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Owned by Ashley

The Training Stimulus

558 members • Free

Empowering coaches, clinicians, athletes to improve movement mechanics, from rehab to performance, with proven strategies and tools.

Skoolers

161.9k members • Free

85 contributions to The Training Stimulus
Case study Neck client
Hey guys, I have a case with a client of mine. He has had a history of lower back pain for a long time. We worked on that years ago and resolved it. He came back to me a few years later and now struggles with neck pain. Mainly on the right side, his right shoulder and neck are very flared up and aggravated. His assessment findings are as such. He has a significant lateral hip shift to the right. His right foot in inverted and left foot everted. He has no stability in both in any plane of motion. His left lateral hip causes a lot of issues because he cannot load it at all. So any type of load hurts him tremendously. His right side is very compressed and right shoulder sits lower than the left. His t spine doesn't move well at all and nor do his ribs. T spine lateral flexion is worse on the right side. T spine rotation is worse on the right as well. Shoulder flexion is very limited, especially due to his lack of t spine extension. Both shoulder are winging but his right one is tipped anteriorly pretty excessively. He works on a desk and his sitting habit gets him flared up all the time. He is unable to focus at work, his neck tenses up and starts hurting him. What happens is he starts of well and about an hour in he ends up very rounded in the spine and shoulders and starts hurting. He then "fixes" his posture by tensing his t spine into extension and just hold it there. Making things much worse. I have been working with him for 2 months and he still gets lots of flare up and is hurting. His stress levels are high and sleep isn't great. lol quite a lot isn't it. So what i have done is i taught him about his capacity. That stress, sleep, diet, recovery all play a role in flare ups. So now when a flare up happens he doesn't get as stressed. I have given him some t spine extension work which helped him a lot with his overhead shoulder movement. I urged him not to brace his t spine as he exercises and sits. I also gave him some neck drills such as shrugs with more protraction and a long neck when he executes. We work on breathing drills to down regulate his nervous system and general push and pull exercises to increase his load capacity.
1 like • 7d
Hey @David Hajjar , interesting case! Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you've done a lot of good work and identified a lot of movement qualities he's missing. It does sound like he's a pretty awful mover so all of those findings could be contributing to his bad neck for sure. You're addressing a lot of the big rocks already so nice job there. Improving his sleep and stress will almost certainly make a big difference if he actually does that. At the risk of oversimplifying things, I'd take a two pronged approach: 1) Minimising the triggers/giving him coping strategies. If he can switch to a standing desk/vary his work position/definitely raise his monitor and or stop compressing into that right side as much, we'd hope the flare ups would reduce. Get him to track how often they're happening and severity to see if it's improving over time. Even if it's 70 minutes before it tightens instead of 60, we know things are getting better. 2) figure out which of those missing movement qualities is the biggest red flag and most likely to be feeding into the neck issues. Consider his phases of gait and full body patterns for how it might lead to that right neck getting short/overworked. Once you have a working theory, start addressing the movement qualities and monitor improvements. From the notes, that left lateral hip sounds like it needs some work. If he's very poor down below, usually the problems amplify up top. I hope that helps! Keep us updated and fire away if this prompts any follow up questions 👊
When the restriction isn't about the tissue
Something we spoke about a lot at the recent workshop, very useful if you work with clients who keep coming back with the same restricted range. The instinct when mobilisation isn't holding is to do more of it, more reps, more time, more pressure into the range. But if the nervous system has decided that position isn't safe, you're not going to stretch your way past that decision. It's not a tissue problem. It's a threat response. The actual fix is building trust. External stability strategies, a hand on a wall, holding onto a bench, let the nervous system practice the range in a controlled environment. The tissue doesn't change. The range doesn't change. But the brain's risk assessment does. From there, the work is weaning off the external support so the body can generate that stability internally. This principle shows up constantly in the gym and in clinics. Restrictions that aren't responding to mobilisation aren't always a mobility issues. Sometimes the body is just waiting to feel safe enough to go there. Where are you seeing this in your clients right now? Hip and T-spine cases especially, drop them below. 👇
