Comprehensive Movement Training for the Orthopedic Practitioner

Comprehensive Movement Training for the Orthopedic Practitioner

2 Year Certification Course Begins May 2018

Applications now being accepted, space is limited

Comprehensive Movement Training for the Orthopedic Practitioner

 

Overview

This training program, leading to Certification as an Orthopedic Movement Specialist (OMS), is open to PT, PTA, OT, COTA, ATC, MD, & DO practitioners who want to expand their knowledge concerning musculo-skeletal pain and dysfunction, exercise prescription, postural instruction, ergonomics and body mechanics training. Anyone with the appropriate medical degree and interest in movement for both personal and professional purposes is welcome to apply.

More than Orthopedics?

While this course is advertised as being for orthopedics, its scope is actually much broader. The unifying theme is movement—participating, observing, and analyzing movement thru the ‘lens’ of movement optimization and principles of dynamic integrated movement. This is in contrast to and is an evolvement from our current static integration principles/concepts/applications. Movement optimization is the common denominator of the rehab profession and as such this course has definite applicability to not only ortho, but also pediatrics, geriatrics and neuro.

How Can I Benefit?

The reason to participate in this program is primarily for practice enhancement purposes. Your primary goals might be to:

• Understand movement and the musculo-skeletal system better
• Add valuable and cutting-edge techniques to your tool-box
• Markedly improve
  • Patient outcomes
  • Physician confidence
  • Word-of-mouth referrals
  • Job satisfaction
• Carve out a unique niche in your market to make your private practice stand out
• Make yourself more valuable to prospective employers
• Gain important insight into your own movement inefficiencies and imbalances—and enjoy learning new movements and developing new capabilities

Ultimately, this isn’t about putting more letters behind your name. It’s about honing your craft, feeling better in your own body, and enhancing your revenue production!

Curriculum

The basic framework of a typical training day consists of a series of related, verbally guided or demonstrated movement sequences roughly based on, but modified from Yoga, T’ai Chi, Feldenkrais and Qi Gong inspired movements. These are examples of what we will be calling Dynamic Integrated Movement Systems. The experiential movement is then followed by group observation of the movement, analysis or breakdown of the whys and wherefores of each exercise, discussion of clinical applications and contra-indications, exploration of relevant sub-variations of the same theme, and partner practice in assessment and the utilization of various teaching techniques.

In the First Segment, you will learn introductory concepts, core principles, specific language and movement training strategies that you will be using throughout the program. We start off with the basics—exploring relationships between the hips, pelvis and lumbar spine. How is the pelvis moved? How is the pelvis stabilized? How does a pelvis become imbalanced or biased in both front/back and left/right dimensions? And what can you do about it? What is the relationship between hip immobility and lumbar hypermobility? And what can you do about it? This hip to pelvis relationship is a key one. It is a crucial component of spinal health all the way up the chain to the head, and a crucial component of lower extremity health all the way down the chain to the feet.

You will be blending themes as you proceed, adding in exploration of thoraco-lumbar relationships to your initial hip-to-lumbar focus. As you work into your Second Segment, you will shift your attention farther up the spine—where you will be working with cervico-thoracic relationships. How are the head and eyes supported in their movement—both up/down and left/right? How are the head and eyes supported in their posture? How do the head and neck become imbalanced or biased in both front/back and left/right dimensions? What is the relationship between thoracic immobility and imbalance and cervical hypermobility? This head-to-thorax-to-pelvis relationship is a key one. It is a crucial component of cervical, shoulder girdle and glenohumeral health.

In the Third Segment, you will continue with head-to-tail connections—mostly working with spinal system movement and postural balance in all basic planes of movement. You will also begin exploration of one of the most fundamental, but also one of the most ignored, building blocks of human movement—the pelvic force couple. This theme is critical to understanding pelvic, thoracic and cervical imbalances.

Starting in these first three segments, but continuing throughout the program, we will be teaching integrative manual skills. This Feldenkrais-based manual therapy approach teaches vital proprioceptive self-awareness skills through detailed and integrated/patterned passive movement. This method can be used as a stand-alone treatment modality or can be blended with joint or soft tissue mobilization to improve proprioceptive awareness and functional carry-over. We will start with basic handling skills—gentle manual support to encourage a deeper level of relaxation—     moving gently and slowly while ‘listening’ for muscle resistance or unconscious muscle effort. This type of ‘manual work’ teaches effort perception and reduction skills, both locally and systemically.

I will for the most part be drawing upon Feldenkraisian techniques initially to ease your learning process. These techniques include: verbal direction of proprioceptive cues, before and after comparisons of test positions or key movements, practicing alternating or reciprocating patterns of movement, positional variations and application of constraints. These tricks of the trade are invaluable in getting your patient to move in the right place, to stabilize the right part, and to apply your carefully considered exercise into their daily lives. These are key skills you will be practicing in your partner sessions.

Also sprinkled liberally throughout the curriculum of the first three segments, and continuing again through the entire program, are exercises borrowed from Eastern movement systems. Modified movements from Yoga, T’ai Chi and Qi Gong will be analyzed, explained, rehab-articulated and practiced as you move through the various themes. This is to give you more content to work with and to help you with pattern recognition. These types of movements, modified and bundled into groupings, make great end-game movement practices.

In the Fourth Segment, you will color outside the cardinal plane lines as you work through the more complex and multi-planar aspects of pelvic and spinal control and optimization. Diagonals, arcs, circles, oscillations and undulations are introduced here. Raise your spinal game to new heights by both recognizing and having the tools to affect positive change in complex and confusing situations. We will also be addressing hip issues in this segment, osteoarthritis, surgeries and fractures plus all the other self-inflicted hip ailments generally related to hip instability and functional hip weakness—FAI, labral issues, trochanteric pain, piriformis or gluteus medius syndromes, hip flexor issues and so on.

