How to do a Range of Motion Assessment

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

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Today I'm going to walk you through how to do a range of motion assessment so that as a practitioner you can keep letting your clients know their progress which is super exciting for them and helps them continue on with us because they understand their money is well spent and then also if you're helping out with demos this range of motion is important so that we can help onboard people assess them and if you're the practitioner doing the time on the table and handing a prospect back to the person that is going through pricing Etc then they've got some data to work with

 

so here is how you do a range of motion assessment of stretch done so we've got our lovely spokes model Alysa volunteering with us today and so what we'll be doing is starting off with your warmup and so you will do an abbreviated warm up; spinal decompression, take a breath in, we'll do some hip circles so that they're getting nice and a little bit of warmth in that hip joint, gentle it stretch you'll already have explained that when we do the range of motion assessment we are not going for the maximum that it is range of motion- it's just to tell where their stretch reflex kicks in and their body begins to put the brakes on so what I'll do now is... I've just completed those couple beginning stages I'm going to go ahead and do some down-groin circles here and making sure they're nice and loose and relaxed and I'll let them know I'm going to motion assessment "now we're going to start by working on this hip" so I'll tap this knee "we're NOT using 3/5/7 yet, so I just want you to tell me when you first feel anything in this hip okay?"... so I bicycle up, and tell me when you first feel anything in this hip I'm taking that foot right there so this is you can recognize it looks like the start of mandatory right?

 

so at this point they've told me right there, and so I'm going to take and illustrate "okay 90° range of motion would be here" I'm showing this with my arm "you're at 70 as your natural range of motion and so what that means is it explains... (their symptoms) a little bit of the tightness and quickly relate to goal then you go right on to the second point.

 

now we're going to measure the range of motion in the back of your thigh or your hamstring so same as before tell me when you first feel anything in the back of this leg I sometimes will assist if it's a heavy leg I'll assist myself to raise it as I'm going slowly because sometimes people have a very limited range and they'll feel it right here so for Alysa tell me when you first feel any kind of a stretch right there okay so again I would take my arm and indicate this would be 90° you're at 80° range of motion in your hamstring now you'll want to be very definitive- you're the expert, you're the authority, you're saying here's how many degrees it is

 

we're going to use increments of five so it would be 80 or 85 right and you're going to want to just be definitive in saying this is what it is then you'll either remember all four measurements and enter them into the computer [WRITE MEASUREMENTS ON THE RX PAD] at the end or sometimes I so that I don't forget the measurements on the first side I'll say take a quick breath and I'll enter these measurements in at that point I can go to the computer and enter them in now we'll do hip hamstring and then explain the 90/90 rule so "here at Stretch Zone we believe that the body begins to function properly when all four points of your hips and hamstrings can naturally reach 90°, and so as we help you to do that over the coming weeks, I'm confident that we can be able to restore that range of motion that we used to have..." connect them back to what they're trying to do here

 

so you'll explain the 90/90 rule there then we'll go ahead and continue with the second side "so now we're going to do the same thing on your second side go ahead and bend that knee for me we'll continue that little warm up with the down going circles same as before time I just want you to tell me when you first feel anything in this hip", bicycle up going slowly okay "so 90° would be here and you are at 90° in the right hip" so  we we only point out when they have imbalances and so if both hips had reached 90° then and all four areas had reached 90° then there's no 90/90 imbalance. if any one of the four points does not reach 90° in natural range of motion then they would be considered to have a 90/90 imbalance so even though one of her hips is reaching it, we're we're not going to bring that up until we do kind of the assessment at the end

 

"so all right now we're going to take this back of the hamstring or the back of the thigh on this second leg so go ahead and tell me when you first feel anything in here okay?" yeah 90° would be here always indicating with the arm where 90 is you're at 85 okay so that's the end of our measurements and then you're going to kind of translate what this means to them "so what I'm seeing is that since some of the points only one of them reaches 90° so the other three points we measured did not reach 90° in their natural range of motion you do have a 90/90 imbalance" um the hips were slightly less flexible than the hamstring and so you have a hip to hamstring imbalance and so then you explain what that means "so there's a little tug war going on from the front to the back your your pelvis is getting tilted forward and you're having to use your back to make sure that those tight hips aren't pulling you forward right and making you fall over so that puts some strain on the back that'll explain some of the back tightness that you feel. does that make sense?" 

 

and so there are three kinds of imbalances; the 90/90, the hip to hamstring, and the last one would be side to side

 

so she had 80° in this hamstring range of motion 85 here anything more than 10° difference is something we consider an imbalance that we want to address and help you to correct in the hamstrings we don't have more than 10 so if that's all I was talking about I'm just leave that out we're going to keep it very simple so she knows to focus just on what she needs to work on but in the hips do you remember what your numbers wereokay you were 90 degrees in this hip and uh I don't see that's why I go and write the numbers down because I don't remember what it was but I remember I believe it was 75 and so if you have 75 degrees range of motion in this hip and 90 here then that's greater than 10° of difference from one hip to another so that means your body is playing Tug of War side to side... you might sometimes feel like you're walking in a resistance band- that kind of takes your energy... but what we can do is retrain that hip to get the same kind of looseness as your other side and so since it's over 10 degrees we would call that a side to side imbalance so  hopefully that explains what you're feeling and then with your client you would explain how these tight numbers keep them from the goals that they're trying to have how it's creating tightness in the body and so at that point you just go ahead and conclude the assessment and go ahead with the championship belt.