1 like • Jul 8
@David Hajjar Love this example 👊 Perfect illustration of the point. Nothing about his tissue changed in that moment, but as soon as you gave him a bit of external stability, his nervous system was happy to access the range that was already there. It's such a good reminder that what often looks like a mobility restriction is often a stability problem in disguise. Nice work experimenting with it and seeing the change straight away. Keep testing these ideas and you'll start spotting this pattern everywhere.
I'm taking on clients again
I stopped taking on new clients about a year ago. The mentorship grew quickly and something had to give. I've spent that time teaching movement mechanics to coaches and clinicians full time. In doing that the assessment process has got sharper than it's ever been, and I'm ready to work with individuals again. I'm looking for 3 people to work with before I open this up properly. If you train seriously and you've got something that keeps coming back despite doing all the right things, the recurring injury that physio has helped temporarily but never solved, the movement limitation quietly capping your performance, drop me a DM and tell me what you're dealing with. I'll tell you if I think it's something I can help you move past. Ash
0 likes • May 5
@David Hajjar 📩
Shoulder Rehab vs Kipping Pullups
Happy New Year team! I hope 2026 is off to a great start for you all. If you want a deeper explanation for why traditional shoulder rehab is not very effective, I recently stumbled on this dissertation presentation I did going through: 🚩 Force differences of an external rotation vs kipping pullup 🚩 Muscle loading patterns compared between the two 🚩 A couple of case studies of people switching from old school physio to movement mechanics Let me know what you think and if you want more similar content, message me with topics 👊 https://www.skool.com/training-stimulus/classroom/e3029523?md=b55ea675ab35418ea7be865093d00ec3
0 likes • Jan 9
@Sandra Beecken a great place to start are ring rollouts: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ck2aa7BoDiS/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== We have deeper breakdowns in exercise of the week too! The goal is to challenge stability while also ensuring we stimulate the target muscle through changes in length 👍
0 likes • Apr 28
Hey @G Doe - it seems like the pain is specific to the pressing part of getting the weight overhead - does strict pressing also trigger it? We have a shoulder and overhead masterclass also which will give some ideas. The way we'd approach something like this is to do an assessment to see what movement quality is missing, then train it back into the body. If the delt is hurting during pressing then maybe another prime mover in the press isn't doing its job fully Let me know if that helps!
Pronation advice
Hi all, looking for some clarity on pronation mechanics. In the exercise of the week / coaching pronation, one cue is that pronation is only occurring when our mass is behind our centre of balance. However in the knee case study of David to test pronation he is in a forward leaning / forward centre of mass position. Just wondering why we would test it in this position if we are expecting the foot to be favouring supination here . Cheers!
1 like • Apr 3
Hey @Dylan Walsh great question! In the pronation EOW, we're looking for as close to "perfect" pronation mechanics as possible, related to walking gait. To maximise the amount of motion, we start from heel strike to get as much pronation range of motion as possible (from a fully supinated foot towards a maximally pronated foot) In David's case, many of his issues related to the squat, so the pronation mechanics can be thought of as partial/mid-range compared to a footstep in walking. We're just looking at how the foot pronates from standing to squatting, so we won't see as much change. One point to clarify is that pronation can and does occur when mass in on top of our centre of balance, the ideal pronation just *starts* when we're behind our centre of balance. Think of it as giving the most space to pronate into. A squat analogy for this would be squatting from standing vs squatting down from the power position. We're still squatting, but if we start standing we have a better change to set up ideal mechanics. Typically maximum pronation occurs when we're in mid-stance or "suspension" phase of gait as Gary Ward would call it, before the swing foot overtakes the stance foot. Let me know if that clarifies things or if you have a follow up question please fire away!
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Ashley Grossmann
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@ashley-grossmann-9959
Chief Lunge Officer Helping you help your clients, patients and athletes move better to do more of the sport and training that they love.

Active 2h ago
Joined Oct 10, 2024
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