McGill 1: Building the Ultimate Back - Foundation For The Pain Free Back

Course objective

Update delegates on the most recent developments in clinical biomechanics of the lumbar spine – how it works and becomes injured. Provide guidance in the application of this foundation of knowledge to the clinic, workplace, rehabilitation centre, and training facility. Enhance skill and technique in client assessment and corrective/therapeutic or performance-enhancing exercise prescription. Empower you with the knowledge to reduce the risk of injury, optimize health outcomes, and enhance performance of your patients and clients.

Course information

Building the foundation reviews and builds on the scientific foundation of lumbar spine function and mechanisms of injury, which enables you to parse science from myth. Anatomical, biomechanical, and motor control perspectives are provided to support an evidence-informed clinical approach. The postures, movements, and loads of the lumbar spine that cause pain and injury, and make them worse, are key components discussed.

Interpreting patient presentation enhances your ability to identify aberrant movement patterns and accurately interpret provocative tests by considering the foundational perspectives.

Preventing and rehabilitating low back disorders integrates the elements of the scientific foundation and patient presentation into practical clinical tools. These clinical strategies will optimize rehabilitation programs – introducing ways to remove the cause of back pain and progressions of corrective exercise therapies. Spine loads, muscle activation patterns, and spine stability influence these low back pain prevention and rehabilitation techniques.

Training and performance. After establishing optimal movement patterns, advanced progressions from stability to endurance to strength, speed, power, and agility are provided from Dr. McGill’s work with professional athletes.

The science of spine stability. Graded stabilization exercise will be developed and workshopped. Special issues regarding abdominal “hollowing” and “bracing”, together with several muscle activation patterns will be discussed.

Brief Description of Topics:

4 hours

Building the foundation: Dispel the myths about how the spine works and becomes injured and/or painful. Anatomical, biomechanical and neurological perspectives are provided to setup the clinical approaches

2 hours

Interpreting patient presentation: Understand aberrant motion and motor patterns and possibilities for corrective exercise. Provocative tests and their mechanical basis provide guidance for optimal exercise design. Lecture and workshop

1 Hour

Preventing Back Disorders: No clinician can be successful without removing the cause of back troubles in patients. This section teaches delegates how to identify the causes and how to remove them. Lecture and workshop.

5 Hours

Rehabilitation Approaches: The first stage following assessment of the pain mechanism is to wind-down the pain sensitivity by removing the cause. Movement techniques to empower the patient to move without pain are workshopped. Then exercise and programs are workshopped to build the foundation for pain-free activity. Lecture and workshop

4 Hours

Training for performance – Training the back for performance (either athletic or occupational) requires different approaches and objectives than training to fulfill rehabilitation objectives. Some of the techniques developed in our work with world class athletes will be introduced and discussed within the context of valid mechanisms and evidence. These include the progressions from establishing motor control patterns, through to stability, endurance, strength, power and agility. Formalization of some of the performance “tricks” including how to get through “sticking points”, and developing “superstiffness” will be done in lecture and practical sessions.

Note: Dr McGill has authored four textbooks: “Low Back Disorders: Evidence based prevention and rehabilitation”, Third Edition, published by Human Kinetics publishers, (www.humankinetics.com), 2016, and “Ultimate back fitness and performance”, Sixth Edition, published by Backfitpro Inc (www.backfitpro.com), 2017, Back Mechanic, 2015, and The Gift of Injury, 2018. The first three books synthesise the material presented in this course and are recommended as resource material for interested delegates.