the importance of a posture assessment

The journey a client takes with a personal trainer usually starts with an assessment of some kind. Now these vary from trainer to trainer, but they all have the same goal, to find what that client needs to be able to give them a more individualised workout to achieve their goals..

All assessments have their benefits.. However, we believe combining them together will achieve better results. The types are assessments trainers use are:

• Posture Assessments

• Strength Tests

• Flexibility Tests

• Gait Analysis

• Movement Screens

• Cardiovascular Fitness

• Body Composition

• Lifestyle Assessments

At PT Buddy, we use a unique combination which we’ve found to be the most beneficial to you, the trainer and your potential client. There are 13 parts in total in our assessment, as well as pre-talk to find as much information out as possible about the individual and a sales talk after.

Everything is structured to get all the information needed, then present them with a solution (training with us) within 60 minutes.

The first one being a posture assessment. This one’s important. We use it to see how somebody stands, how they hold themselves against gravity. Here, you’ll see an array of issues, you’ll want to take note of all the ones you find and use them to help paint the picture of what could be causing the clients issues and what’s holding them back from achieving their goals.

Keep in mind throughout the assessment that the body was designed to be upright with all joints in their neutral position. From here, the person SHOULD have enough strength and flexibility to do whatever job you require your body to do without pain. 

Remember, what you see from standing for the most part is only an assumption. Some things will be quite obvious, with others a bit more difficult to tell just from sight alone.

Once we’ve taken our pictures of the client standing, we’d then go in with our hands to double check certain bony positions. Always double check with the person before you touch them, but never once have we had anyone say they would prefer we didn’t.

Here we check the position of the pelvis. Does it rotate forward, backwards, drop sideways, do the Ilium’s of the pelvis twist on each other? Each position will result in a different combination of exercises that person would need. 

Then we move upwards to check the position of the spine and shoulder blades. Now we know the positions of the joints, we can make an assumption as to which muscles are moving the joints out of place. Either from tight muscles pulling bones in one direction, or weaker muscles not stopping bones moving too far. We now use these assumptions to perform strength tests to find out which ones are the problem.

We can do flexibility tests to test for tightness, but we don’t for two reasons. One, we’re already limited with time so adding an additional test will likely take you over your 60-minute assessment time, and we’ve found better results using strength tests over flexibility test, as muscle tightness can be a result of muscle weakness across the same joint.

Here, we typically focus on the bigger muscles, the phasic muscles that move us, as these are usually the muscles prone to weakness, such as the Glute max (the butt) and abdominals.

Once we’ve gone through our pre-set muscle tests, you should be left with a clear picture of which joints are out of position, which muscles are causing this (if it is down to muscle weakness/tightness), and an idea of where to start a client on their road to glory. Glory being either injury free, better fitness or being a lean, mean machine.

Knowing what muscles, a client doesn’t have control over is essential to building them structured workouts that can help them reach their gym goals quicker, and with less chance of injury. Once you show an individual what their body is missing, most will sign up with you as they know you’re an expert and only you can help them with their problem.

If you as a trainer are not yet using a form of assessment for you clients and put them straight into strength training, especially if they have an injury, then you really are missing a big piece of the puzzle, a piece that will help keep your clients happy as everything is working, and happy clients don’t leave you.

For more information on our assessment and how we can help you improve you personal training business, please get in touch now.