The FMS's Influence on Strength and Conditioning (Part 2)

I wrote yesterday about how I see pre-training movement screens fitting into the yearly programming for strength and conditioning professionals. I’m hoping today to give a little bit more insight as to how exactly I see strength and conditioning professionals putting those assessment and screen scores to work for them. I should note that I’ve only been using scores from pre-training screens like the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) for 3-4 years and I’m certain that the way I implement the system is far from flawless. I try and stick to the principles of the system as much as possible and keep things as simple as possible when there is a score that grabs my attention. As I alluded to in my previous blog: bigger, faster, and stronger is still the ultimate goal, just not at the expense of available and healthy.

At Heilman’s Performance we collect scores on the Functional Movement Screen (FMS). You can purchase a kit that will aid you in the entire screen and in my opinion; it’s the most efficient process that provides you with the most valuable feedback on the functions of the neuromuscular system. Most people can get through a screen on an athlete or client in 9-12 minutes. By the end of it you can have a pretty good idea of how that person moves and any “red flags” that may need retraining or any referrals that need to be made. The FMS, in my opinion, gives you the best start. The great people at functional movement systems have since come out with other assessments like the Y-Balance Kit and the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA - which is a breakout for clinicians when pain is reported). We don’t use either of these methods yet in our athlete assessments at Heilman’s Performance.

This is the best crash course (I know you guys are busy) I’ve found on YouTube highlighting the 7 tests that make up the functional movement screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkPYqPIeBjc

It’s important to let you guys know that I’m not just promoting the functional movement systems. It just happens to be the screen that we use as our check and recheck at Heilman’s Performance. What I’m trying to encourage is that you have SOMETHING to provide you with feedback before you start throwing exercise prescription at people. The basic questions we want to help people with are:

Do you have a screen? Any screen?

Does it provide you with usable feedback?

How do you use that feedback?

And do you have a method to check whether or not the screen is improving?

Ok, now let’s get a bit more specific about how some of these scores affect a strength and conditioning session. Again, this is just how I let individual scores guide me through my program design. I encourage you to find a screen that works for you and your clients, and develop your own methods of helping to improve it.

As of this writing, I use pre-training screens to affect my program design in one of three ways:

Applying Regressions

This is the idea of taking a fundamental movement (like a squat) and finding a more efficient way to train it than the way initially proposed. Most people understand squats, so I think it makes for the best demonstration. A lot of people jump immediately into back squatting (where an athlete or client rests the bar at the top of the shoulders at the base of the neck) when they first learn to squat. I would consider the back squat one of the most advanced strength training exercises you can apply to an individual, whether they are an athlete or a member of the general population. I generally use back squats with my more advanced high school and college athletes, but it’s pretty rare in my programming. So let’s just assume, the back squat, is our top tier exercise for the squat pattern, here is a simple example of how I might regress it.

Back Squats

Front Squats – Switching the load to the front of the body generally helps provide counter balance through the movement and allows the athlete/client to load the joints structures of the ankles, knees, and hips more safely. Young athletes are also less likely to overload this exercise. Nestling a rugged steel barbell against your throat isn’t exactly an enjoyable experience for most.

Goblet Squats – An easy way to provide counter balance to the movement without the kinesthetic awareness that a barbell requires. Sometimes our “under the bar” experience makes us forget that the weight room isn’t the most comfortable place to be for a lot of people, and barbells can be scary. Loading with a dumbbell can allow you to train the movement with sufficient resistance, without putting an athlete into fight or flight mode.

Air Squats – Performing a squat without load is still a squat, bro. And besides, gravity is pretty strong.

Assisted Squats – This is where you can have a client hold on to a fixed barbell or a TRX to keep them upright as they move throughout their squat pattern.

Exercise Omittance

At Heilman’s Performance we use certain red flag scores that we get from our screens to tell us when we should just avoid some exercises entirely. It’s not to say that we don’t think training all the fundamental movements are important, it’s just to say that in some instances, we can get the stimulus we desire from something else. That something else should allow us to take the 5 steps forward we all want without taking 10 steps back somewhere down the road. In my next blog I’ll discuss this further in depth with each test score we collect but a good example off the top of my head would be:

An asymmetrical shoulder mobility score = no bilateral barbell pressing.

We see instances all the time that one shoulder in an athlete has considerably more mobility than the other. Until that asymmetry is cleaned up, I don’t see any reason for them to be trying to apply the equal amount of work to a single implement (a barbell). A lot of asymmetries in shoulder mobility will come from previous injuries or as structural adaptations made by the individual depending on their past experiences (e.g. Most baseball players). Because of these changes made due to past stressors, some people may never have a symmetrical score on a shoulder mobility test. THAT’S OK! Just don’t let them get under a two hundred pound barbell and bounce it off their chest or push it overhead multiple times. You’re taking two sides, one more capable than the other, but you’re expecting them to split the work 50/50. Sounds like a disaster in the workplace, but it’s something we should take into account in the weight room too.

