Latest / The STA Clinician Podcast / STA202: 'Movement Assessment Technologies' with special guest Stephen King

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STA202: 'Movement Assessment Technologies' with special guest Stephen King · The STA Clinician Podcast

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You're listening to the Sports Therapy Association podcast, putting evidence
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back into soft tissue therapy.
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Music.
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And we're live. Hey people, how are you doing? Welcome to the Sports Therapy
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Association podcast, episode 202. My name is Matt Phillips, creator of RunShutLive.com.
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And as always, this episode is being recorded live on the Sports Therapy Association
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YouTube channel and also on the Sports Therapy Association Facebook page.
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Before we begin just a little shout
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out if you are an sta member we mentioned this last week if
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you're an sta member who would like to be on the podcast who would like to be
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on the sports therapy association podcast then listen
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up because what you may not know and
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some people will know that on the first tuesday of every month we do
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an ask us anything episode with a panel made
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up of four or five sta members and and
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on the next episode which is going to be tuesday july the second
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at eight o'clock the topic is going to be therapy for
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swimmers so if you are an sta member who
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works with swimmers and you like the idea of being on that panel it's not a
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test there'll be some questions but it's all about just you sharing your knowledge
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your experience your ideas all that sort of stuff no real well there will be
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some wrong answers but we'll make them but it's just sharing experience so if
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you like the idea of that and even if you're kind of interested but not quite.
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Sure i need a little bit of a pep talk then email me matt at
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the sta.co.uk it's people
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who've done it and been on it were nervous to start
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off and then after they said that was so great pop
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my podcast cherry and i'm feeling good and that's what they sang and it really
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can help you in your career and your life and everything because it's one of
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those things where you just overcome a little bit of fear and it's also good
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on your cv you can play a little exercise to your patients and clients you can
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network more with other people being on the show and all that sort of the stuff
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so if you're interested let me know,
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Okay, did I sell it? Well, I think so. I'm looking forward to those emails flocking in.
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If you listen to the podcast and you'd like to join us live,
2:08
then like I say, just head along to YouTube or the Facebook.
2:11
People are coming through the door now. I'm just going to say good evening.
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If you do come in, then I can bring your message and your comments and questions up onto the screen.
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So for example, Gary Benson, founder of the STS, just come in.
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I'm saying good evening all. Says Gary, hey Gary, how are you doing? Good to see you in here.
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David Fahity says evening all. Hey David, thanks for joining us. How are you?
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Muscle Mechanics has come for good name, strong name
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there muscle mechanics uh good evening all said muscle mechanics i'm good to
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see you muscle mechanics do i what's your real name unless that is your name
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i'm not judging but yeah if you have got a name like that and i do know you
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and i'm just like don't recognize your brand and stick it in the comments so
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i know who's here anyway talking of sta members yes as part of our recent.
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200th episode celebration a couple of weeks ago and we announced that we'll be giving away some
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free memberships so thank you to everyone who entered
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the draw by commenting on our facebook post and
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congratulations to those who by being picked
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from the hat have won free sta membership
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and those people are and they've already been informed michelle oliver
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scott walker and roberts and somebody
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called julia massage therapy which is a great name for a massage therapist so
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well done to all of you for your free membership congratulations thanks for
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participating the enjoy everyone else there the discount celebrations do continue
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until july the 4th fitting date and we have got 20 50 discounts up for grabs
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if you want to be part of the sports therapy association.
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And again i mean it's it's to tell you the truth it's i'm
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always telling gary it's too cheap anyway but we do keep the prices down because
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it's a non-profit association we're not here to make a profit we don't make
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a profit we declare no profit because we don't make anything it's all about providing
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support and helping the industry along so it's already
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cheap but if you like a bit have a discount if that's what you need to
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come and discover all the benefits and advantages of
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being part of our wonderful group and community then here's
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another chance are you ready the first
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20 therapists who sign up as new sda members using the code 200 so 200 as a
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code will get 50 discount on annual membership it's first come first served
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you heard it here first only 20 of them are available and it must be claimed
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before July the 4th, 2024.
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I think I got that right. Is that okay, Gary? I think so. That's all good.
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Right then i've got a bit of fog on my throat here
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tonight muscle mechanic says i'm danny matthews forgot i'm
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logged in from work long hey danny good i'd like to have a name now thanks
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for joining us danny good to see you in the live lounge so we
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are continuing our two-part episode
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on movements in part one last
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week which was episode 201 for those
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of you who missed it it's available as always on
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the on your favorite podcast apps and
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also on youtube if you'd like to see the the glorious
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visual spectacle that it was and my guest was john scriven
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founder of move well um there's a natural movement of rehabilitation specialist
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some of you might know him from therapy expo a wonderful guy such such knowledge
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i mean he was dropping all these other names i was like john just tell us the
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stuff yourself you don't have to quote every single person you've studied with
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but he's so learned and he's got a massive passion for helping individuals achieve
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what what he refers to as physical literacy.
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So a lot of it was about trying to restore or just checking whether the exercises
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which we tend to give out because we're taught to give out really do replicate
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what our clients need to do,
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whether that's for occupational movement of some form or just everyday movement
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or maybe for their sport.
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And I know that there's going to be a nice segue and crossover in tonight's
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episode as well. So it's a great episode to have a listen to if you haven't done yet.
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And like I say, available on all popular podcast apps, including spotify
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and apple podcast and all that sort of stuff and leading on very nicely from
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that i'm very excited tonight to introduce stephen king who hasn't been on the
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show before so it's always lovely to get people i've known the name and seen
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the name and followed the posts for probably nearly a decade and we're just
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chatting off air it's just ridiculous how you can,
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see someone's name and follow each other for so long and not actually say hi
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to each other even in a virtual way, but it's happening finally.
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Stephen King is the founder of Movement Assessment Technologies,
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or MAT. Now you know what MAT stands for.
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And we're going to be having a look at that. We're going to look at different
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types of technologies of which Stephen is very much involved in,
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and have a look at, in many of these cases, without giving too much away,
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how they can be useful in making sure that we are helping our clients actually
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get better at what they want and need to do.
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So strap yourself in, grab your pens and paper, those of you in the live lounge.
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Welcome, just a final few highs, to Sir Glenn Murphy MBE. I love sticking that up.
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That's the the sort of class we get in here you see on the sports
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therapy association podcast here in the uk sir glenn murphy
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mba thank you thank you sir for joining us and gary
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says we've already had lots of interest matt we've processed
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three of the winners today we've had five discounted memberships already
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taken right so yeah five are gone 15 left if you
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are listening live and you do want to join the sta then now
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it's time to do it 15 left god sound like i feel like
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i'm on twitter not twitter what's it called that new one gone oh
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my god right anyway enough dawdling around let's bring up the guest for tonight
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movement assessment technologies with steven king you're listening to the sports.