Starting in the fourth and continuing through the Fifth Segment, you will make your way down to the legs. The lower extremity themes include optimal movement training rationale and techniques for working with both repetitive stress injuries and traumatic injuries. Toe arthritis, plantar fasciitis, bunions, shin splints, patellar issues, and various proximal thigh strains will be covered—as these repetitive stress injuries in particular need to be addressed by motor control training. Lower extremity fractures, ligament and meniscal tears, and surgeries for the ankle and knee will also be discussed with a focus on strategies used to both restore normal mobility and strength around the injured part and to reintegrate that part with the larger whole. Applications of these patterns of lower extremity integrative movements to gym workouts or sport specific conditioning drills and performance enhancement are demonstrated and practiced.

Autonomic balancing issues—where you will learn relaxation themed exercise or movement mediation—is another interwoven theme that starts in the first segment and follows the same thread throughout the whole program. Breathing, mouth/TMJ, eye and facial muscles, upper neck and pelvic floor exercises are explored as a means of further facilitating proprioceptive acuity and minimization of unnecessary effort. You will be continuing the development of your integrative manual skills with another type of handling—skillfully and deliberately moving two or more related skeletal parts in global or differentiated patterns and providing your patient the proprioceptive experience of recognizing certain skeletal relationships.

This type of handling teaches pattern recognition and functional application skills. Ultimately, the two types of handling blend together into a manual technique full of depth and nuance that is powerfully informative and deeply pleasurable for the recipient and highly rewarding and mentally stimulating for the practitioner. Also starting in the fifth segment, you will use what you have learned throughout the first year to create a movement practice for yourself—a 10-15 minute series of key exercises designed by you and for your particular needs. This simulates putting together a well-thought out home program.

You will begin upper extremity themes in the Sixth Segment. Mirroring the lower extremity needs for both both traumatic injury and repetitive stress injury strategies, you will explore upper extremity organization with an eye toward optimization. Thoraco-scapular, scapulo-humeral and humero-forearm relationships are scrutinized, analyzed and practiced. Because of the many degrees of freedom of the shoulder, this theme will continue to spill over into the Seventh Segment. Bilateral and unilateral movements, closed and open chain sequences, forward and outward directions, across and overhead directions, behind and underneath directions, internal and external rotation types, and manipulation of object facilitators makes this theme a large one.

The Eighth Segment is the icing on the cake. We will do a lot of review here, finish up movement practices and case study presentations, and have fun with some more complex content. A motley variety of my favorite developmentally based movements, Yoga sequences, Qi Gong forms and T’ai Chi drills are provided as movement puzzles to solve, as observation opportunities to be honed, as multiple areas of attentional focus to be harmonized, and as content with deeper potential to be dug into for years to come.

Quality Control

To ensure adequate understanding of the principles involved with this work and to ensure competency for certification, students are expected to participate in the tests, demonstrations and assignments that will be provided. Quizzes (one per segment starting with the second), a written case study, demonstration and explanation of your personalized movement practice (10-15 minutes) and demonstration of adequate teaching and handling skills (showing your stuff in class) will assure quality control and that your certification is more than a piece of paper that you buy.

What Does Certification Mean?

Therapeutic Movement Seminars (TMS) is a continuing education provider organization. We only offer training programs in our specific area of expertise, functional and practical applications of movement. At the completion on this program you will be certified as an Orthopedic Movement Specialist, trained and tested through TMS.

We are not a vocational school licensed by the state or sanctioned by any university or professional organization. This means that you will need to work within the practice guidelines of your own profession. For instance, a PTA or COTA cannot set up an independent practice as an Orthopedic Movement Specialist if you are going to present what you do as medical or if you want to be able to touch.

Essentially, this is no different than enhancing your professional credentials with advanced trainings through Ola Grimsby, Shirley Sahrmann, Brian Mulligan or other luminaries—you gain specialized skills and recognition, but stay within the parameters of your own chosen practice. Each segment will count toward CEU requirements and you will get a course certificate for each segment, as well as a certificate of completion at the end.

CEU Hours & State Approval

This course is held in Washington State and is worth 22 continuing education hours, each segment. This course meets requirements for the state of Washington. Please call if you have any questions regarding other state approval.

PT – The Washington PT Licensing Board does not pre-approve nor certify CE courses.

OT – The state of Washington does not have a pre-approval process for Occupational Therapy.

Length, Cost and Duration

We will be meeting 4 times per year, 3-day weekends, Friday-Sunday for 2 years. We will meet for a total of 24 training days of approximately 6-8 hours each. The live instruction will be expanded by including some home study—certain exercise assignments not covered in class and occasional reading assignments in addition to the personalized movement practice and case studies already mentioned.

The entire program will cost $4,000.00. Upon acceptance into the program, there is a $500 deposit (applied toward tuition for the programs final segment) to hold your spot and express your commitment to complete the entire 2-year program. Each segment will cost $500 (except the last because of your deposit), and is due 2 weeks before the start of that segment.

Application Process

If you feel ready to apply please go to www.movementseminars.com and just get started. As part of the application process, we would like you to write a short letter outlining your profession, work experience, movement experience (not required), reasons for considering this program, what you hope to get out of it and any physical limitations or accommodative needs we should be aware of.

If you have any questions, or would like to start a conversation please email us at Gordon@MovementSeminars.com or Julie@MovementSeminars.com or give us a call at 206.930.9204.

If you’d like to get in touch with someone currently in the program to get their opinion, we are happy to arrange it.

Cancellation Policy