|
You love a bench press.
You love a back squat. You love to play sport.
Could the first two be hurting the third?
Yes. "Go on," I hear you think. The short term responses and long term adaptations, if left un-offset, will cause, contribute or complicate your ability to move well, move often and move fast. "Be specific," I hear you think. You bench so much that you have great bulk and tone in your pecs and anterior deltoid. Looks great, feels great. Except that tone creates an internal rotation at the glenohumeral joint. If the pec minor is tonic as well (and it will be), it creates anterior tilt and/or protraction at the scapulo-thoracic joint. So what, I hear you think? Well, the now what is that now you can't externally rotate your shoulder enough to get under the bar comfortably in a back squat, particularly a low-bar back squat. Let me keep going before you feel the need for another "so what". So now you have to find another way to get your hands on the bar and you need more spine extension. Well, that weighted bar on your spine has been pushing your spinous processes down towards each other and they've responded and adapted to rest in an extended position so much that you are already extended at the thoracic spine. Plus, you remember you should lock your lumbar spine into extension when you squat heavy, so you do, and that means you also anterior tilt your pelvis. So now you go into loaded hip flexion where the hip was already pushed into flexion by the anterior pelvic tilt, and you load your quads, because, well, it's squat day and big quads matter, and that rectus femoris tone develops, and the deepest tendon attachment of the rectus femoris attaches at the ilium, across the hip joint, creating more hip flexion tone and hip extension restriction. So, now you're accelerating running, lack hip extension even though you've been training your glutes in the squat rack, lack shoulder extension because of the bench adaptations, and your quads are highly tonic. The leg swing is propelled by passive elastic tension in the quads and your hamstrings have to brake the tibia that is swung forward by a rampantly elastic set of hip flexors and quads. Ping. Hamstring tear. So, do more nordics, that'll fix it. Plus, as you swing the leg through, the opposite leg can't express hip extension range, because, (well, see above re effect of rectus femoris and anterior pelvic tilt and lumbar extension and restricted thorax and big chest), and so your ability to separate legs in acceleration is limited, and you're just not accelerating fast enough, despite doing "all the right strength training" and not enough of the offset training. 
Right. Ahhhh. So, what's the offset training?
Come on, weigh in, you're better than that. You come up with training, based on revealed limitations, to improve movement where you don't have it. Being strong matters, but how strong is strong enough and what are you doing to offset the negative adaptations?
0 Comments
 The racecar driver says, "I can’t go around those left turns very well." The mechanic reveals that there’s a kinetic chain issue from steering column to wheel, so either, a) There is a part that is broken, b) There is a part that is restricted, c) The parts move but but there’s a hydraulics leakage or an electrical signal issue from steering. The car is the volleyball players body. The driver is their will. The broken parts are bad energy - pain, toxins, inflammation and similar. The restricted parts are blocked energy - mobility restrictions. The hydraulics and electrical issues are leaked energy - stability and motor control issues. The role of the mechanic is to give the driver access to all the cars movements that they want to race how they want. So, the role of the sports physio in volleyball is to give athletes access to all the movements their coaches want. Don't jump the gun just yet. Your athletes will mostly ask you to help them get out of pain. Sometimes they’ll ask you for exercises to help them do something better.  To advance your sports physio career in volleyball, your unique selling position is to NOT miss what you need to find when they come to you for help, from a movement perspective. Plugging a leak doesn't guarantee the steering works. Unblocking hydraulics or spraying a nut with lubricant doesn't guarantee they can go around the bend. The final point is to be accountable to help your athletes win the race and put your hand up when you're missing something. I'll help you find it, like so many of my teaching colleagues. Here to help, comment if you want to know more. And if you don't want to ask for help yet, check out my articles page for examples and deeper explanations of being a sports physio in volleyball.
|
 |  |  |
Physical + Spiritual + T.E.A.R = The Best Way to Find Success
“Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal.” – Earl Nightingale
Worthy ideals come when you serve others, to make the world a better place.
Success and happiness are side effects of dedicating yourself to a cause greater than yourself.