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Music.
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Therapy association podcast evidence back soft tissue therapy,
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hey steven how you doing hi matt hi everyone
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fantastic name matt as well it's very on brand for today
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which is very exciting and just want to say a big thank you to yourself Gary
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and obviously Scott for teeing this up I'm really excited to be
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here the signal for you guys very very early
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in the morning here for me so I apologize the coffee's
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just kicking in I've managed to spill it all over myself already once this morning
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so a couple of little accidents but uh hopefully get through the rest of the
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uh the podcast without any interruptions thank you yeah I should start off by
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saying thank you once again another another expert from Australia we don't know
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what it is how you You guys chuck out all these experts.
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But yeah, thank you very much for being up so early in Melbourne,
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aren't you? Is that right?
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Correct. Yeah. Which everyone in listening is thinking, oh, lucky so-and-so.
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He's sitting in the sun bathing in the luxury of Australia. But actually,
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it's pretty chilly over there. He's sitting, he's actually wearing like a sweat top at the moment.
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So yeah. Yeah, we're at zero degrees and it's pitch black still.
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So yeah, I feel like I'm in the UK. So it's probably quite appropriate for this show this evening.
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Yes, yes, that's us, pitch black and zero degrees. That's us, you know, as well.
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Right, so great. Like I say, great to finally be able to spend some time with you.
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I think we'll jump straight into it, really. For people who aren't aware of
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you, the kind of name, the website tells us all about it.
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The MAT standing for Movement Assessment Technologies.
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I love how, let's bring up a little shot of your website, just so people who
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have joined us live have got that visual input, which they're here for.
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Here we go. You ready, people? people bathe in this so yeah
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we're talking about mattassessment.com isn't
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it it's mattassessment.com yeah mattassessment.com m-a-t-assessment.com so movement
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assessment technologies fantastic website there's so much information on there
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as with all my guests fantastic website to have a look at and i love this bit
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because it seems to be your not catchphrase that devalues it but your Your tagline,
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that's it, is, if you're not measuring while assessing, you're guessing.
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And I've seen that a lot around on your social media. And it's,
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yeah, explain why you like that so much and how that kind of fits in with what you do.
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Look, I think a big part of it is, you know, a lot of people have got,
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you know, there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of gray area in what we do.
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And I think, you know, what I've learned over the last sort of 15 years or so,
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starting to incorporate, you know, more data-driven assessments into my practice
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is, you know, it really does help to take away some of that guesswork with the
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people that you're working with.
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And hopefully, we can get some better long-term, life-changing outcomes for the people we work with.
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Yeah, it's been something we've had since day one. Yeah, we sort of finally
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got the trademark through actually officially this morning, which is nice on that too here.
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So, that's a big thing as well. So, it's probably appropriate you sort of brought
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that up first thing today.
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That's cool. And it's and it's it's a pretty serious thing, isn't it?
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Because we're a lot of us.
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Physios as well i'm not just going to say sports therapists i
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think in a lot of careers we're taught to kind
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of evaluate things with our eyes not only we
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kind of measuring bony structures which we know all about
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the kind of different shapes and and variabilities but
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also we're looking at it with our eyes and our thumbs and thinking yeah
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that's definitely changed a couple of degrees good we're getting
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better now and it's limited isn't it there's a lot of
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problems with that i guess there's a lot of problems
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i think and yeah that's probably you know what started me on this journey you
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know 15 years ago or so look i my background i
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sort of graduated as an osteopath first so i went through the
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three years bachelor two years master's program here in melbourne
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and australia in that and i came out into practice and you
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know for me i had a lot of confidence coming out you know i'd been
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told you know we've done five years it's more than physio we've got
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the back we've got the masters we can call yourself doctors you know
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we're better than everyone else and had a lot of confidence and
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then quickly i realized it probably wasn't the case and I
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really struggled I worked as a personal trainer through my osteopathy course
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I really struggled to take those people who I was treating on
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the table and get them moving and take those people who
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I was sort of training and get them on the table so for me there was a you know
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a bit of a disconnect there so I sort of decided I needed to try and sort of
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upskill myself further and you know it took a big journey to get there and to
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start to remove some of that uncertainty but I definitely sort of you know feel
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that I've got there 15 years later or so collecting some data.
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And it just helps you feel more confident with the uncertainty.
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Look, I really remember one specific client where, you know,
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I was probably at my confidence was at the all-time low.
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It's all about that Dunning-Kruger effect. You come out, you're really confident,
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and then all of a sudden you get right down to the bottom of that sort of Dunning-Kruger
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curve. And it was a guy who came with a hamstring strain.
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And so he sort of hobbled in a strain real slowly.
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Footballer real football sort of came in and he
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you know he sort of said i've got some pain in my hamstring so i pushed
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on his leg you know with all the assessment skills i had at the time and it
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was a little bit weak i sort of had a look at his straight leg raise and his
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range of motion through that hamstring and it was a bit reduced i got in there
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with my hands and i had a bit of a feel around as you know therapists we often
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pride ourselves on doing and it was pretty tender and painful and so i thought
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i know exactly what this is it's a grade one hamstring strain so i did you know,
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when I was taught in my osteopathy course, you know, I did some,
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you know, some treatments.
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I got in there, did some soft tissue, did some muscle energy to the leg lengths
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and the, you know, the pelvic imbalances, it's the muscle itself.
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I might've even done some dry kneeling back then as well.
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And then I gave him a few exercises. We did that, you know, a few times over
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the next three or four weeks. And, you know, he got back four weeks later, he's feeling good.
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He could run, he could train. He had full range of motion. I pushed on his leg. It was pretty strong.
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And he sort of got in there and had a feel of the tissues and there was
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no pain or of discomfort and so i thought okay look you're
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good to go back to sport what happened four weeks later matt
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oh suspense dramatic pause he's
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hurting again let me let me guess yeah yeah he hobbles back in and he goes yeah
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i've sort of got this pain in the hamstring again so i pushed on it again yeah
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it was a little bit weaker again i sort of got in there had a feel it's quite
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tender and his range of motion was reduced and for me i thought i didn't balance
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that pelvis well you You know, it was my treatment techniques weren't good enough.
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And so I got in there, did more treatment. I gave him more exercises.
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And again, three or four weeks later, you know, full range, pushed on his leg,
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it was strong, and it was no longer tender. And I sent him back onto the sports field.
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Six weeks later, you know, he comes back in and he's done his ACL.
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And so for me, you know, I was at that real low point. So I decided to add another
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$30,000 worth of debt to my HECS, my sort of study debt here in Australia,
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and went back and did my master's in physiotherapy and hoping that that would
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bridge the gap a little bit to get those people off the table and get them moving again.