Again, I need to stress that I think pressing is important, I just think that for this population a landmine press (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCfcGei-NqM) or a single arm press with a dumbbell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVM2S2KWX6Q) would be better options.

Exercise Prescription

We use standardized functional movement scores at Heilman’s Performance to assess mobility and stability through the fundamental human movements. It would only make sense, then, that we design our programs to reflect the information that we collect from those assessments.

The way we do that is to train a certain number of movements at least twice per week. As long as the movement score dictates that an athlete or client can control a certain movement through a safe range of motion we apply an exercise that fits the individual, their goals, competitive sport, training ability, and training phase.

If all movement scores are clean, the movements I make sure to train at least twice per week are:

Squatting – Back Squatting, Front Squatting, Goblet Squatting.

Hip Hinging – Deadlifting, Kettlebell swinging, Olympic lifting.

Stepping/Lunging – Most any exercise performed on a single leg.

Pushing – Bench pressing, overhead pressing, push ups, Turkish get ups, planks etc.

Pulling – DB or barbell rowing, suspension trainer rowing, or pull ups.

These are five of the fundamental movements that we can get pretty good feedback on via our screens. I’m also convinced that if you took just these five movements, and found a safe way to train all of them at least twice per week, you would have pretty well rounded athletes and clients. HOW you train each and every movement should be dictated by the information that you gather from your pre-training screens.

These movements provide a good platform for our initial program design. As I said before, anything else we decide to add could be dictated by a number of variables. Our baseball and hockey players, for example, tend to have more rotational power exercises mixed in. Our sprinters work with the sleds and Woodway treadmills more often. If an athlete’s goal is to deadlift 400 lbs, and I think we can safely pursue that goal, I’ll try and design a roadmap to that goal. The key is that every program we design covers a safe way to train squatting, hinging, stepping, lunging, pushing and pulling. Everything else is exactly that… Everything else.

One good example of how exercise prescription is dictated by pre-training screens would be this:

A person who can’t touch the shins below their knee caps without rounding over at their lower back probably doesn’t need to pick up anything from the floor just yet. Bring the barbell or implement closer to them first, and work on their ability to hinge their hips effectively. Or, if it’s an athlete, that you insist on moving load, try a Romanian deadlift, where the athlete starts with the load at the top and only hinges as far as their hips will allow.

Finding a screen that will tell you whether or not your client or athlete is ready to perform any of these movements under sufficient load should be something you take care of before you start prescribing any exercises. In my next post, hopefully this week, I’ll provide you with more examples of how I use specific feedback from the FMS and other movement screens to dictate how I regress, omit, and prescribe certain exercises, but I hope this was a good start.

As always, thank you for reading,

Caleb Heilman

The FMS's Influence on Strength and Conditioning (Part 1)

With the announcement of our January “Movement Workshop” here in Minot, ND, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and having a lot of discussions about assessing movement quality and where it “fits” in the strength and conditioning world. Assessments aren’t new to the world of strength and conditioning. Every coach I’ve ever encountered has their own battery of assessments that they put their athletes through before getting into the bulk of their training. I think we all pretty much agree on certain standards: vertical jump tests help us assess vertical power development, standing broad jumps give us a standard for horizontal power development, and 60/40-yard dashes can assist in monitoring speed development. Assessments like these have been around forever and are mainstays for a reason. They give us valuable feedback that helps us audit our programs and ourselves.

I think we all understand the value of monitoring and assessments, but for some reason are still quick to ignore or write off the application and analysis of a simple movement screen. I’ve been using pre-training screens and assessments now for 3 or 4 years to drive individualized programming for my athletes. I’m not afraid to admit that when I first started I didn’t really know how to best use all the information I was collecting. I hope that 10 years from now, I’ll say the same thing about how I use the information today. What I did/do know, however, is that some of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the world were/are using screens like the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) to facilitate consistent progress with fewer setbacks with their athletes and clients.  

In my opinion, getting people in the strength and conditioning world to buy into the idea of collecting standardized movement scores gets hung up because of a couple of reasons. I’m hoping, with this blog, to address these reasons and explain how I think we can turn them from obstacles into a driving force for progress in our human performance community.

Reason #1: When you collect standardized scores that aren’t a direct reflection of strength, power or speed development, people assume you are trying to be a clinician.

This for me has been one of my biggest setbacks since collecting standardized movement scores. I think a lot of the clinicians I work in congruence with feel like a strength coach that is committing a fraction of his/her time and energy to collecting scores not directly related to strength and power is trying to do their job. I’m hoping to give some insight to how that can’t be further from the truth.

When I collect an FMS score, I am doing nothing other than assessing neuromuscular function. Neuromuscular function in essence is just the patterns that the brain accesses when it conducts the human structure (muscles pulling on bones) to move.  Assessment tools like the FMS have given us a means to apply a standardized score to neuromuscular function. That’s it. When we collect the numbers, we are able to seek out certain dysfunctions in the neuromuscular system. When we compare scores bilaterally (one side to the other), we are able to seek out asymmetries in the neuromuscular system that might eventually lead to structural imbalances and, eventually, to pain and/or injury.