Remember what Viktor Frankl said, “Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it, the more you will miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued, it must ensue as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”
“Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal.” – Earl Nightingale
Worthy ideals come when you serve others, to make the world a better place.
Success and happiness are side effects of dedicating yourself to a cause greater than yourself.
Remember what Viktor Frankl said, “Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it, the more you will miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued, it must ensue as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”
To improve your ability to climb the mountain of success as a physiotherapist in sport, set your challenges progressively higher, then upskill.
Rinse and repeat.
Rinse and repeat.
There is a difference between absolute and relative statements when talking to all in our profession – ignoring this could cause you to miss opportunities.
The examples I gave you in previous "how to..." posts are are absolute statements. I’ve told you that you should have them. They are told to you to make a point and to begin a conversation between us, or at least between you and another. Very few statements are dogmatically true, in my experience. I will tell you some examples that are variations of the same. For all other dogmatic statements you hear, recognise it as a statement to make a point and to begin a conversation. They always depend. It’s always relative.
The examples I gave you in previous "how to..." posts are are absolute statements. I’ve told you that you should have them. They are told to you to make a point and to begin a conversation between us, or at least between you and another. Very few statements are dogmatically true, in my experience. I will tell you some examples that are variations of the same. For all other dogmatic statements you hear, recognise it as a statement to make a point and to begin a conversation. They always depend. It’s always relative.
For example:
Absolutely, “player welfare is our top priority” except when it is superseded by a subjective reason that is more important, made by someone else. I was approached by two military decision makers to help them build a new soldier recovery and rehabilitation system. I’d seen a system work very well in the UK and Germany and I suggested that it could be a beginning point for Australia because it had a track record of success, efficiency and safety. No was the answer. It didn’t suit a subjective reason of somebody else. I was asked how to manage the system of restoring function of soldiers with back injuries. I recounted a system of assessment and intervention in the private sector that I worked for with a return to work rate for those with chronic low back pain that was six times the rate of clients who did not participate. The Major General with the money to implement the program said it wouldn’t happen because it was a direct solution to a direct problem and bureaucratically that wasn’t how the Australian Army worked. Absolutely, the success of returning to work, efficiently and safely, was paramount, except when it was decided that it wasn’t as important as something else.
Absolutely, injury prevention is very serious except when the perception of training hard at the beginning of a pre-season is a better use of time than pre-season evaluation of who was ready for training. Here’s a case study:
- “Here at this organisation, player welfare is our top priority.”
- “We take injury prevention very seriously, it will be part of your role.”
- “Strength underpins everything we do.”
- “You don’t need to test our athletes because training is testing.”
Absolutely, “player welfare is our top priority” except when it is superseded by a subjective reason that is more important, made by someone else. I was approached by two military decision makers to help them build a new soldier recovery and rehabilitation system. I’d seen a system work very well in the UK and Germany and I suggested that it could be a beginning point for Australia because it had a track record of success, efficiency and safety. No was the answer. It didn’t suit a subjective reason of somebody else. I was asked how to manage the system of restoring function of soldiers with back injuries. I recounted a system of assessment and intervention in the private sector that I worked for with a return to work rate for those with chronic low back pain that was six times the rate of clients who did not participate. The Major General with the money to implement the program said it wouldn’t happen because it was a direct solution to a direct problem and bureaucratically that wasn’t how the Australian Army worked. Absolutely, the success of returning to work, efficiently and safely, was paramount, except when it was decided that it wasn’t as important as something else.
Absolutely, injury prevention is very serious except when the perception of training hard at the beginning of a pre-season is a better use of time than pre-season evaluation of who was ready for training. Here’s a case study:
China Women’s Handball Team, 2013
Screening and analysis of this team, using the Move2Perform software revealed the following:
This was shown to the coach. Three-quarters of the team needed either individual attention or modified programming. That didn’t happen because pain, injury, limited or asymmetrical movement was not considered important, even though injury prevention was absolutely considered desirable.