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But, you know, what I learned, I learned a lot about myself,
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a lot about communication, and lucky enough to do a lot of pain science stuff
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with, you know, Dave Butler and Laura Mosley and those guys over there at UniSA.
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But we did one to our Pilates class of exercise prescription in the whole physiotherapy course.
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Most of it was sort of, you know, getting patients up out of the hospital bed
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and walking them 20 metres and taking them back to the bed.
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So it really didn't help, you know, what I sort of wanted it to do and bridge that gap.
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So I sort of started travelling the world. I came to the UK,
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did some great courses over there, went over to the USA and did some great sort
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of functional movement stuff and thought, look, I'm doing some good stuff here,
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but how do we actually know if people are getting, you know,
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good results and they're actually heading back towards their goals?
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And that's where I was talking to some people, with some other business owner
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friends that I had, you know, they were sort of accountants,
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they're lawyers, they're video production companies.
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So a few of my close mates who, you know, by that stage, from getting pretty
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old, a few grey hairs are starting to come in.
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They've all got their businesses. And the one thing that they kept telling me
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and how they sort of evaluated the outcomes in their business was through data.
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And it was just one thing at the time, you know, going back,
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you know, 12 years ago or so, wasn't really considered in the healthcare space.
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So we're a bit different today, thankfully, over the last sort of,
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you know, 10 years or so I've been doing this, it's changed a lot.
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But at the time, no one was really talking about data.
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And, you know, as I was saying to you before we came on air,
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we were sort of put out there as a bit of an outcast, I guess,
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early on in our journey where people were like, what's this stuff?
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You don't need numbers in healthcare.
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So, yeah, it's been an interesting journey.
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That's really interesting. Thank you for that insight. It's going to be really
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interesting for listeners to hear that even as an osteopath,
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we don't sit up quite as high as physios, obviously, not in the heavens,
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but we put them higher than us, humble kind of sports therapists.
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But even an osteopath wasn't satisfied and not getting results.
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And what you did with this patient will mimic what a lot of people listening
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will go, well, that's exactly what I would have done. Maybe I should call myself an osteopath.
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You can't. but then you went and did physiotherapy which in
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theory should have solved it all and it didn't you ended
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up with even more questions so it's really healthy because that's a common theme here
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of always thinking that the next career is the one that's going
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to give you all the answers and the grass is greener but it's kind of not is
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it so no really healthy to hear that i appreciate that and
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the the yeah the measuring thing the
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data thing is it's very true and i'm really excited to
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hear about some of the tools you've come up with and how they kind
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of do help you get results i wonder whether sometimes
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people worry i i i i
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found this with gait analysis years ago when you
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were collecting data and the stuff you think was supposed to be happening wasn't
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actually happening you were like no no no you can't can't show this to my customer
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to my client he's feeling better and it shouldn't have worked according to this
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data so i think sometimes especially when we're doing stuff which isn't actually
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evidence-informed the data can be our enemy you're almost crossing your fingers
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thinking please show this cadence this has increased.
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Police showed it and it hasn't. And you're like, what's happened? It was.
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So I think as we, as we'll see with you now, it's great collecting data as long
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as you're linking that with the evidence because otherwise the data could really
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show that what you're doing is not, is not giving you the desired outcomes, you say.
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Yeah, definitely. Look, it's always going to be coming back to the individual's
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needs, wants and goals. And I think that's the big thing.
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And if you start with that in mind, you know, and you use the assessments along
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the way, you know, of all the different capacities that someone needs to achieve
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those goals, look, hopefully we can do a better job.
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And, you know, I'm pretty confident to say now, look, we can't,
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you know, prevent injuries or predict who's going to necessarily go on and sustain an injury.
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We can get some better information around it. And I think with that hamstring.
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The AFL player with that hamstring example, I think if
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I was seeing him today you know potentially he doesn't go on
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to sustain that non-contact ACL injury you know
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if my assessment had been a bit better and but as I
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said these problems are you know are right around I think everybody you
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know I've noticed traveling around the world I think we've taught in over 30 countries
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now and I've had people from over 15 different professions
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attend the course over the years and everybody's sort
17:55
of got the same sort of issues and you know for me I think the best
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thing about incorporating data into practice is it
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means there's no right or wrong way to go about getting someone back to
18:04
those goals there's literally a million different ways you can go about
18:07
treating or training someone to get a great long-term outcome for
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them you know it's just about making sure that you've got good data
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to know that you're actually making progress and gate example is
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a really good one look i think everyone who works with runners look
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that's often you know the first place that i'll start but for me that's
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you know used to be where i used to start with the runners but that's probably the
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last thing that i start to do now because without having the information
18:28
around their all the different capacities they they need you're
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really just making sort of assumptions and guessing you know if
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you see something on their running analysis that you know why that's
18:37
happening and for me if you know if you've assessed their you know their
18:40
other movement patterns you've looked at their balance and proprioception you
18:43
know their speed and agility you've tested out their strength and their power
18:47
their endurance their flexibility all the muscle capacities then hopefully you
18:50
get there and you start to see something which is doesn't look quite right you
18:54
can start to bring the whole picture together and i think that's you know the
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beauty of data and also brings you know brings that that research.
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You know, and that evidence into practice.
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Which I think a lot of us talk about being evidence-informed or evidence sort of based in practice.
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But a lot of the time, we're not using the, you know, the assessments that they
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use in the research in practice and the types of technology and stuff that they
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use to make these decisions in the research in practice as well.
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And, you know, that's something I've been a big advocate of for a long time
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is, you know, how can we actually start to bring some technology into practice
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and collect data which is meaningful?
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You know, a lot of these systems out there that you can bring into practice
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will give you lots of different metrics out there and you can get a bit of paralysis by analysis.
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We're all time poor, so it's really trying to find the, you know,
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the one or two key metrics which are actually meaningful for that patient in achieving their goals.
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Brilliant. Love it. I'm listening to you thinking I'm so excited to bring up
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some of the products now, especially the main one.
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Well, I don't know it's the main one, but the one which I'm going to start off
19:48
with. And hopefully you'll be able to use the mat as an example of everything
19:52
you said kind of there to put it into some kind of context.
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So let's bring up, we'll start off with the mat if that's okay.
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I've got some images here just for you image thirsty people in YouTube here.
20:00
So the mat as it sounds i mean
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for people who are listening to the podcast they won't be able to see this image
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so you can talk us through it as well but there's a little image
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of the mats and as one of somebody using it people
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in clinic may well have used something similar but yeah
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talk us through what what is the mat and how it links up
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with the whole mat approach if you could steven yeah sure
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the mat's the movement assessment tool so sort
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of pretty creative name it's also a mat on the ground so it sort of worked
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pretty well i sort of gave myself the rest of the afternoon off when
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i came up with that i was pretty all tied
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in pretty nicely nicely together but look for me i
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had no intentions of you know running courses
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or you know selling this product around the world to other people you
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know for me at the time i was i was starting to do some of
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that functional movement and training and starting to bring some data into practice
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and for me i was working a little treatment room at the time was probably no
20:51
wider than like probably two and a half meters by three meters with it so with
20:55
a treatment table in there you couldn't do all three-dimensional movements So
20:59
I wanted a way to be able to sort of perform a lot of different movements,
21:02
you know, those triplane lunges, you know, my favourite test,
21:04
the star excursion balance test.
