Movement Screening for Limitations

The fall sports season is in full effect here, and at Essentials of Life, we are all about making sure that our families and our young athletes are staying healthy, and in this season, performing their best on the field and staying safe. And so even if you are one of those young athletes or weekend warriors that feels like your body is working pretty well for you, I have a movement screen that can potentially show us where some limitations are hanging out that might lead to some challenges down the road here.

So let's get right into it. I have a length of PVC pipe here, but you can definitely use a broomstick, a mop, or anything that you got around the house that you can hold up over your head. So we're going to grab this stick here. I'm going to step back into the room so that you can see me fully here.

We're going to hold this stick up over our head here, and we're going to perform an overhead squat. So feet about shoulder width apart, arms staying straight up over our head here, and then we're squatting down until we get to the bottom and coming back up. Now, we're going to be able to see some limitations here if we're tilting one side or the other, if we feel like we're rotating, or if we feel like we're starting to fall forward or not able to get all the way down deep into that squat.

So even if, like I said, you are feeling good, you feel like your body is rocking and moving well, if you're not able to perform this comfortably, or if you feel like you're moving funny or losing balance, that can be an indicator of an imbalance that may come back to show up as an injury throughout the season. So this is a great time to come on in, get your movement screen done, get a scan done here in the office, and make sure that not only you can perform your best throughout the season here, but you stay feeling good too.

Be Well

Dr. Daniel