Many people often overlook the fact that they need a proper movement assessment before they do any fitness or sports activities. This is ultimately the trainer’s fault because they are rushing their clients to get them to the gym and start the transformation process. The truth is that if the trainers’ ultimate goal is to improve his clients’ performance or fitness it’s best to evaluate the client first so he would know which areas to focus on and where he can improve. It is also important to get a movement assessment in case the client has an injured area that he’s not completely aware of. It is in, both the trainer’s and the athlete’s best interest to get this assessment done before they dive into the workout plan and training.
Doing a proper movement assessment before starting with any activity will allow you to figure out what your range of motion is and let you know which part of your body needs the most attention. It will also let you know if there’s an injury that you don’t know about because there’s no pain yet. Many people have these “silent” injuries that they aren’t aware of because the easiest way to know some part of you is injured is through the pain. The fact is that pain doesn’t always manifest when there’s an injury. Sometimes you can have an injury and no pain at all so you won’t know you are injured and that your movement in that particular area is impaired. As a personal trainer, the movement assessment can prevent you from giving exercises to clients that may increase their injury or flat-out injure them because of a movement they are unable to do.
Benefits of Getting Assessed
The first benefit you get as a coach that sends their client to do a movement assessment is to build trust and start your coach-client relationship the right way. The client will see that you care about their well-being and you will show professionalism in your work. Your credibility will also become much higher at this point because you know what you are doing.
The assessment will also allow you to prepare a specific training plan for your clients. You can tailor it to their specific needs and help them improve the areas they are having trouble with. After the assessment, these areas will be pinpointed for you and you can devise a workout routine around those areas to target them properly and avoid further injury.
The movement assessment will also create a good mark for a baseline that you can use later on to track how much your client has improved. Once you have the starting point you can easily compare it to the results later on.
One of the most important benefits is that you will be able to prevent any injuries when you do a proper movement assessment. The limitations will show themselves and the entire workout routine can be built in a way to slowly improve the areas without the risk of an injury.
An assessment will also allow you as the coach to create a slowly progressing training routine that your client can follow without too much effort. This will ensure that your client does the exercise in proper form and it will also help him with the mechanics of the exercise.
Having an assessment will also help you plan corrective exercises for the areas that are not functioning optimally. You can create an exercise routine to improve these areas once you know them and movement assessment will identify them so you can properly focus on those minimizing the chance of injury.
Assessing your client before you start working on their exercise routine will show the value of your work as well. It will show your client that you invest your time and energy into devising a proper workout plan for them based on their particular assessment and they will trust you more than they would if you don’t do an assessment.
Specific Benefits of Movement Assessment For Athletes
When a movement assessment is done properly, it can show athletes their weak points and their strong points. For an athlete that competes and wants to perform at maximum capacity, this is crucial for their training. When they know their weak points it’s much easier to create a training plan around those areas so they can improve them. But they also benefit from knowing their strong areas as well. When you learn that something you do is affecting your performance positively, you keep doing that and improve your results. It’s also going to help you when you make adjustments in your training routine. It will show you the exact areas you need to pay more attention to so you can adjust your training routine accordingly.
Specific Benefits of MA for Recovering Patients
Patients who suffered an injury are constantly at risk during their recovery process of getting a repeat of the same injury. A movement assessment will ensure that the injury has healed enough and the patient is ready to start actively participating in sports to get back his fitness level. Usually, this is done by observing the patient but a movement assessment is a more efficient and precise way that will give you more information.
Specific Benefits of MA for Elderly
Movement assessment also has benefits for the aging population because as we are getting older our movements become constricted and it’s much harder to perform some actions. By doing a movement assessment you will be able to figure out exactly which areas are starting to decline and address them properly by devising a workout that would increase the range of motion and provide some pain relief.
Conclusion
Movement assessment is an essential piece of creating a proper workout routine. It will increase efficiency and properly address the issues and injuries you have, minimizing the risk of causing another injury or repeating an injury you are recovering from. The proper workout would also allow you to learn the exact technique for doing an exercise with the full range of motion. Proper movement assessment is also essential for professional athletes because it helps them figure out their weak and strong points which lets them know what they need to focus on more and what they are doing right.
If you need a professional team to perform a movement assessment so you can reap the benefits, feel free to book a session with us.