If an athlete reports pain or injury to me as a strength coach, I refer them to a clinician. It is not in my scope of practice or my interest to treat pain or injury. I do believe, however, that assessing the function of the neuromuscular system and treating any dysfunctions or asymmetries in its function pays incredibly high dividends down the road to preventing that injury and pain from returning. Also, training around pain and discomfort is a far cry from treating pain and discomfort. If an athlete has knee pain or shoulder pain, they get referred, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find something for that athlete to work on. I think often times, when a strength coach TRAINS AROUND pain; it can seem as if we’re trying to TREAT pain. This is one reason that communication between coach and clinician is so valuable.

I think of the Functional Movement Model like this:

If you have a leak in your roof, your first action is what? Well, put a bucket under the leak to catch the water so the floor doesn’t get soaking wet, of course. I liken this method to a clinician assessing and treating the site in which pain is presenting. Your knee hurts, why wouldn’t we look at your knee, right? This is logical thinking, but even though we’ve kept the leak from destroying our brand new carpet, we’ve done nothing to actually fix the cause (the leaky roof) of the problem (our floor getting wet). When we look at the way a person is moving with standardized scoring it can give us valuable insight into not only where the water (pain) is coming from, but also how large the leak (neuromuscular dysfunction) might actually be. What we’re trying to do with standardized movement scoring isn’t to clean up the water, but to keep the roof from leaking before it ever has a chance to make a mess.

I understand that strength and conditioning coaches collecting information that doesn’t directly reflect power and strength development can have some clinicians a bit nervous, but please try and understand that by doing so, I’m not trying to do your job, I’m trying to make your job easier.

Reason #2: Strength and Conditioning coaches don’t understand how the scores can positively affect their programming.

I attended a Functional Movement Systems weekend certification course about 4 years ago, and it was the first time I was ever introduced to pre-training movement assessment and screening. I left Minneapolis that weekend with my head spinning like a top. I had just spent 72 hours amongst an array of human performance professionals: athletic trainers, chiropractors, physical therapists, personal trainers, strength and conditioning and CrossFit coaches, etc. and had no idea what the hell had happened. Sprinkle in that my weekend roommate was one of the most well read, hardest working, brilliant young human performance minds I’ve ever met and I left the state of Minnesota feeling pretty insignificant. It took me a long while to understand, even though they reiterated the point multiple times, that collecting standardized scores for the neuromuscular system is just ONE TOOL IN YOUR TOOLBOX.

Since that weekend, I have adopted the system to allow me to individualize training for all of my athletes while avoiding set backs and chronic pains as best I can, but it doesn’t mean every stimulus I apply is just to create more efficient movement. I haven’t lost site of my purpose with my athletes. Bigger, faster, stronger will always be my job. I just refuse to chase any of those three attributes at the cost of proper function and physical health. I’m hoping this week I can give you a better idea of how you as a strength and conditioning professional can still get more strength, power, and speed out of your athletes while still following the principles of the movement system.

I’d like to discuss how the collection of scores leads me to certain implements to assist exercises, the use of exercise regressions, and the omittance of certain exercises entirely.

The ideas and methods that I am going to share are a collection of such from literature I have read from other strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists, athletic trainers, and chiropractors. I have used the information, research, and experiences they have shared, to affect my programming in what I believe to be a positive way. I want you, as a reader, to understand that even though I have developed my own method of applying the information I collect (and I encourage you to experiment with your own ideas/methods) I’m not going to take any credit for coming up with them. Any information that is shared that you think might be valuable is because I stand on the shoulders of giants that have paved the way for young coaches like myself to share how they’ve affected my professional development in a positive manner.

Furthermore, I’m not recommending the functional movement model as a replacement to your assessment methods. I’m recommending it as a valuable addition to your assessment methods. I use it strictly as a red flag system that can alert you to possible problems before they ever arise. You can still turn your athletes into beasts, I’m just hoping this gives you insight into how to create beasts that compete free of pain and injury.

Later in the week I’ll try and illustrate exactly how I use standardized movement scores to drive my programming, and hope that by now, I have some of you interested. For those of you who are planning on attending our “Movement Workshop” January 27^th – 29^th, 2017: I would encourage you to start researching different methods of movement assessment.

The functional movement systems has pretty much established itself as the gold standard in assessment of movement patterns and would be a great place to start.

Here is the website: http://www.functionalmovement.com/fms

I’m also hoping that this can give people a better idea as to what we’re trying to accomplish by hosting workshops in our community. Local human performance students and professionals gathering consistently to discuss and share ideas is something we don’t yet have here in Minot. We’re hoping to change that and bridge the gap in the process. Ultimately, if we can work better together, the human performance students, our athletes, and our clients will be the beneficiaries. I think we all know and understand that, but now it’s time to act.

As Always, Thank you for taking the time to read,

Caleb Heilman