Get Moving with a Functional Movement Screen

Posted on 3/8/2018 by Joshua Cramer, DAT, LAT, ATC, CES, CSCS

Injuries can happen at any time to anyone. Whether playing your favorite sport, working on the job or living your daily life, it’s important to get the proper treatment when an injury occurs, and that starts with the evaluation process.

During an evaluation, a clinician will discuss a patient’s medical history, discuss goals and specific needs, inspect for abnormalities, tenderness or deformities and test musculoskeletal health. All of these components are essential to making a proper diagnosis, but they rarely provide the whole picture. These evaluative techniques focus on the area of the patient’s chief complaint, but what if the issue is in a different region or system in the body?

To design more effective treatments, it is important to look at the body as a whole – the upper and lower body, the front and back of the body and the limbs. This is where postural and functional assessments come into play.

Functional movements are essentials movements found in activities of daily living. They usually involve multi-joint movements in numerous directions, which place demand on the body's core muscles. Our clinical team frequently include functional movement screens in the evaluation process, which are designed to examine these daily essential movements and help identify limitations and dysfunction, reduce the risk of injury and improve efficiency and performance. Functional movement screens also include a detailed report and customized corrective exercise program.

There are a handful of functional movement tools available to clinicians. Some of the more popular are through the Functional Movement System, which is divided into two main parts: the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) and the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA). Another popular functional movement tool is Fusionetics.

The FMS is a screening tool which takes the patient through a series of basic movements with the intention of determining if the patient is at risk for injury. Its role is to impose minimum standards on movement patterns. The movements include:

Squatting
Stepping over a hurdle
Lunging
Reaching behind the back
Leg raises
Push-ups
Core test – the patient starts on his/her hands and knees and touches the elbow to the knee
The SFMA is a full-body assessment broken down into two parts, the top-tier and the breakouts. The top tier helps determine if movements are functional versus dysfunctional and painful versus non-painful. The breakouts determine the type of dysfunction a patient may suffer from. The movements consist of:

Various neck movements
Reaching behind the back
Hip flexion (bending forward)
Hip extension (arching backward)
Hip rotation (twisting)
Single leg stance
Squatting
The SFMA will help define what type of dysfunction exists, whether that’s stability and motor control dysfunction, joint mobility dysfunction or tissue extensor dysfunction. Once the clinician determines which dysfunctions exist, he/she will set up an individualized treatment protocol to correct the faulty movement pattern and treat the injury and prevent future occurrences.

Fusionetics is designed in the same manner, but is web-based. It is a series of 10 exercises that determine whether someone is susceptible to certain injuries due to form and body mechanics. At the end of the Fusionetics assessment, the system will provide patients with corrective exercises. Each patient can create a free account with Fusionetics and access the results and corrective exercises from any computer, tablet or smartphone.

These screenings and assessments can be done on both injured and healthy individuals to identify movement and stability deficits. As you continue to play your respective sport or go through your daily routines, keep in mind that proper functional movement is a necessity. It is just as important to treat your body properly when you’re healthy as it is when you’re injured.

By: Joshua Cramer, DAT, LAT, ATC, CES, CSCS. Josh has been with NovaCare Rehabilitation for five years and serves as the head athletic trainer for Germantown Academy and the Philadelphia Freedoms. He is certified in various manual therapy techniques and has treatment expertise in shoulder injuries and concussion.