3 minute read
WELLNESS: Pre-game
Summer Tune Up
Get fitness ready with a functional screen test
With the warm weather on the horizon – and all the added surf and sand activity that South County summers bring – when Anchor Physical Therapy’s Mark Torok, PT, DPT, MS, MBA invited me for a tune-up, it felt like a smart idea.
A physical therapy tune-up does not make you injury-proof. Rather, “it tells us what things are present physically or neuromuscularly that we can identify that might lend itself to injury in the future,” Torok explains. Knowledge is power, and knowing what to change up, add to, or begin (or even end) could help avert problems down the road.
Torok, a former college athlete, discovered physical therapy when he injured his shoulder on the baseball field. He felt his physical therapist did more to fix his injury than the orthopedic surgeon who stitched him together. The fitness fanatic fuses his background in sports with his clinical knowledge to screen everyone from little leaguers to college and pro athletes to active seniors, evaluating their fitness levels and propensity for injury.
After talking through my medical history, Torok led me to a well-appointed workout room, which included weight machines, several bikes, and a bunch of resistance bands, wedges, and other items used during a functional screen test. This seven-point exam put me through a variety of exercises so Torok could observe my movement patterns and see where I had any functional deficits. (Spoiler alert! There were plenty!)
The protocol began with three deep squats with my arms overhead. Watching me with an eagle eye, Torok noticed that my calves were tight and I had stability issues in my trunk, pitching me forward. Next, we moved on to a hurdle test. This required me to step up and over a hurdle while holding a dowel across my shoulders. This checked the mobility and stability of my hips, knees, and ankles. (I scored a three! Boom!)
My in-line lunge was less than stellar. While holding the dowl along my spine, I stepped into a lunge position while Torok assessed the flexibility of my hamstrings and back (tight, tight, and tight).
On to shoulder mobility, another move I thought I’d ace, until the around-the-back hand clasp proved painful on the right side and I couldn’t bring my hands together in either position. My shoulders needed serious attention.
From there, I moved to the floor for the active straight leg raise. Keeping one leg on the floor, I raised the other as far as I could before switching legs. This checked my hip mobility and core stability, as well as the control over my trunk and pelvis during the hinge. (Three points for Gry ndor!)
The trunk stability pushup was an epic fail. Starting from flat on the floor, I had to get to the top of a pushup in one motion. I quit planking a while ago (because ugh! planks), but after that humbling test, I mentally added them back into my workouts.
Rotary stability was the last test. On my hands and knees, I did a Bird Dog (opposite arm and leg extended). Easy peasy. Until Torok told me to do the same move, this time on the same arm and leg. The di culty of this test wasn’t physical, but mental. I struggled with coaching my brain through the unfamiliar movement pattern.
This, Torok explained, was not unusual. Much of the early gains made in weight training are because of the formation of a new neurological pattern. Once I established this new pathway, I’d struggle less with the exercise.
The functional screen test pointed to some imbalances I was already aware of – looking at you, tight calves – but I came away with a ton of knowledge that I put to use immediately in my next training session. At Torok’s recommendation, I added single leg movements to my leg days to work on my neuromuscular stability issues. I am planking again, using di erent variations to break up the boredom.
I was ignoring the neurological component.
