain, a history of pain and compromised function. The course gives clinicians the skillset, the understanding and a systemized framework to efficiently facilitate changes in muscle synergies so as to reverse the frequently observed recruitment impairments. 

Clinical tools of assessment and movement retraining are directed towards altering contributions of synergistic muscles, a process ensuring patients can move through each day with a more optimal set of movement patterns, meeting the demands of function without pain and a reduced chance of recurrence. 

COURSE OUTLINE: 

The main focus of this course is to enhance clinicians’ abilities to change their patients’ muscle synergies to reduce pain, the effects of pathology, and the impact of compromised function. 

A systemized framework of movement management is presented and applied, including a model of muscle synergy classification. This model helps steer clinical decision making, retraining design and delivery and patients’ long-term outcomes. 

Clinicians gain an enhanced ability to analyse and subsequently alter muscle synergies. As all functional movement utilises synergistic patterns, the clinical value of this course’s content is to supply the tools to positively influence multi-joint in function.

KEY FEATURES: 

Enhances ability to assess and retrain muscle synergies associated to pain, pathology and compromised function of the low back and hip 

Develops clinicians’ cueing and facilitation skillset to positively impact movement impairments attributable to altered muscle synergies 

Supplies clinical skills to give patients strategies to reduce recurrence and maintain function Gives therapists the skills, tools and understanding to choose movement assessment and retraining as the clinical intervention of choice 

LEARNING OUTCOMES: 

At the end of this course the participant should be 

able to:

Demonstrate the skills allowing them to change patients’ movement through the assessment and retraining of muscle synergies 

Relate muscle synergy recruitment patterns to pain, recurrence and compromised function 

Demonstrate an ability to assess and retrain muscle synergy efficiency 

Demonstrate the ability to assess for loss of extensibility and aberrant recruitment substitutions of dominant synergists 

Display options for movement retraining in addition to acquiring the ability to match the level of retraining to your patient’s abilities and goals 

Operate within a structured clinical reasoning framework to help patients achieve their outcomes 

PROGRAMME OUTLINE: 

Practical workshops to enhance movement assessment and retraining proficiency within clinical environments: to include global stabiliser muscles – oblique abdominals, multifidus and spinalis, gluteus maximus, medius and minimus, iliacus, psoas, short adductors. Global mobiliser muscles – rectus abdominis, quadratus lumborum, erector spinae, latissimus, hamstrings, superficial gluteus maximus, tensor fascia lata, rectus femoris, satarious, gracilis & adductor longus 

Practically applies principles of muscle synergy management to target mechanisms associated with patients’ movement impairments 

Supplies clinical relevance to the functional roles of muscle synergies 

Explores the relationship between muscle synergies and the presence of pain, pathology, and compromised function 

Supplies clinical value to the analysis and management of restriction and movement impairments 

Presents multi-factorial rating criteria to assess efficiency of muscle synergies Presents multi-factorial muscle synergy classification model to support clinical reasoning and intervention 

Retraining options and progressions for global stabiliser retraining at the low back and hip Cognitive recruitment efficiency solutions for movement control impairments of the low back and hip 

Matching recruitment efficiency retraining to the client’s / patient’s goals