21:06
All those great three-dimensional sort of data-driven type assessments in a way, in a small space.
21:11
And also be able to do it when I went out and worked with the sports teams I was working with.
21:15
I was sick of, you know, putting tape on the ground and, you know,
21:18
each time I went down to the sports club and draw the numbers on it,
21:20
spent, you know, 15 minutes doing that, you know, when I should actually be
21:23
doing some meaningful stuff with the athletes I was working with.
21:26
So for me, it was just a necessity.
21:28
Necessity and i started you know sort of
21:31
putting a few pictures on social media back in the glory days where you
21:34
put one picture up and you probably hit a hundred thousand people or so
21:37
organically it was pretty nice and a few of my colleagues
21:39
and close friends said can you teach us you know how to use this we're pretty
21:42
interested and at this time it was literally a yoga mat with some markings on
21:46
it so i hadn't even created a you know official sort of product yet and so i
21:49
ran that first course then you know sort of made up a few of those different
21:52
products for them and you know it went really well i think we had 10 people
21:55
so i thought look maybe i can start to produce this And so I went into sort of,
21:59
you know, trying to work out ways to go down the manufacturing path,
22:01
which for me, you know, as a physio and osteo, it was something I had no idea
22:05
about where to start. So we ended up getting there.
22:07
And then I think, you know, over the next 12 months, I ended up running about
22:10
10 courses around Australia.
22:12
So a few in Melbourne, a few told their colleagues interstate.
22:15
And then it wasn't until probably 18 months later when we got a call from or
22:20
an email from a guy in Hong Kong who sort of said, hey, we're really interested in this approach.
22:25
You know, would you be keen to bring it over? And that's when I started to say,
22:28
look, it wasn't just a problem that I was having in my own practice and,
22:30
you know, that I'm sitting. It was actually a problem sort of elsewhere.
22:34
And we got over there. I think we had 40 people in the first course in Hong
22:37
Kong and Taiwan. So they were really sort of popular.
22:39
And then I think over the next sort of 12 months or so, I ran courses in about
22:43
25 different locations.
22:45
So it grew pretty organically from something which, you know,
22:48
was a pretty simple tool, which was, for me, just designed to give me data around
22:51
all three planes of motion and be able to quantify all those.
22:54
So it allows you to measure the distance in multiple different ways along the mat.
22:58
It allows you to measure the angulation using the sort of star on the mat.
23:02
And then you've got the mat ruler, which allows you to measure the verticality.
23:05
So, you know, if I was to assess someone here in Melbourne, you know,
23:08
they say they've got some, you know, some back pain when they bend down and
23:11
pick up something to the left.
23:12
I can put them into that position and I can sort of have them reach down and
23:17
I can get a number on that angulation.
23:19
I can get a number on that distance and I can get a number on that verticality
23:23
of where their pain comes on. You know, often you can quantify that as well.
23:27
I might say five out of ten pain.
23:29
And so if they're jumping on a plane and they come over and see you,
23:31
Matt, then, you know, you can hopefully with the map, put them in that same
23:34
position and know whether they've got, you know, better or worse over that sort of period of time.
23:39
So it really just allows a quick, simple way to collect data.
23:42
And for me, that's the best data you can collect. It's got to be,
23:44
you know, quick, simple and easy to do, you know, not take too much time.
23:48
And, you know, it's got to be affordable as well. A lot of the technology we
23:51
bring into practice, you know, we're not charging huge amounts in the healthcare industry.
23:55
It's got to be viable to implement into your business as well.
23:58
And that's also been a big philosophy that I've tried to keep,
24:00
you know, through the development of, you know, I think it's over 20 different
24:03
products now for the healthcare space is, you know, making them affordable.
24:07
So you can put one, you know, not just one into the business,
24:09
you know, put one into every room in the business.
24:12
So every patient, every client can get access.
24:15
So let's continue with your, I mean, you were examining somebody with back pain.
24:18
What is the advantage of therapists being able to note down that particular
24:22
distance they've managed to travel to touch or the angle? What's the advantage of that?
24:27
Yeah, so I guess it probably comes down to some of the issues that I had earlier
24:31
in my career where, look, you'd have your back pain patient and you ask them
24:35
to bend forward and they go, ah, you know, that hurts.
24:38
And so, you know, there's pain on bending forward or on deflection and so you
24:43
get down the treatment, you do your great treatment, they get back up again
24:46
and they bend forward and they go, ah, that hurts.
24:50
And so I'm thinking, you know, I've got two minutes left on here,
24:53
they don't feel any better.
24:54
But actually you know what I've probably learned over the time
24:57
and as I've started to collect this data is we're probably actually making
25:00
some meaningful changes in their range of motion it was
25:03
just that I wasn't able to show myself firstly you know to help my clinical
25:06
reasoning that that was the case but secondly you know most importantly I wasn't
25:10
able to show the patient that that was the case as well and especially some
25:13
of those you know chronic back pain patients little wins along the way are really
25:17
important in you know driving that change you know improving their confidence,
25:21
you know, and trying to improve their adherence to doing the stuff outside the
25:24
room, you know, which is the most important thing as well.
25:27
So there's numerous benefits to collecting data.
25:29
And, you know, when I first started collecting, as I said, I created the map,
25:32
you know, and this data-driven approach, you know, for myself.
25:35
But what I've learned over the last, you know, 12 to 15 years is it's actually
25:38
more important for the people that we're working with.
25:40
So we can sort of show them that progress over time.
25:43
And as I said, bring some of that sort of evidence and science into practice.
25:48
So your person's come off the couch and they've gone into forward flexion and it's hurtful.
25:54
You're saying with the mat, you might be able to put them, direct them visually
25:58
to a slightly different angle, which maybe they couldn't do before.
26:01
So rather than just a black and white, does it hurt or not, you can move them
26:05
through a different kind of range and see what improvements have occurred here.
26:09
100% different angles. You might just see, look, they've bent forward,
26:12
but they can actually get another five or 10 centimetres forward.
