by Mitch Hauschildt, MA, ATC, CSCS
As many of you likely know, I’m a fan of the Functional Movement Screen (FMS). I have been performing the FMS with athletes since 2001 and over the last 8 years, between myself and our student athletic trainers, I oversee close to 500 screens being performed each year as part of our comprehensive injury prevention screening process at the university level.
One thing that concerns me about some clinicians who use the FMS (or other movement quality assessment tools), is that they become so married to it, that they can’t see the forest through the trees. Meaning, they forget that the FMS is meant to be a tool to help us understand our athletes and patients better, not to punish them by holding them out of an activity because of a bad score.
I have heard several clinicians that I know and respect highly in our field state that someone shouldn’t be allowed to run unless they can to x, y or z on an FMS. Or, that they shouldn’t be able to swing a kettlebell unless they can score a minimum in one or two areas. That is great in a perfect world, but most of us don’t work in a perfect world. My sport coaches expect my athletes to be on the field or court, regardless of their FMS score (or weightroom performance or body fat and so on…).
Thus, the FMS is designed to GUIDE our training, not dictate it. That’s not to say that in certain situations we don’t hold people with bad scores who also have other confounding factors (i.e. injury history, illness, biomechanical flaws, etc), but to blindly state that someone shouldn’t be allowed to perform the activity that they love or get paid to do simply because of their FMS score is short sided.
I love the way that Charlie Weingroff approaches this concept (he discusses a similar approach with physiological readiness as measured by the Omegawave). What he says is that all of the information that we gather on our athletes shouldn’t necessarily hold them from working out. Rather, we need to keep poor scores in mind when we prepare for a workout and be ready to accept the consequence of our actions should we choose to train through something that is less than optimal.
For example, if one of my basketball players has no glaring injury history or past problems but has a 1/3 on his deep squat, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he shouldn’t practice until that is corrected. What it does mean is that when given the opportunity, we will train that issue to correct it.
In the meantime, the entire coaching staff (sport coach, ATC, strength staff) should all be aware of the athlete’s predisposition to injury. If the workout can be modified…great. But, if it can’t be modified (which is more likely the case), then everyone has to go into the practice session with eyes wide open as to what the ramifications might be of him practicing with a poor movement pattern.
As long as everyone understands that at that moment, the skills he will gain during that practice session outweigh the potential risks, then he should hit the court. And, we should all be ready to handle the potential consequences of him working out. If we aren’t prepared to lose him to injury, then he should sit until his movement skills are improved.
It’s all about risk management. We use the FMS to help us assess someone’s risk and then it is up to us to decide if that potential risk outweighs the positives of that specific workout.
The FMS is a great tool, but it is just that…a tool. Let it steer your training, but not take it over.
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