JC's Musings

Reducing Injury with SPOT - Screening

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Previously I suggested to ensure sure you have integrated physiotherapeutic and strength and conditioning (S&C) screens in place that provide sport, position and/or activity specific diagnostics to reduce injury. Coming from a S&C perspective there are a number of screening tools out there, my favourite the Movement Competency Screen (MCS) developed by Matt Kritz. Up front, I have some bias as I was on the team that helped Matt develop it.

Some reasons why I like it:

  • The MCS is based on common movements that S&C coaches use – squat, push, lunge and twist, bend and pull.
  • An observation was that many S&C coaches were loading faulty movement patterns, so it provided a checklist what to look for in good movement patterns.
  • It also provided a framework for progressively overloading the athlete:
    o Assisted
    o Bodyweight
    o Resisted
    o Eccentric
    o Plyometric

So you would video record all the movement patterns in a couple of minutes using bodyweight only. Thereafter decisions were made as to the entry point for the athlete e.g. couldn’t do a body weight squat, therefore the athlete was regressed to an assisted squat. From that point screening was daily i.e.coaching.

Do you a favourite screening tool?