“First move well, then move often” is a very powerful quote that every weight room should stand by. Here at Northeastern these words are gold to the strength coaches. Testing an athlete’s movements is done well before any sort of training in the weight room occurs. The four coaches and their interns test over 400 athletes in one day looking for common imbalance and immobilities which could later lead to injury. The organization and accuracy of the team is extraordinary and just one example of the elite status Northeastern holds.
In order to test the athletes, Northeastern enacts a Pre-Participation Examination which incorporates a few movements from the Functional Movement Screening (FMS) and the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) put together by the coaches. I was very familiar with the FMS testing protocol; a seven step screening system checking for imbalances in the client. The SMFA, however, was new to me. If an athlete comments on pain during any of the FMS movements (found from one of the three clearing tests) the testers can move on to the SFMA testing protocol in order to pinpoint where the pain is felt and maybe figure out why pain is occurring.
The five FMS tests that the athletes are put through here at Northeastern are the overhead/ deep squat, the active straight leg raise, shoulder mobility, multi-segmental flexion and extension. Complete with their own cues and list of protocol and athletes can score one of four numbers, giving the coaches an idea of where they stand with movement ability and what should be corrected during training in the weight room. If an athlete scores a 3 the movement is completed perfectly along guidelines set, a score of 2 or 1 shows some error specific to the test. If the athlete scores a 0 they are experiencing pain during the movement. This is when the SFMA comes into play. Along with the movement screening the strength coaches test abilities through the OptoJump, body composition, and movement minimums.
It is important to remember the job of these movement screens. Finding movement dysfunction is the number one task and will surly lead to preventing injury and better performance by the athletes. “Being strong doesn’t mean much without fluid, efficient movement.” – Gray Cook