Subjects Of Athletic training Philosophies (SOAP) Notes

Hello everybody! I’ve previously mentioned Gray Cook and some of his thoughts on how the body moves. Today I am going to discuss how his thoughts mixed with those of Douglas Heel relate to cueing a movement. One thing Gray Cook includes in his FMS program is a pyramid that looks like this: His ideas are that we need to install quality movement before reinforcing that movement by increasing performance. Finally once we have a solid base we can properly teach (sport) skill. After I saw this pyramid, I instantly thought about Douglas Heel’s three body zones presented in his Be Activated series. I created a similar pyramid with Heel’s zones, which looked like this: Notice any similarities? These two pyramids are almost talking about the same thing but from two different approaches. Quality movement begins with zone 1. Power (performance) is produced in zone 2, and skill exists in zone 3. This progression also mimics the relationship between a sport coach, strength coach, and the...

Hello Everybody! I’d like to discuss one basic treatment philosophy today; cookie cutter protocols. What role, if any, do they play in our treatments? I’ll start by saying in an ideal setting I would prefer to assess every athlete’s health and quality of movement then address not only the injured tissue but any imbalances they may have as means of injury prevention. Unfortunately this is rarely feasible due to time constraints as I’m sure many of you can relate. It’s my impression that cookie cutter protocols often get a bad reputation as being unspecific and impersonal, but is there some sense to using them? First let’s get on the same page and define what a “cookie cutter” protocol looks like. I consider a cookie cutter protocol to be a “one size fits all” type of rehab. It doesn’t matter what sport/position you play, if you suffer a lateral ankle sprain you will complete exercises XYZ over the next 2-4 weeks. Second, we should make a distinction between macro-protocols and micr...

Happy New Year! I hope you all got a chance to enjoy the holidays with family and loved ones. After my article on compensation patterns I began thinking more about how the body completes movement goals. Many experts will say that athletes’ are great compensators. At first I debated that statement, I thought the exact opposite. I thought athletes’ were individuals who didn’t need to compensate. But then in my personal experience of treating athletes I started to pay attention to how many soft tissue dysfunctions were a result from or somehow related to compensation patterns. Just today I treated an athlete who reported low back pain every time he ran over the past two weeks. He was evaluated by a different therapist to have low back instability, however I thought his issue was more related to a compensation pattern. So his treatment with me consisted of training him to revert out of his hip extension compensation and force him to fire his glutes more. He walked out of the athletic ...