The team picture and pie-chart colours were collaborated into the following, to demonstrate that the team was likely to not look the same by season end, due to “reds” and “oranges”:
The team picture and pie-chart colours were collaborated into the following, to demonstrate that the team was likely to not look the same by season end, due to “reds” and “oranges”:
Still no change to team management of training. This indicated that “safety” was absolutely a priority, but it was relative to how the management didn’t want to do anything different this year. In this population, athletes could be replaced.
A similar approach was taken with the Chinese Women’s Volleyball team. On this occasion, I had a mandate to develop more power and speed in the team. At first, we tested the athletes using a battery of tests and produced a “power quotient”, ranking the athletes. I still used a colour scheme to indicate those in red who, coincidentally, performed the worst and were injured.
Some professionals you work with may not have a taste for safety. They might have a taste for saving money.
The details of that conversation are the relative statements that refine whether or not you have the resources to follow those recommendations. It is often said that “strength underpins everything we do.” An absolute statement. We could argue whether that’s correct or not. There’s no doubt performers need to produce and absorb forces quickly, reactively. The relative statement, borne from the absolute statement, begins with “however”, and continues with it’s not possible to force any more strength out of our athlete’s body’s than our nervous system allows. So, an absolute statement like that is the beginning of a conversation that progresses to suggest that underpinning strength (capacity) is competency of mobility and motor control. Further, underpinning those is the absence of ill-health.
If you are exasperated at absolute statements made by those in positions of influence, remember that they often are the beginnings of conversations, with relative statements borne from your knowledge that all depends on all else. Know that you can take an absolute statement you might disagree with and bring it around to agreement in the three crucial elements of a process – success, efficiency and safety.
A similar approach was taken with the Chinese Women’s Volleyball team. On this occasion, I had a mandate to develop more power and speed in the team. At first, we tested the athletes using a battery of tests and produced a “power quotient”, ranking the athletes. I still used a colour scheme to indicate those in red who, coincidentally, performed the worst and were injured.
Some professionals you work with may not have a taste for safety. They might have a taste for saving money.
The details of that conversation are the relative statements that refine whether or not you have the resources to follow those recommendations. It is often said that “strength underpins everything we do.” An absolute statement. We could argue whether that’s correct or not. There’s no doubt performers need to produce and absorb forces quickly, reactively. The relative statement, borne from the absolute statement, begins with “however”, and continues with it’s not possible to force any more strength out of our athlete’s body’s than our nervous system allows. So, an absolute statement like that is the beginning of a conversation that progresses to suggest that underpinning strength (capacity) is competency of mobility and motor control. Further, underpinning those is the absence of ill-health.
If you are exasperated at absolute statements made by those in positions of influence, remember that they often are the beginnings of conversations, with relative statements borne from your knowledge that all depends on all else. Know that you can take an absolute statement you might disagree with and bring it around to agreement in the three crucial elements of a process – success, efficiency and safety.
Do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it. That’s integrity. Accept that not everyone else will do the same.
If you’re like me, words matter. For me it’s because I define integrity as “doing what you said you would do, when you said you would do it”. I still value that, but I no longer assume everyone has integrity.
In the early days of being recruited into professional sports, many things are said. Everything that is said at the recruitment stage is strategically chosen to encourage membership and applications to work. Those same words aren’t always followed through. When organisations are large, these words are followed through even less since they are often uttered by someone senior, delegated to someone subordinate, further delegated. Follow up can be missed until it’s too late. It can be a source of frustration early in your career. So you can choose to be one of those who CANNOT OR DO NOT follow up on what you said you would do, or you CAN DO AND WILL DO what you said you would do – that is called standing up. When you simply do that, stand up, you stand out.
In my experience, standing up is the new standing out.
Standing up to do the minimum, in this day, is enough to make you stand out. It’s not an accolade that’s popular but it takes the least amount of effort to simply do the minimum. The reason one stands out is that few people will do just that. Here are specific examples:
- Have a system of assessment, screening and testing that protects you against your own subjectivity. That should be a minimum. Have such a system, and use it, and you will stand out.
- Apply systematic process to intervention (treatment and training) and monitor your intervention, adjusting appropriately. That should be a minimum. Have such a systematic process and you will stand out.
- Have a referral network of other professionals who support athletic preparation and know how to screen when a referral to them is appropriate.
