This module develops clinicians’ ability to create the greatest change in their patients’ movement, functional outcomes, and likelihood of recurrence by focusing on the muscle synergies of the neck and shoulder.

Current research increasingly identifies the relationship between muscle synergies and altered movement quality in the presence of pain, a history of pain, and compromised function. This course provides clinicians with the skills, understanding, and a structured framework to efficiently facilitate changes in muscle synergies, helping to reverse the recruitment impairments frequently observed in clinical practice.

Clinical assessment and movement retraining techniques are directed towards optimising the contribution of synergistic muscles. This approach enables patients to move more efficiently throughout daily activities, meet the demands of function with less pain, and reduce the likelihood of recurrence.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Demonstrate the skills required to improve patient movement through the assessment and retraining of muscle synergies.
• Relate muscle synergy recruitment patterns to pain, recurrence, and compromised function.
• Assess and retrain muscle synergy efficiency.
• Assess for loss of extensibility and identify aberrant recruitment substitutions of dominant synergists.
• Select appropriate movement retraining strategies and match the level of retraining to each patient’s abilities and goals.
• Apply a structured clinical reasoning framework to help patients achieve optimal outcomes.