Functional Strength: An Updated Approach to Exercising our Patients

Course Description

This course will help you "connect the dots" with your manual therapy approach to treatment by linking patterns, force couples and muscle slings to retrain ideal movement. 

Come advance your understanding of therapeutic exercise as well as your ability to create basic to advanced functional exercise programs customized to your patients. You'll also learn to assess functional weakness and differentiate this from weakness found in manual muscle testing. 

This course will progress from basic fundamentals to advanced, high-level athletic plyometric training. As with all our courses, this course will be at least 75% hands-on lab. However, participants will not be required to perform all the exercises demonstrated in the course.

 

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What people are saying!

Instructor was able to relate the techniques that he was teaching to our patient populations and give us modifications and progressions as necessary to meet our clinical needs. He also related the techniques and concepts to billing and documentation requirements. Excellent course that was interactive and kept me engaged the whole weekend.
Cody, WY
I found several modifications to exercises I already use and new applications of exercises that I can use with patients at varying levels of ability.
Chattanooga, TN
Information was delivered in a systematic manner that was very helpful to learning. Material was reviewed multiple times over the course of the weekend.
Canton, MI

Top Takeaways

  • Peel back why a particular dysfunctional movement is occurring.
  • Improve your ability to blend retraining with manual treatments for improved efficiency.
  • Look at your patient's dysfunctional movement with "new eyes" to better determine re-occurring compensatory patterns within the plane of motion.

Course Objectives

At the completion of this seminar, the participant will be able to:

  • Given a case study, assess functional weakness in a patient using the four pathological barriers to ideal/optimal movement
  • Perform an assessment of a dysfunctional movement pattern and specifically identify 2 primary and 1-2 secondary compensatory movements occurring due to weakness and/or pain
  • ​Accurately justify the use of functional strength testing versus manual muscle testing when assessing a patient
  • Properly exhibit and/or correctly perform 4 exercises using a functional approach to muscle activity
  • Correctly state the rationale for an in-depth functional strength assessment of upper extremity, lower extremity and trunk
  • Properly execute an in-depth functional strength assessment of upper extremity, lower extremity and trunk
  • Correctly apply force couples, synergies, and muscle slings to the body to address function-specific strength deficits
  • Develop and implement a comprehensive functional exercise program, progressing from basic to advanced levels for patients

Course Instructors

Stuart Orr

BS, PTA, NSCA-CPT, CWcHP

Stuart Orr graduated from Pennsylvania State University earning his AS in Applied Sciences with a concentration in Physical Therapy Assistant in 1999. In 2006 he earned his BS in Marketing and Management from Pennsylvania State University. Stuart holds certifications as an exercise specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA-CPT), Matheson Functional Capacity Evaluator and Workers Compensation Healthcare Provider. Stuart is ongoing in post graduate continuing education to develop his clinical and manual skills, yet also has found a passion for teaching other healthcare professionals as an assistant instructor with Great Lakes Seminars since 2003. Stuart has more than 12 years of orthopedic and sports medicine experience & has worked extensively within the worker’s compensation field assisting the injured worker in getting back to the labor force. Stuart is currently a regional director of Work Hardening/ Conditioning for ATI Physical Therapy for PA/ Northern DE.

Stuart Orr

Course Outline

Saturday

7:30am

Breakfast

8:00am

Lecture: Introduction, functional muscle assessment, action versus function, and muscle synergies

10:15am

Lecture: Functional synergies, appropriate use of different exercise tools

12:00pm

Lunch (on your own)

1:00pm

Lab: Functional exercises for the upper and lower extremity

3:15pm

Lab: Movement assessment - upper and lower trunk

5:00pm

Review of evidence-based literature

5:30pm

Adjourn

Sunday

7:30pm

Breakfast

8:00am

Review session

8:30am

Lab: Functional exercises of the upper extremities

10:15am

Lab: Functional exercises for the lower extremities

11:00am

Lab: Palpation/functional anatomy of lower extremity

12:00pm

Lunch (on your own)

1:00pm

Lab: Functional exercises of the upper trunk

3:15pm

Lab: Functional exercises of the lower trunk

4:30pm

Review of evidence-based literature

5:00pm

Adjourn

Course PDF

Course Brochure PDF

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