26:16
So you actually have made a change. or maybe you have and that's
26:19
that happens quite a lot as well it also means next
26:22
time you when you go back and do your next session with them you're
26:25
not going to go ahead and do the same thing so it helps your clinical reasoning
26:28
in that regard too and the big issue that i
26:31
see you know especially from my osteopathic background is people will get patients
26:35
and clients onto the table and they'll do five they'll do 10 treatment techniques
26:39
and they'll get them back up and if you're asking to bend forward and they're
26:42
still painful you've got two minutes left you know what do you do or Or even
26:46
worse, they've improved a lot.
26:48
Next time they come in, you've got to do all those five to ten treatment techniques
26:52
again where really it might have just been the first thing you did with them
26:55
that was actually the thing that got them better, but you don't know.
26:58
So by bringing those little bits of data and that continual reassessment with
27:02
data throughout your sort of treatment and training process,
27:05
whether that's within the session or over days, weeks, months,
27:08
or years, it can really help you narrow down the key thing, which is helping
27:12
that individual get back closer to their goals.
27:15
Sounds good. Good. Sounds good. And does having like a visual input help the
27:19
client rather than just saying, point out with your foot as far as you can,
27:22
having them something to actually aim for?
27:25
Yeah, so definitely there's components, and we've changed the map a lot in regards
27:28
to that over the last 10 years or so.
27:31
I think we're on to our eighth or ninth sort of iteration, not including the
27:34
prototypes that we created.
27:37
And the reason is to make it a little bit more visual to enhance communication
27:40
with our patients and clients. I think that's the biggest thing to help with workflow and stuff.
27:45
So you'll see now there's lots of bright colours on there for different sort
27:48
of tests and that sort of thing,
27:49
and it really does help sort of streamline the workflow and give them,
27:53
you know as you said some targets or some visualizations which make
27:56
it a little bit easier to perform those assessments and and
27:59
speed it up as well the biggest complaint i hear about you know
28:02
bringing doing more assessment you know in practice is
28:04
that it takes too long you know for me if you haven't got
28:07
time for assessment you know you haven't got time for you know treatment
28:10
or training there's a lot of time you know if you spend a lot of time you know
28:13
time on assessment collecting you know some data it's going to really speed
28:16
up a lot of that treatment and training process to the meaningful stuff which
28:20
is actually going to get people you know hopefully back closer to their else
28:23
fantastic yeah it all sounds great i like the simplicity of it i like the idea.
28:28
Or how to improve into an intro rate
28:31
of reliability like you said i love the idea of somebody going to another
28:34
therapist you might be working with if they're traveling and then you you can
28:38
reproduce that to the exact position can you do it now yeah i can still do it
28:41
can i not or something's changed that's that's i didn't think of that as a really
28:44
nice idea yeah so data helps us communicate you know better with our patients
28:49
but also you know better with ourselves and our notes but also
28:52
allows us as, you know, those 15 different professions who have attended our
28:55
courses to speak the same language as well.
28:57
You know, if you're talking to, you know, medical professions,
29:00
you know, it's often, you know, if you're sending a letter back to a doctor
29:03
or something like that, you know, being able to say, oh, they can now bend forward
29:06
10 centimetres further than they could is a lot more sort of meaningful than
29:10
saying, you know, there's still pain on. That's true.
29:13
Getting a better language. I like it. You mentioned on the website as well,
29:16
I like this, you can bridge the gap between traditional assessment methods and
29:20
the functional movements that are performed by your patients every day.
29:22
So this is something which will resonate with people who listened to John Scriven
29:26
last week, where he was suggesting that a lot of the assessments and the exercises
29:30
we give out afterwards are not really replicating.
29:34
They might have their place early on maybe in the rehab ladder,
29:37
but they're not ultimately replicating what that person is going to need to do.
29:41
So how does your map, for example, help bridge that gap, what you're referring to?
29:46
Yeah, so look, for us, it comes down to, you know, the different components.
29:50
And, you know, a big framework that I love is, you know, one that was actually
29:52
first talked about back in 2009 by Ryman and Mance, which is that functional
29:56
performance testing spectrum,
29:58
where they talk about, you know, bringing assessment in all three planes of
30:01
motion, collecting, you know, qualitative and quantitative data around the things
30:06
that people need, want, and love to do.
30:08
And so, you know, they talk about looking at all the different movement patterns you
30:11
know so we're going to assess that you know we talk about balance and
30:14
proprioception we talk about speed agility that sort
30:17
of fitness capacity you know which i think is therapists we don't
30:20
tend to do you know necessarily as well that anaerobic anaerobic capacity and
30:24
then those muscle you know components the strength the endurance the power the
30:28
flexibility and so i think if you can assess all those different things you
30:32
know and know what that individual's goals are hopefully take people a little
30:35
bit further from that traditional assessment And for me, look,
30:38
the traditional assessments, you know, still have their place.
30:40
There's still, you know, things that have made people great therapists at this
30:43
point in time, you're still going to do.
30:45
But there's a big gap from, you know, like that hamstring example,
30:48
pushing on that leg or looking at that flexibility on the table and actually
30:52
getting someone up and running at, you know, full speed like that AFL footballer
30:56
would have done, you know, running 25,
30:58
you know, kilometres an hour, changing direction at speed, you know. Yeah.
31:02
With trying to bend down and grab a ball, you know, potentially.
31:05
So, yeah, we need to try and take our assessment further.
31:08
And a lot of the times, you know, especially in modern technology.
31:11
We can actually start to quantify some of these things in those,
31:15
you know, whether it's the occupational tasks, the recreational tasks or the sports tasks.
31:19
You know, we've got lots of wearables. We've got lots of video sensors and capacitors,
31:23
video sort of sensor or, you know, AI, even AI-driven sort of video analysis apps.
31:28
So we can start to take people further along that. And so, you know,
31:32
whether we can actually fully reproduce the things, you know,
31:34
as part of our assessment, you know, it can be challenging.
31:36
But I think we can do a lot better than what we're doing now.
31:39
And getting people, you know, off the table is probably the first step in that
31:43
process for a lot of people.
31:46
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32:51
Can you think of an example I mean I'm putting you a little bit on the spot
32:54
here but I imagine you've used the mat a few times so is there anything which
32:58
comes to mind where you thought oh yeah this mat is really coming to its own
33:01
now this is really helping this person or helping the outcome?
33:04
Oh, look, there's, yeah, you know, hundreds of times over the last,
33:08
you know, thousands of times over the last, you know, last 10 years or so.
33:11
Look, probably a good example was a young girl, young basketball player who
33:15
came into me when she was like, she was 12 or 13 at the time.
33:19
And so she'd had six ankle sprains in six months playing basketball.
33:24
And so for me, I sort of, you know, I had a look at, you know,
33:27
some of the assessments.
33:27
I started using the mat and I looked at her weight-bearing sort of lunge test,
33:30
her ankle, sort of weight-bearing ankle range of motion test.
33:33
And she was quite symmetrical between sides and she was above the norms for,
33:37
you know, her age group and sort of population. So I thought, that looks pretty good.
