Movement Functional Movement Systems: Screening, Assessment, Corrective Strategies Author: Visit Amazon's Gray Cook Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1931046301 | Format: PDF
Movement Functional Movement Systems: Screening, Assessment, Corrective Strategies Description
- Paperback: 408 pages
- Publisher: On Target Publications (2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1931046301
- ISBN-13: 978-1931046305
- Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
How does one go about writing a review of a Gray Cook book? I mean really, where do you even start? I have read the book about ten times by now and still wondered where to begin. Staring at a blank page, I kept thinking about the monstrous task of doing it justice. There is so much knowledge packed into these pages it boggles the mind. So I decided to do something a bit different and give you a perspective of this book and how it has changed the way I practice medicine. The application of the principles contained in this book has changed the lives of many people. The real world people I see every day in my clinic. People who have suffered in pain for years now have their quality of life restored because of the applied principles in this book.
`Movement' was a paradigm shift for me as a clinician. Gray opened my eyes to the wonders of human movement and the systems necessary to understanding it. This was the system I had been searching for in determining why people were getting injured, and why their pain syndromes kept returning. People would ask me, `why does my pain keep coming back?', and I never had an answer that made sense to me. That is until I discovered Movement. Here is a summary of my journey through `Movement.'
This introductory chapter sets the stage for the paradigm shift. It's an awakening to understanding human movement. The section on dysfunction, pain and rehabilitation is something to read a hundred times. The mobility and stability rules are powerful enough to change the clinical outcome of almost every client. I never learned this stuff in school. This one chapter taught me more than I had learned reading entire textbooks. Gotta look at the body as a whole. Imagine that?
Let me first say that I am very much inclined to be sympathetic with Gray Cook's overall message. It speaks to my existing disposition concerning exercise. Here's a brief sum up: Modern fitness culture is guilty of heaping attempts at strength and endurance gains atop dysfunctional movement. This tends to cause compensation in joints and muscles not intended to sustain loads which leads to inefficiency of movement, pain, discomfort, and often injury. A more proper hierarchy for developing physical ability is Mobility->Stability->Strength in basic movement patterns, and on top of this we can support more specific skills.
If you are looking for a technical book, something which will go through a variety of ways to view and interpret the FMS (Functional Movement Screen) along with appropriate corrective exercises, then this book falls short. The detail regarding the screen itself could be better and more concisely expressed as a pamphlet. Likewise, the corrective exercise section is very sparse, particularly considering the size of this book, and primarily is filled up with the repetition of Cook's main ideological explanation. While I was hoping for some solid exercises, he mostly encourages people to 'do what they know' within the very general framework of his idea (Mobility>stability>strength). This is obviously not helpful if you don't actually have a background in physical therapy.
So rather than a technical book, it is a sort of Philosophy of Fitness book, but even this it does poorly. For the first part, Cook is no writer, and this book is best when it is at its driest, clearly explaining the particulars of an exercise or details of the FMS.
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