- Have a mentor to keep you on track - one way to do that right now is to find one of the worlds best Physiotherapy Mentors in a group setting, with others who want to rebel against mediocrity - you don't have to .take my word for it, you can do your own research, but I suggest you start here, at the BulletProof Career Rebellion.
The experiences you want the most will probably be experienced the least, but you can increase their frequency.
You can do this by gaining a perspective through having a system that clarifies what you need to do to change the behaviour of your athletes.
The highs of being a performance sports physiotherapist in professional sport can be exhilarating. These “green light moments” are seen when athletes peak. Outweighing these moments in frequency are the moments from red light through orange, to green. Red light is the time when we protect for medical or musculoskeletal injury reasons. All moments after red are where we correct and develop for competency and capacity of performance. The orange-light time of correcting patterns has historically been given little attention or credence in the world of performance change. It is here, where a person isn’t in pain, or medically unwell, that we screen and intervene. I can tell you that this is often where double-figure percentage performance changes are found. Since the exhilarating highs are so dopamine-dump-worthy, it stands to my reason that increasing the frequency of these can be done by doing the good things in the “red light, orange light and green light zones” properly. Within each of these areas, the assessment, screen or testing areas, we contribute more to the world of professional sport thanks to being on the shoulders of giants before us who created a bandwidth of real-world testing data to guide us and our athletes.
I feel how disconcerting must be words of mine that what we want most is what we experience the least in professional sports. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of your charges and your soul for persisting to feel the need to uptake such an important service to the world. You will receive cherished memories and solemn pride will be yours to lay such a sacrifice as your academic, technical and tactical everything at the foot of the professional sporting mountain.
To be continued in part 3.
You can do this by gaining a perspective through having a system that clarifies what you need to do to change the behaviour of your athletes.
The highs of being a performance sports physiotherapist in professional sport can be exhilarating. These “green light moments” are seen when athletes peak. Outweighing these moments in frequency are the moments from red light through orange, to green. Red light is the time when we protect for medical or musculoskeletal injury reasons. All moments after red are where we correct and develop for competency and capacity of performance. The orange-light time of correcting patterns has historically been given little attention or credence in the world of performance change. It is here, where a person isn’t in pain, or medically unwell, that we screen and intervene. I can tell you that this is often where double-figure percentage performance changes are found. Since the exhilarating highs are so dopamine-dump-worthy, it stands to my reason that increasing the frequency of these can be done by doing the good things in the “red light, orange light and green light zones” properly. Within each of these areas, the assessment, screen or testing areas, we contribute more to the world of professional sport thanks to being on the shoulders of giants before us who created a bandwidth of real-world testing data to guide us and our athletes.
I feel how disconcerting must be words of mine that what we want most is what we experience the least in professional sports. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of your charges and your soul for persisting to feel the need to uptake such an important service to the world. You will receive cherished memories and solemn pride will be yours to lay such a sacrifice as your academic, technical and tactical everything at the foot of the professional sporting mountain.
To be continued in part 3.
An excerpt from a book chapter that didn't get written. "How to get into professional sports"
Let me frame some key messages that took me forward and may help you in our profession. It’s been said that in an audience, over 70% of attendees aren’t able to recount the key message. Further, 50% of presenters aren’t able to summarise their key message. Further, 86.7% of statistics are made up on the spot! Thus, permit me to summarise key messages promptly so we can be in the top percentiles of those who can summarise and recount key messages:
1. You’ll need to play a strategic card at the recruitment stage – be job-description aware and results focussed.
In an industry that seemingly values maintenance of, or improvement in specific results, it is sadly obvious that physiotherapists are not recruited with a verbalized focus on results. For example, “we’d love it if you could work to improve athletic success, efficiency and safety.” Those three are the areas that count:
· Athletic success speaks of capacity (strength, strength endurance, power and power endurance). Being able to demonstrate that your work moves an athlete forward in capacity demonstrates their investment in you to support the availability of the athlete to execute the sporting techniques, tactics required for success.