33:41
I had a look at my favorite test, the static skin balance test.
33:43
And on all the reaches, you know, she was reaching symmetrical,
33:46
you know, within a couple of centimeters on each side.
33:49
And she was well above norms for her population. And so I then had a look at
33:53
her strength and capacity and her strength.
33:55
She could do, you know, 30 plus calf raises on one leg, which is pretty rare
33:59
at that age, really well.
34:01
And so I'm sort of there scratching my head. I'm like, I don't know what's going
34:03
on with this individual.
34:05
And so then her mother said, you know, she wears orthotics, like insoles in her shoes.
34:10
And I thought, oh, no, my history should have been a little bit better.
34:12
I probably should have known that information.
34:14
But, you know, what I did there is I then, you know, I'd had her baseline data,
34:18
but then I took those insoles out of her shoe and I put them on the ground.
34:21
And her weight gain lunge, I think, went from 14 and 14 to 14 and 10 or something
34:26
like that on the side that she had her ankle sprains with the orthotics in.
34:30
I then had her perform the reach in all those different directions.
34:33
And she went from pretty symmetrical side to side to falling outside that four
34:37
centimetre cut-off point that we usually sort of, you know, want people to be
34:39
less than on all the reaches.
34:41
And she actually got to that lateral reach on the star excursion balance test
34:44
and she rolled her ankle there in the room, which, you know,
34:47
It wasn't bad, it wasn't a bad result, but automatically it sort of started
34:51
to help my clinical reasoning.
34:53
I then put them back in her shoes and she got worse again on both the weight
34:58
bearing lunge test and on the site excursion balance test.
35:01
I then took out the orthotics from her shoes and just assessed her in her footwear
35:05
and she was the best she'd been yet.
35:08
And so for me, from a clinical reasoning point of view, what do you think I did, Matt?
35:12
No, don't. In treatment point of view, what did I do? No, no,
35:14
you keep going. They don't want to hear me. They don't want to hear you.
35:18
All I did, I took those orthotics and I literally threw them in the bin.
35:21
Oh, wow. And her mother just spent $1,000 on them.
35:24
You can't do that. I paid a lot of money. And I said, look, you're going to
35:27
pay me a lot more money if you keep those in there because she's testing really
35:31
well and everything else.
35:32
And that's probably 10 years later now.
35:35
She's represented her state level in basketball.
35:38
And touch wood, she hasn't had another ankle sprain since.
35:42
So a lot of the time, she was given orthotics based off a traditional assessment
35:46
because she had, you know, flat feet, you know.
35:49
But for her, actually the worst thing that she could have done was put her in
35:52
those because it was really driving her into that sort of inversion forces when
35:55
she was sort of moving and, yeah, and robbing her range of motion and creating
36:00
a lot of that dysfunction there.
36:01
So that's where that sort of test, retest process and, you know,
36:04
simple data, you know, a couple of simple tests that take, you know,
36:07
30 seconds or so, you know, 30 seconds to two minutes to perform.
36:11
Can have a really beneficial change and, you know, hopefully a life-changing impact on that person.
36:16
That's really cool. And I guess the advantage of the mat is the reproducibility
36:20
of it because you're changing one of the factors,
36:24
for example, with or without orthotic device, and everything else is staying
36:29
the same because it's reaching the same way and you can really level, you know,
36:32
decide whether the intervention has made a difference or not.
36:35
So that's really cool. That's a good example.
36:36
And I also like the way the other lesson, and which I
36:39
hopefully people picked up on you you thought yourself oh geez my
36:42
subjective should have been a little bit more I should have known about that orthotic and
36:45
which we all still do you know it's for whatever reason yeah and that's good
36:50
I'm good and if you if you forget things like that that makes everyone else
36:53
feel a lot better as well so it's good to hear that okay well look once of course
36:56
let's have a look at so we're talking about the mat that's great hopefully people
37:02
can visualize it if you listen to the podcast and you want to see the mat then just
37:05
head over to YouTube and check out episode 202 and you'll see some of the screenshots of what it is.
37:11
I mean, it's – how much is it? Can I say how much is it? Because you mentioned it's accessible.
37:18
Yeah, I think it's about probably £120 or something like that,
37:21
I think, off the top of my head. I've got to do the currency conversion rates,
37:24
but probably something like that.
37:25
Yeah, so usually, you know, one or two patients fit forever,
37:28
you know, and it's something that literally you buy it once,
37:31
you never have to use it again.
37:32
Unfortunately, you know, we probably manufactured it too well in that
37:35
you know i don't think we've ever had someone come back and need to buy a
37:38
second to replace it which is unfortunate which is
37:40
probably not a great business model but you know the durability i've
37:44
still got our first one which is almost 10 years old now which
37:47
is i'm still holding up which is pretty cool yeah that's cool
37:49
so yeah three clients or something depending on what you're charging but yeah and
37:52
you've got something which you you'll you'll learn from as well because
37:55
it's interesting as well and from listening to you it's not just
37:58
the mat it's how you use it it's the map
38:01
approach so and and it seems to me
38:03
that you use the math and we'll look at some other and tool
38:07
soon as a way of kind of
38:09
educating people on all the other things you've
38:12
talked about you know the matter is the focal point but this is why we're
38:15
using the map this way because of this and this and the limitations of this
38:18
and the evidence so i get it i get how it's clever you're using like the website
38:22
said like i said on the tin you're kind of collecting data but following the
38:26
the the evidence and the research that's nice okay i'm excited let's look at
38:31
some other products i'm going to again for those of you in the live lounge let's
38:35
bring up someone else here i'm going to.
38:38
Show this in the stream instead so again this is straight from the website i'm
38:42
just bringing up for you guys in the live lounge so you can see it um it shows
38:46
some of the other products which are available um and i'm i'm sure there's gonna
38:49
be a linking theme with all of these we look to the mats just on the screens
38:52
people can see we're also going to have a look quick look now the muscle meter,
38:55
the mega mat, the hot mat.
38:57
And we won't have time to go through the right gate analysis,
38:59
but there's also gate analysis devices and things there as well.
39:02
But let's go to the muscle meter because we've talked a few times about.
39:06
About measuring force output and stuff like that with
39:09
various people with dr claire minshaw we talked about it
39:12
the advantages the disadvantages i think peter
39:15
maliara has talked about it as well with the limitations when you are trying
39:18
to measure the forces for example throwing a baseball or something are you really
39:21
going to create or measure those forces so i'm interested about this the muscle
39:26
meter tell us about it yeah look this is this is one of our newest tools i guess
39:31
i think I think we launched it, I think, last August,
39:34
about nine months ago or so.
39:36
And yeah, it's been a huge success. I think a lot of people,
39:39
it's a lot different to my journey probably 10 years ago launching the mat where
39:43
nobody really knew what it was.
