Do you ever feel like your aches and pains are being treated without getting the source of the problem? Joint and muscle problems are often treated without changing the root cause of the injury. In fact, the best way to predict an injury is to determine if there has been previous injury in the same area. This is because people repeatedly injure an area with addressing the underlying issue.
You don’t have to live with recurring pain. By addressing the underlying problem you can free yourself from repeatedly having the same aches. The difficulty is to find the underlying problem. The way people move and dysfunctional range of motion is often to blame for irritated or painful structures. There is a new revolutionary process called the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (or SFMA) that helps medical professionals find asymmetries and dysfunction that leads to re-occurring pain.
The SFMA is used by several professional athletic and special forces organizations to screen their athletes. It is also provided Siskiyou Physical Therapy as a way to address pain and improve athletic performance.
Quick Facts:
1: If a person is experiencing pain the way he or she moves and the muscle he or she uses is changed. This often irritates structures and changes pain. 1 Exercising in painful ways is rarely productive and may actually make you worse.
2: Seemingly unrelated problems can affect distant areas of the body.2 Spine problems in particular should be addressed in order to move normally.
3: Often by addressing underlying strength or flexibility problems a person can drastically improve their pain management.3 If you have an obvious flexibility problem, often if you improve your flexibility and your pain will improve spontaneously.
In conclusion, there are often underlying reasons why you are not getting better. It just takes a professional using a good assessment tool to find the reason. In my experience there is no more comprehensive tool to evaluate movement dysfunction and the sources of pain.
For more information about the SFMA, visit www.SFMA.com. Additionally the SFMA is provided at Siskiyou Physical Therapy. We regularly perform the assessment and there are several payment options for those with or without health insurance.
Jon Hill, DPT, Licensed Physical Therapist with Siskiyou Physical Therapy
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1: A history of low back pain associates with altered electromyographic activation patterns in response to perturbations of standing balance. Jesse V. Jacobs, Sharon M. Henry, Stephanie L. Jones, Juvena R. Hitt, and Janice Y. Bunn. J Neurophysiol jn.00296.2011
2: Regional Interdependence: A Musculoskeletal Examination Model Whose Time Has Come. Robert S. Wainner, Julie M. Whitman, Joshua A. Cleland, Timothy W. Flynn. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2007;37(11):658-660.
3: Strength Around the Hip and Flexibility of Soft Tissues in Individuals With and Without Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome. Sara R. Piva, Edward A. Goodnite, John D. Childs. . J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2007;37(11):658-660. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2005;35(12)
