PROGRAMMING: MOVEMENT COURSE - EXPLAINED
Who and Why to take OPEX’s new Programming: Movement Course
Our new course Programming: Movement has a lofty mission: To fix a giant gap that exists in the health and fitness industry today.
What gap?
The disjointedness that exists among various healthcare professionals—physiotherapists, chiropractors, fitness coaches, RMTs, osteopaths etc.—in terms of language and perspective. We all receive different training and acquire a different language and ways to communicate with our patients and clients, and as a result, they often leave the clinic or gym more confused than when they came in.
Whitney Reese, one of the course creators, explained the course is designed specifically for three specific types of people:
1. Healthcare professionals
Often healthcare professionals, such as physiotherapists and chiropractors, are great at facilitating acute injury rehabilitation, but less knowledgeable about helping their clients return to exercise safely, and even less sure about how to implement a strength and conditioning plan.
“They’re very familiar with assessing movements, but they’re not familiar with programming movement,” Reese explained, making this course particularly useful for chiropractors, physiotherapists, RMTs and osteopaths or any other professional in the healthcare system.
2. All fitness coaches looking to fix movement
It goes without saying this course is for all types of fitness coaches—OPEX coaches, group class coaches, personal trainers etc—looking to improve their ability to understand, assess and correct movement.
“It’s especially good for coaches with clients with a lot of problems with movement, who are looking for a program based on health, wellness and longevity. They will also learn about how their clients’ movements change throughout their lives,” Reese explained.
3. Coaches of elite athletes
Although elite athletes tend to move better than the general population, Reese explained it’s a great course to learn how to prevent common injuries that often arise in athletes of specific sports.
“For example, if you’re working with an overhead athlete and you know certain shoulder injuries often come from repeatedly going overhead, it’s worth learning about how to dedicate one day of programming a week to shoulder health,” she said.
In this sense, the course teaches how to keep your elite athletes’ movement as ideal as possible, especially when it comes to more sport-specific risks, thus making it the perfect course to help prevent injuries.
3 reasons to take Programming: Movement
1. Produces results for your clients
Do you ever find yourself seeing a flaw in a client’s movement, but sort of guessing why that flaw exists?
You must have tight hamstrings, you infer.
(At which point, your client folds herself in half showing off her flexible hamstrings. And you’re left dumbstruck wondering what’s up with this person’s inability to hinge properly.)
As Reese explained, sometimes a poor movement stemming from a lack of flexibility can look the same as a poor movement that stems from poor stability or from a lack of coordination during a certain movement.
This course teaches you how to recognize the WHY behind the limitation, and then how to program to fix the specific limitation, as opposed to guessing how to fix a particular movement pattern. All of this means you will now have the tools to properly program to fix poor movement patterns, which will help your clients see greater performance results.
2. Reduce and fix your clients’ injuries
As we know, many injuries, especially chronic injuries, result from poor movement.
The tools you will acquire in the course will help you:
Describe movement in a way your clients understand (this is key in helping them understand why the way they move is currently causing them problems).
Understand the WHY (the source of the problem, as explained above).
Assess the problem (understanding what the assessment means allows you to program safely and effectively).
Incorporate principles of movement progression in program design.
Implement a solution through coaching and cueing (to fix movements and ultimately injuries).
These five steps will help you help your clients fix long-standing problems that have been causing them physical grief for months, even years.
3. Develop a network to provide both client support and referrals
Being on the same page as other health professionals in your area and beyond—RMTs, physiotherapists, chiropractors etc.—will provide you the opportunity to network with and speak the same language as them. Not only will this allow you to work together to support each other’s clients with their long-term health and fitness, but it often also leads to referrals, as well.
As OPEX client Chad Butler explained, the fact that there’s a connection between his physiotherapist and his OPEX fitness coach has made all the difference to his health.
After having emergency back surgery, Butler temporarily became a paraplegic. During his recovery, he was reduced to a wheelchair and eventually a cane for quite some time. He did physical therapy but it became incredibly expensive to pay US$220 an hour. Then he found an OPEX coach—Dennis Cheatum at OPEX Franklin in Tennessee, who connected with his physiotherapist.
“Dennis literally did a clinical handoff with my physical therapist, so by the time he designed my program he knew exactly where I was physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually. All of that was taken into account,” Butler said. “Then he put together a program for me, and there are still constant touchpoints between him and my physical therapist.”
Butler continues to meet his physical therapist on a quarterly basis, and on a weekly basis, he puts his trust in Cheatum’s knowledge. As a result, Butler has gone from walking with a cane to living a normal, functional life again.
“I can’t even put a number on it. It has been a 180-degree change. Working with Dennis has helped me improve my quality of life times 100. I can camp with my family now and push my kids on the swings or stand at a cocktail-type setting at a work (function),” he said.
The overarching point is when we acquaint ourselves and learn to speak the same language as other health professionals—and they with us—we can start to work together to provide a higher quality of service and care for our clients that produces real results. THAT is the intention of OPEX’s Programming: Movement course.
Get Programming: Movement and become the coach you’ve always envisioned today.