· Athletic efficiency speaks of movement competency (mobility and motor control) that underpins capacity. Efficiency also speaks about the use of time and resources to achieve athletic success. Organisations respect reduced costs and reduced use of resources to achieve outcomes. Being able to demonstrate this is a sign that your role is an investment, rather than an expense.
· Athletic safety goes to identifying risks of injury and their recurrence, limiting injury severity and thus maintaining availability for efficient success.You might be wondering why I even raise the possibility that an organisation should baulk at asking you to focus on getting results. wanting continued improvement. Without a hint of cynicism, I tell you that change is the enemy of security. If you aspire to do a great job, filled with improvement in those three areas, you may be in for a rude shock when you move into professional sports. I know, who would have thought? The people around you and above you may genuinely block you from working towards those same visions and missions as it may do them out of a job.
I found one organisation who was results focused – EXOS. I’ve worked for them intermittently since 2014 in various missions across multiple sports. I’ve also worked for sports organisations who had a results-focus but lost it to a bureaucratic shift – an Institute of Sport in Australia. I’ve also worked for two seemingly similar organisations – Australian and British Defence Forces who had quite different focuses. The British Forces in Germany were in training and rotation for tours in the Iraq so deployable soldiers were a premium – successfully competent and capacious soldiers, treated and rehabilitated efficiently to ensure they were safe enough to train for the mission. The Australian Defence Forces were not actively engaged in tours at the time (except for Special Forces) and the preparation of soldiers was reflective of a strategic focus on results but a practical focus on not doing anything different to improve results.
To get into the short list for a professional sports job, you will have to check the box of having the pre-requisites - the degree and registration and minimum experience. You’ll probably have to meet more specific pre-requisites or desirables. Sports specific experience, for example. Or specific training in some assessment or treatment/rehabilitation methodologies. As well as checking those boxes, for your genuine satisfaction, and meaningful contribution, you should hold a focus of “working measurably closer to success, efficiency and safety as a result of you being in the job”. That phrase by itself can emotionally connect with a recruiter or manager, demonstrating how you already have a script for critical moves in your job and are shaping a path to doing a great job. For more on scripting critical moves, shaping a path and emotionally connecting to effect change, I encourage you to read “Switch – How to change things when change is hard”, by Chip and Dan Heath.[1]
Find out something about the person above you, or above them. If they have any publicly available record of working towards one or more of those three things, pitch your application to that - the emotional connection of you being on a similar mission will create an instant bond. Be careful, if your superior in the position has no publicly available record of achieving in those three areas, then if YOU pitch those benefits, you’ll be creating an INSTANT discomfort for the supervisor or manager, and that’s a recipe for NOT getting the job.
In early 2014, a colleague told me EXOS would be interested in someone with my background. I reached out and they got straight back to me. My connection related to experience in sports and many years’ experience using the Functional Movement Systems to screen and assess athletes – a core part of their methodology. In 2015, after a contract with EXOS was completed, I returned to an institute of sport in Australia – within six months, they stated a deliberate intention to NOT use or teach the Functional Movement Screen because “it didn’t work”, “there was no standard of movement” and “no one could be as good at it as me so there was no point teaching anyone to use it.”
In late 2015, a professional sport team knew I was an instructor for Functional Movement Systems and experienced in EXOS methodology and had been part of the World Cup winning Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team. They had been working on their own screening battery and didn’t want to change it. Like I said, your intent when dealing with supervisors could create such discomfort that you aren’t recruited or you have to make a decision to remain or leave. A year later, the same team overlooked me for a rehabilitation physiotherapist position because I “was too experienced and too senior.” Perhaps a polite way of saying that they valued a lower ranked person who could be moulded in their image over a physiotherapist with a record of getting results in tough athletic environments. Getting into professional sports is a challenge.
If your future supervisor is an unknown with respect to their intent on success, effcency and safety, and if you still want the role, rely on you meeting pre requisites and getting an interview. When you’re asked if you have any questions, ask them if you could measure outcomes that relate to success, efficiency and safety if you’re successful in getting the job. This type of question bypasses a lower level question about whether they consider these things important. If they hadn’t thought of it, you’ll make an impression. If they don’t consider it important, you’ll find out quickly and can make a decision about whether you want to simply be in “a job” instead of “a mission”. There’s no shame in filling a position that is not a mission - we all have to earn an income, get experience and pack a resume for future opportunities. It usually won’t be your own best way of demonstrating that you can work towards measurable outcomes of success or efficiency, but it might be safe for you.