39:45
Nobody was really thinking about or collecting data.
39:47
Whereas now I think a lot of people, you know, realise they,
39:49
you know, should be, you know, using these types of tools to get some,
39:53
you know, simple, accurate information.
39:54
You know, go back to that hamstring example. It's probably the easiest way to keep going again.
39:58
You know, again, something simple has been able to test his hamstring strength
40:01
in three or four different positions like he can with
40:04
something simple like the muscle meter again i think i probably
40:07
could have made some better decisions than just manually push on his
40:09
leg and saying oh look that feels pretty strong so and
40:13
the good thing is like using these types of technology especially if you
40:15
pair it up you know with our measures that you know you do get
40:18
you know comparisons in there around you know some of the norms and
40:21
i hate that that word sort of that normative data but you know for me it's
40:24
sort of reference data there's no normal patient that
40:27
comes in and a lot of the research that we see in the best
40:30
data we have at the minute is from you know elite sports populations or
40:34
you know university students typically is where a lot of the research is
40:36
done but we get some still some reference or guidance data i guess to know where
40:40
someone is compared to people of similar ages and heights and weights and that
40:44
sort of stuff and we can start to compare really easy so it just enhances the
40:48
decision making and starts to bring you know they said bring that research into
40:51
practice and in a consumable way that you know,
40:54
not only, you know, communicate and help your decision-making.
40:57
Most importantly, communicate it to the people, you know, that you're sort of
41:00
working with and help them sort of buy into the process, which is going to be
41:04
the thing that gets them a great long-term outcome.
41:06
So, yeah, the muscle meter is a simple tool that you can, you know,
41:09
measure, you know, both pushing and, you know, pulling tight forces with.
41:12
So it's two devices in one.
41:14
As I said, it retails for around 200 pounds.
41:18
It might even be a little bit under that, I think, under 200 pounds.
41:21
So, you know, it's easily the most affordable device in the market.
41:24
And there's now big big software release
41:27
actually the android's just gone live overnight which is
41:30
exciting in the ios yesterday but there's three different testing modes
41:33
now built in there as well you can get you know your peak and average force
41:36
in there with the app and get endurance force you
41:39
can measure force over a period of time and it can also get
41:42
you it's time to peak in your rate of force development so there's over 150 different
41:45
assessments you can perform with it with your patients and clients
41:48
to get some you know some meaningful and most importantly some some actual
41:51
data you're going to collect data in practice you've got
41:54
to do something with it and that's probably the biggest mistake i see with people
41:57
you know implementing data into practice and collecting
42:00
data is they collect lots and lots of data but they don't then go and do anything
42:04
with it and so for me if you're going to spend time you know an assessment it's
42:09
got to be something that's going to it's going to change what you do and you're
42:11
going to action something off the back of very cool i like the way and i admire
42:16
the way and i knew you were going to do it because i I followed you for a while,
42:18
but I like the way you're quick to remind people that, yeah, we use norms,
42:22
but it is as a reference and you will have patients who will fall outside of these norms.
42:25
And a lot of the studies are done with different populations. So it's really cool.
42:29
But it's also nice that you're not a lot. I'm always complaining,
42:33
whinging about social media, but a lot of the kind of pendulum swings totally
42:36
other way, like, oh, there's no such thing as norms. Therefore,
42:39
don't do any data collection.
42:40
You know, just go with the individual in front of you. And suddenly it's like,
42:43
well, no, you didn't have to throw that baby quite as far out with everything
42:45
else. So you could have just said, let's just collect the data,
42:49
but not jump the gun and go, you know, look at a red herring or something. So it's healthy.
42:53
It's staying in a nice place in the middle where you're not kind of like throwing
42:57
everything out just because it's not as relevant as you once thought.
43:00
So it's cool. It's cool to hear.
43:02
I learned that the hard way, I think, early on. I think 10 years ago,
43:05
I think when we first launched the map, we had, I think, you know,
43:07
obviously probably one of the biggest social media, you know,
43:09
influencers out there, Meeks, sort of, you know, called us out there,
43:13
like he tends to do early on. Is it really?
43:15
And, you know, for using that term normative data, and for us,
43:18
you know, terminology, you know, people tend to look too much into stuff.
43:22
And I think he thought, look, you know, here's another FMS, like someone looking
43:25
to do a generic sort of, you know, screen, which is probably as far away from
43:28
what we could do, from what we actually do, you know, as possible.
43:31
But yeah, someone sees one thing on social media and decides to jump in there
43:35
and, you know, say a few comments.
43:37
But I think that the pendulum sort of, you know, swung the full other direction
43:40
when I launched another technology company previously that I sold a few years ago.
43:44
I'm sort of, you know, selling some similar sort of force measuring devices.
43:47
And, you know, the first person who reached out to me on social media to purchase it was.
43:51
Go on. Oh, yeah. I can get that. Yeah, Meeks. Yeah.
43:55
So that was a nice moment where sort of, you know, it sort of swung and, you know, maybe
44:00
we're a little bit ahead of the curve you know back then but it's nice to see
44:03
you know that lots of people are starting to collect this data and it is
44:06
you know transforming yeah we've had lots of conversations since
44:09
then and we've got a lot of uh a lot more similarities and disagreements oh
44:12
as always yeah that's great it's cool fantastic okay well look i'm going to
44:17
pop to the next one that's all right let's have a look what else we got on the
44:20
list the next thing here was called the megamat was it that's the megamat tell us about the megamat.
44:27
Big sort of you know two by two centimeter it's similar to
44:30
the mat it's you're just able to move in all three dimensions
44:33
in a more functional way so for me look the mats
44:36
a better assessment tool because you can really standardize the processes a
44:39
little bit better but the mega mat you can use as an assessment tool but it's
44:44
great sort of you know general training tool and especially sort of bringing
44:47
in some of that you know which i'm sure you probably talked about on the tendon
44:50
stuff a little bit some of that neuroplastic training with some of the reactive
44:53
elements and that sort of.
