3rd December 2013
The inaugural London 'Movement Analysis Meeting' for Pilates Teachers was held late October at Pilates off the Square in the West End of London. This meeting is aimed at presenting Pilates teachers with topics focussing around movement.
Pilates teachers do understand movement and are one of the key groups of practitioners who can positively influence 'Uncontrolled Movement.’
Sometimes the concept that ‘specific exercise for specific movement faults’ can become watered down when trying to teach a client a whole body Pilates exercise. It is important that the client is looked at as a whole but by identifying a key uncontrolled movement to change within that exercise may speed the achievement of the goal.
Sarah Mottram, of Movement Performance Solutions was the first speaker, she presented her recent research titled, 'Motor control retraining exercises for shoulder impingement - effects on function, muscle activation, and biomechanics in young adults’ recently published in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery.
The key take home messages included the fact that cognitively placing the shoulder bade so that the glenoid faces up and then performing a non functional exercise of lifting the arm to 90 degrees at the shoulder (and lowering it again) while continuing to maintain the shoulder blade position made a difference in function and pain with those with impingement signs. Pilates Teachers at the meeting agreed that by placing their clients focus on maintaining the shoulder bade position while performing this familiar movement during a Pilates 1:1 class and setting it as a short homework exercise is likely to make a difference to their clients and their own practice.
The second Movement Analysis Meeting is going to be early in the new year. Mark Comerford will be discussing Lower Limb Rotation Control with a talk titled 'Ground Up or Hip Down?’ Mark dropped in (from Australia) on the first meeting and interested the assembled teachers in his views of his most hated shoulder exercise.
The meeting was a success on feedback measures and there was great interest in further meetings so if you are interested in attending please email warrick@physioworks.co.uk to be included on the list.
See more on Movement Analysis here from Warrick