Know this, you can keep your own records on your clients meeting milestones, criteria of competency and capacity and return to sport criteria. You can even track metrics of your own that relate to return to play timings, recurrence rate, return to baseline metrics, number of treatment and training sessions or hours required to get there. These can form honest appraisals of how you are applying objective systems and clinically-reasoned treatment/rehabilitation methodologies and critically-thought training methodologies. You can use them for professional reflection and upskilling for future positions.
Everything that is unexpected creates an opportunity. By supporting results-focused organisations like EXOS and the British Defence Forces, and observing other organisations with different strategies, only then can perspective be gained, and performance bandwidths be understood. A performance bandwidth is a tolerance for variation in outcomes, borne from the motor control and movement learning research world. Each sporting circumstance you meet helps to shape your tolerances. Each tolerance point is population specific, task specific and guided by safety research. When you aspire to change behaviour of your clients towards athletic success, athletic efficiency and athletic safety, you are forced to study and expand your understanding of different sporting populations, tasks and risk factors for injury. What a great opportunity to have to respond and adapt to!
[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Switch-Chip-Heath/dp/0385528752
Let me frame some key messages that took me forward and may help you in our profession. It’s been said that in an audience, over 70% of attendees aren’t able to recount the key message. Further, 50% of presenters aren’t able to summarise their key message. Further, 86.7% of statistics are made up on the spot! Thus, permit me to summarise key messages promptly so we can be in the top percentiles of those who can summarise and recount key messages:
1. You’ll need to play a strategic card at the recruitment stage – be job-description aware and results focussed.
In an industry that seemingly values maintenance of, or improvement in specific results, it is sadly obvious that physiotherapists are not recruited with a verbalized focus on results. For example, “we’d love it if you could work to improve athletic success, efficiency and safety.” Those three are the areas that count:
· Athletic success speaks of capacity (strength, strength endurance, power and power endurance). Being able to demonstrate that your work moves an athlete forward in capacity demonstrates their investment in you to support the availability of the athlete to execute the sporting techniques, tactics required for success.
· Athletic efficiency speaks of movement competency (mobility and motor control) that underpins capacity. Efficiency also speaks about the use of time and resources to achieve athletic success. Organisations respect reduced costs and reduced use of resources to achieve outcomes. Being able to demonstrate this is a sign that your role is an investment, rather than an expense.
· Athletic safety goes to identifying risks of injury and their recurrence, limiting injury severity and thus maintaining availability for efficient success.You might be wondering why I even raise the possibility that an organisation should baulk at asking you to focus on getting results. wanting continued improvement. Without a hint of cynicism, I tell you that change is the enemy of security. If you aspire to do a great job, filled with improvement in those three areas, you may be in for a rude shock when you move into professional sports. I know, who would have thought? The people around you and above you may genuinely block you from working towards those same visions and missions as it may do them out of a job.
I found one organisation who was results focused – EXOS. I’ve worked for them intermittently since 2014 in various missions across multiple sports. I’ve also worked for sports organisations who had a results-focus but lost it to a bureaucratic shift – an Institute of Sport in Australia. I’ve also worked for two seemingly similar organisations – Australian and British Defence Forces who had quite different focuses. The British Forces in Germany were in training and rotation for tours in the Iraq so deployable soldiers were a premium – successfully competent and capacious soldiers, treated and rehabilitated efficiently to ensure they were safe enough to train for the mission. The Australian Defence Forces were not actively engaged in tours at the time (except for Special Forces) and the preparation of soldiers was reflective of a strategic focus on results but a practical focus on not doing anything different to improve results.
