I’m back with another installment of my Assessing our Assessments series. In this series, I look at simple and effective ways of improving the way Fitness Professionals use Postural Assessments and Functional Movement Screens.
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As I mentioned in Part 1, I use my own hybrid style Assessment of Gray Cook’s Functional Movement Screen. Eventually, I may make an assessments for Strength Coaches DVD. Please comment below and let me know if you’d be interested in purchasing that kind of product if I produced one?
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Part 1 of Assessing our Assessments was some what controversial. Today, in Part 2 – I’m simply going to provide you with a piece of advice (from the trenches) everyone can use from Strength Coach to Athletic Trainer to Personal Trainer to Physical Therapist.
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Regardless of who you are or who you work with, if you’re using some sort of Postural of Functional Movement Assessment, take this simple advice piece of advice –
Don’t EVER make your clients feel bad!
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No, I don’t mean you’re going to be nasty to them. I’m talking about when you’re performing their Functional movement/ Postural assessment. Don’t jump at every chance to tell your client what a train wreck they are!
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Keep in mind you are working with someone who knows they need help. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have hired your services in the first place. They may already be uncomfortable with how they look, move and/or feel. Don’t add to that by telling them how horrible their posture is, how poorly the move or that their glutes don’t work. By the way, if you’re telling folks their glutes are off, you must read this post!
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I don’t care how poorly someone performs during a Functional Movement assessment! – I never tell my clients anything but positive stuff like “nice work, you did exactly what I asked of you!” or just simply “good job!”.
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I’ve even seen other presenters at conferences bring up a Fitness professional from the audience, assess all their supposed “dysfunctions”, then proceed to tear this poor volunteer to pieces in front of all their colleagues and friends. You should see the negative body language and uncomfortable facial expressions of these poor folks who were only trying to learn some new training techniques. Instead, they get publicly embarrassed. That’s certainly not what these folks paid for nor is what your clients are paying for either!
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My friends the “let me show you all your dysfunctions, or show you all the ways you suck at moving because I’m so super educated” tactic is certainly not I how I teach nor how I deal with clients. Again – DON’T MAKE ANYONE FEEL BAD! You can still discuss what needs to be improved and help people without seeming condescending or trying to “break people”.
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When doing my assessments, I may be thinking “Man, I’ve got lots of work ahead of me with this person”. But , my client doesn’t need to know that. I’m happy to tell folks in a diplomatic way, what they need to work on and improve. But, I will never say anything that could possibly be discouraging or make them feel bad about their body and how they move.
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Keep in mind that above all the fancy technical training tactics and exercises, we work with living, breathing people with thoughts, feeling and emotions. Your clients mental/ spiritual fitness is just as important as their physical! If you have never seen the movie Patch Adams – There is a great quote where Patch says “The only difference between a Doctor and a Scientist is Doctors deal with live people”. We can take a lesson from Patch!
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I hope you enjoyed today’s post!
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Don’t forget to comment about if you’d like me to produce a DVD teaching my Performance U method of Functional Movement Assessment?
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