What Is A Muscle Imbalance Assessment?

I often get asked what a Muscle Imbalance Assessment is, so I thought I’d write a quick blog on it, hopefully it will give some insight into how it works and perhaps outline some areas for improvement in your own training, or give some structure around how you view movement and biomechanics.

The majority of people/athletes booking in for an assessment are experiencing pain or a niggle that just isn’t going away. They’ve usually tried traditional healthcare options, with no joy, and are frustrated that their training is suffering as a result. Sometimes they’ve noticed a major asymmetry in their movement or where they feel sore after training and want to get ahead of it before it becomes an issue, or that they’ve plateaued in a certain movement and are struggling to make progress despite ramping up their training/doing several different programmes e.g. tried 3 different squat programmes but never been able to increase that 1RM. These are all great reasons to have an assessment.

Every assessment is different. The key consideration is obviously what exactly is causing the pain - establishing the specific movements that trigger it and the circumstances around it is step 1. Is a back squat worse than an overhead squat? Is strict pressing a problem, but push pressing fine? Does running fast feel okay but long slow plods hurt? Maybe the pain is worst when you wake up, then eases off as your warm up into training. Questions like this give a lot of clues as to what the type of issue might be.

Next we chat history - sport/training/injury history specifically. Usually there are some big clues as to what the root cause of the issue might have been. Years of playing a one sided sport. Being in a cast for several months and avoiding loading a limb/joint. A job that necessitates you being in one position for long periods of time. The body is incredibly adaptive and will form movement habits to respond to whatever it thinks you need your body to do; unfortunately this isn’t always aligned with what you want it to do.

Lastly, before we even look at the body, we’ll talk current training. What are you working towards? What’s training been like recently? Did any changes in your programme/routine/lifestyle precede the issue? The body can adapt to almost anything if the rate of progression is appropriate - so considering training volume, both overall and regarding specific movements is crucial for understanding why a certain body part may be experiencing trouble. Also, knowing what your goals are will impact the programme design - rehabbing a knee for squatting is different to rehabbing a knee for running, even if the injury is the same.

Finally, we start looking at the body. Depending on what we’ve established in the consultation above, we’ll have a look at the fundamental movement qualities related to the issue at hand. In simple terms, these are mobility, stability and functional control. In simpler terms, can you use the mobility and stability in the movement that matters? It is possible to have good mobility and stability in isolated tests, but not when you perform the actual exercise that hurts, so it’s essential to make the assessment reflect the context in which the issue arises. i.e. you are able to “activate” your glute in an isolated test like a glute bridge (which I’ll never ask you to do) - but it doesn’t seem to fire when you deadlift or run - context is everything here.

Once we have assessed the body and built a picture of where the movement gaps are, we will design exercises to plug these gaps. We will play with directions, ranges of motion, points of stability and loading options to give your body the best environment to learn the skills that it currently lacks. This is where Silly Lunges come into play. The odd looking exercises are specifically targeting a movement quality that your body needs to improve in - it could be as simple as stretching a muscle to create more range, or as complicated as stabilising a “lazy” muscle in one plane of motion while tweaking out an overactive muscle in two planes of motion.

We will film the exercises with instructions so you can refer back to them and ensure form is correct without me - the subtle tweaks make a big difference. Then I will put them into a programme that fits in with your training schedule and lifestyle. Depending on exactly what is going on, you may feel benefit immediately in session, you may feel a bit beat up from it or just exhausted from asking your body to do movements it has never experienced before. Over the next few weeks, we’ll stay in touch to review progress and advance exercises to make sure you’ve seen the improvement in performance and/or reduction in pain that you desired.

Thank you for reading if you’ve got this far, hopefully it sheds some light on the process. Any other questions you have about it, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!