To get into the short list for a professional sports job, you will have to check the box of having the pre-requisites - the degree and registration and minimum experience. You’ll probably have to meet more specific pre-requisites or desirables. Sports specific experience, for example. Or specific training in some assessment or treatment/rehabilitation methodologies. As well as checking those boxes, for your genuine satisfaction, and meaningful contribution, you should hold a focus of “working measurably closer to success, efficiency and safety as a result of you being in the job”. That phrase by itself can emotionally connect with a recruiter or manager, demonstrating how you already have a script for critical moves in your job and are shaping a path to doing a great job. For more on scripting critical moves, shaping a path and emotionally connecting to effect change, I encourage you to read “Switch – How to change things when change is hard”, by Chip and Dan Heath.[1]
Find out something about the person above you, or above them. If they have any publicly available record of working towards one or more of those three things, pitch your application to that - the emotional connection of you being on a similar mission will create an instant bond. Be careful, if your superior in the position has no publicly available record of achieving in those three areas, then if YOU pitch those benefits, you’ll be creating an INSTANT discomfort for the supervisor or manager, and that’s a recipe for NOT getting the job.
In early 2014, a colleague told me EXOS would be interested in someone with my background. I reached out and they got straight back to me. My connection related to experience in sports and many years’ experience using the Functional Movement Systems to screen and assess athletes – a core part of their methodology. In 2015, after a contract with EXOS was completed, I returned to an institute of sport in Australia – within six months, they stated a deliberate intention to NOT use or teach the Functional Movement Screen because “it didn’t work”, “there was no standard of movement” and “no one could be as good at it as me so there was no point teaching anyone to use it.”
In late 2015, a professional sport team knew I was an instructor for Functional Movement Systems and experienced in EXOS methodology and had been part of the World Cup winning Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team. They had been working on their own screening battery and didn’t want to change it. Like I said, your intent when dealing with supervisors could create such discomfort that you aren’t recruited or you have to make a decision to remain or leave. A year later, the same team overlooked me for a rehabilitation physiotherapist position because I “was too experienced and too senior.” Perhaps a polite way of saying that they valued a lower ranked person who could be moulded in their image over a physiotherapist with a record of getting results in tough athletic environments. Getting into professional sports is a challenge.
If your future supervisor is an unknown with respect to their intent on success, effcency and safety, and if you still want the role, rely on you meeting pre requisites and getting an interview. When you’re asked if you have any questions, ask them if you could measure outcomes that relate to success, efficiency and safety if you’re successful in getting the job. This type of question bypasses a lower level question about whether they consider these things important. If they hadn’t thought of it, you’ll make an impression. If they don’t consider it important, you’ll find out quickly and can make a decision about whether you want to simply be in “a job” instead of “a mission”. There’s no shame in filling a position that is not a mission - we all have to earn an income, get experience and pack a resume for future opportunities. It usually won’t be your own best way of demonstrating that you can work towards measurable outcomes of success or efficiency, but it might be safe for you.
Know this, you can keep your own records on your clients meeting milestones, criteria of competency and capacity and return to sport criteria. You can even track metrics of your own that relate to return to play timings, recurrence rate, return to baseline metrics, number of treatment and training sessions or hours required to get there. These can form honest appraisals of how you are applying objective systems and clinically-reasoned treatment/rehabilitation methodologies and critically-thought training methodologies. You can use them for professional reflection and upskilling for future positions.
Everything that is unexpected creates an opportunity. By supporting results-focused organisations like EXOS and the British Defence Forces, and observing other organisations with different strategies, only then can perspective be gained, and performance bandwidths be understood. A performance bandwidth is a tolerance for variation in outcomes, borne from the motor control and movement learning research world. Each sporting circumstance you meet helps to shape your tolerances. Each tolerance point is population specific, task specific and guided by safety research. When you aspire to change behaviour of your clients towards athletic success, athletic efficiency and athletic safety, you are forced to study and expand your understanding of different sporting populations, tasks and risk factors for injury. What a great opportunity to have to respond and adapt to!
[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Switch-Chip-Heath/dp/0385528752
Author
Greg Dea
Sports Physiotherapist
Archives
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
February 2020
December 2019
November 2019
June 2019
April 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
September 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
November 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
May 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
RSS Feed