Try reading David Butler and Lorimer Moseley or any pain studies. Pain has very little to do with structural pathology, especially chronic pain. WE always thought structure pathology = pain.

Chronic pain was a mystery till now because we always focused on the biomechanical model. Now we know that chronic pain is a nervous system phenomenon and all out treatments work via the nervous system. Haven’t you come across studies which shows gross abnormalities in people with no history of pain?

“Sahrmann has been in the trenches for many years using her theories and there has to be something to be said about that.”

The worst crime a researcher can commit is to believe in his hypothesis. And it doesn’t matter how many years “in trenches” or how many gray hair she has, it has to stand the rigors of scientific evidence.

http://www.mindandmuscle.net/articles/a_balachandran/posture

This was an article i wrote 4-5 years back. Thanks for the reply.

Thanks very much for the comment.

I do agree that pain is multifactorial. However, I think it is negligent to ignore the biomechanical causes of pain or the psychosocial elements. Sadly, it seems people these days are either in one camp or the other. As with most things, I suppose the truth is not at the extremes, but somewhere in the middle. My specialty just happens to be in biomechanics and exercise physiology so this is where I tend to focus.

I also think pain is a very subjective process since we all experience it differently and it is often situation/state dependent. When we get hit playing football we might “feel” the pain less than if we’d been hit when we were in a different situation or psychological state.

With regards to Kendall’s book, I’ve found that muscle testing to be of great use when it comes to performance, but I rarely use it to treat pain.

Sahrmann’s work has definitely influenced my thought processes on movement/compensation patterns/etc, but I don’t use it to diagnose or treat injury. To this day, I don’t think I’ve read a more comprehensive hypothesis on human movement. Granted, there are many studies, but they are all done in isolation and usually by researchers in a lab. Sahrmann has been in the trenches for many years using her theories and there has to be something to be said about that.

Thanks again for stimulating me to further investigate where my influences are coming from.

i am surprised you being so skeptical endorses books like Kendall’s which has a complete lack of reference. It has been clear now that posture has very little to do with pain.

And Shirley Sahrmann’s movement impairment syndromes is just another hypothesis which only looks at the biomechanical component of pain.Pain is better explained by the biopsychosocial model and all the current research is pointing towards it.

Good blog!

I’ve heard Dan’s book is really good, but I’d totally forgotten about it until now. I’m going to put that on my “to be purchased” list right now. As for the clips, I thought they were hilarious and watched them several times before posting them. Interestingly, I saw versions of my much younger self in that squat argument.

Thanks for the comment. I think there are some minor differences in the texts, but overall I find them to be quite similar. I was laughing at what you wrote too because some days I wish I was back in grad school so I’d have more time to read journals and go to the “academic” conferences that I don’t get to do as much these days.

Btw, where were you a couple weeks ago when I was deciding which Gladwell book to buy?

If I have to put down just 3 top books I would currently pick
“The Body Has a Mind of Its Own”
“Blink”
“Z-Health, Master Trainer Manual”

What would others list?

Rock on
Mike T Nelson PhD(c)
http://www.ExtremeHumanPerformance.com

Patrick