44:54
Stuff um in there so some cognitive driven training
44:57
and for me when i'm prescribing you know exercises to
45:00
my patients and clients there's always got to be an end goal to it
45:03
i don't want someone to be able to sit there doing their exercise on their
45:06
phone you know we're not going to get those you know meaningful you know
45:09
neuroplastic changes you know i want to make sure there's a
45:11
specific end goal or end direction they need to reach for
45:15
there's a specific sort of load they've got to be moving or the
45:18
specific sort of focus they've got to have the more we can
45:21
sort of get them cognitively involved in the process i think you
45:23
know the better changes and often quicker changes we can get so
45:26
the mega match is the tool that you know can allow you to do that
45:29
and pairs up really nice with lots of other exercise equipment
45:32
you've got the only issue is it does require a lot of space oh
45:36
is it that yeah i guess you're getting people to lunge out quite far yeah
45:39
what are we talking about i can't see from the how big is it then that's not
45:42
the it's it's two by two oh okay yeah
45:45
but yeah no great for people who are
45:47
trying to visit you just imagine i mean if you didn't have
45:50
that you probably i always used to when i was starting out use like
45:53
the idea of a clock and you tell people okay point to 12 o'clock go around
45:56
to one here you've actually got the numbers and the angles and you've also got
46:00
depth and distance and all sorts of things you measure but i'm glad you pointed
46:03
out the kind of like the cognitive stuff the the neuroplastic stuff because
46:07
you can like give people directions now shout at them scream get to change direction
46:12
quickly look for the number and get the brain involved and the visual input and everything.
46:16
So it's quite exciting. I'm interested to hear.
46:20
In your experience, are there some clients you are more likely to use these sort of tools with?
46:27
And some clients you go, right, this client, no, I'm not even going to get it
46:30
out. And if so, what kind of changes that decision?
46:33
Look, you know, there's, look, for instance, totally out of measures that there's
46:37
over 800 different assessments in this.
46:39
So, look, there's always something you can start to utilize with your patient.
46:42
And you don't necessarily, you know, always need the tools to be able to perform it.
46:46
You know, there's lots of other ways. you know for instance you can get strength
46:49
data you know simple you know rent max testing
46:52
with a dumbbell or something like that you know still a really
46:55
nice way to get some you know strength or even without you know strength endurance
46:59
without it without any weight things like you know your single leg sit to stands
47:03
or your you know single leg or you know wall sits or something like that there's
47:06
always ways along the spectrum to get information it's just about getting creative
47:10
and as i said look in the in the measures that we've got 22 different capacities that you can
47:15
go and assess and there's there's five different um
47:18
sort of strength capacities in there so you know there's lots of
47:20
different assessments you can perform without needing any equipment at all
47:23
to get meaningful data and as i said the quick simple
47:26
easy and affordable assessments are the most important things you know i see
47:30
a lot of people you know making the mistake of rushing out and you know they
47:33
see you know the shiny force plates and look like you know being part of creating
47:36
a number of different force plates and i think 15 years ago i was probably the
47:40
first person you know in australia to bring them into you know clinical practice here
47:44
And, you know, for me, the biggest mistake I see is people see this shiny stuff
47:47
and they go and do all these different assessments of, you know,
47:49
jumping or double leg squats.
47:52
They don't know anything about their strength capacity. They don't know anything
47:55
about their range of motion.
47:56
All they're purely looking at is some of that information and lots of information
47:59
data off, you know, off those types of technologies.
48:03
So for me, that's the last stuff that you do. You know, for me,
48:06
you need to know all that information before you start to look at that.
48:10
The only thing I see people do a lot is, you know, they often use double leg
48:12
assessment, you know, probably too much in my opinion as well,
48:15
especially without having the context around, you know, the individual muscle
48:19
strengths and imbalances and those types of things.
48:21
You're really just making assumptions because you'll often see that people,
48:24
you know, when they go to jump, you know, they'll end up putting,
48:27
you know, say 60 or 65% more weight through one leg or generate power,
48:31
you know, 65% quicker on that side.
48:33
Often you'll see that'll be the weaker side though. And so I see a lot of people
48:36
who come into my practice who, you know, they told me I've I've got a weak,
48:40
you know, right leg because I keep sort of shifty across that way when I – I
48:45
keep sort of shifty away from that side when I squat.
48:47
When actually you start to test out their strength, it's exactly the opposite.
48:51
And so people have been reinforcing that. And so if you're not building that
48:55
whole picture, you're not looking at all those different capacities we mentioned
48:59
earlier, you're not looking at all three planes of motion with them,
49:02
you know, you're really just guessing, you know, as far as I'm concerned.
49:05
So, again, it's picking data which is meaningful and actionable and that's actually
49:09
going to change what you're doing. You know, a lot of the time people overcomplicate things.
49:13
I think it's a bit like the, you know, I love that quote, you know,
49:16
probably a bit controversial for the podcast, that quote about, you know, teenage sex.
49:20
You know, everybody, you know, sort of talks about it and nobody really knows,
49:23
you know, necessarily how to do it and everyone just does it because they think
49:26
everyone else, you know, or everyone else thinks everyone else is doing it,
49:29
you know. So everyone claims that they sort of do it.
49:31
So people get these force plates and they sort of implement it in practice because
49:35
they see someone else doing it. where they really don't think about the process
49:38
and the application and what they're going to do with that data.
49:41
They just do it, you know, because everyone else is doing it. Very cool. Yeah.
49:46
Now great let's i mean that that when you talk about single leg that's something
49:49
which we mentioned we mentioned quite a few times again in the tendinopathy
49:52
series importance of of doing that but that leads us nicely to another one of
49:56
the products which is on the website um which is the hot mat which obviously
50:00
you are looking at single leg assessment so this photo doesn't do it justice
50:03
but tell us what the hot mat's all about.
50:05
Yeah so it's a six meter you know long mat initially created to you know assess
50:09
the limb symmetry index so you know battery of tests you know including the
50:12
single leg hop you know the the triple leg hop for distance,
50:15
the crossover hop, and the six metre times hop.
50:18
But there's a number of other different sort of hop and power-based assessments.
50:22
So the big difference of this is, you know, you obviously require a bit more
50:24
space and it's getting down towards that end phase, towards that return to sport,
50:28
often with the people you're using this with.
50:30
And, you know, often, you know, lower limb injuries, things like,
50:33
you know, those ankle sprains and ACLs and those types of things you typically use it with.
50:37
Or, you know, nice screens for, you know, and baseline data
50:41
setting in pre-season for a lot of your athletes at the sports clubs
50:44
and stuff too um so it gives you some nice data that
50:47
you can track over time but again great simple idea well
50:51
how did you how did you did is it something you just
50:53
sort of like you know just sitting down and suddenly thought you know what imagine
50:57
just a nice length of reliable hopping test where we can actually measure this
51:01
each time and reproduce it how did it come into your mind and was there not
51:04
something already out there yeah and i said at the time there was nothing out
51:08
there like the mat well the main metal the hot mat and for me it was It was just, you know, mostly.
51:13
You know, putting tape on the ground or pulling a tape measure out each time.
51:16
Cones or something, yeah.
51:17
And it just took a long time. And then it's like going out and working with those sports teams.
51:21
It was really difficult to be able to do that. And for me, you know,
51:24
I want to assess people not only in the perfect environment in the clinic,
51:27
you know, when they're fresh, but I also want to assess them,
51:30
you know, when they've been out at sports training with, you know,
51:32
they've been running around for an hour, an hour and a half and they're fatigued.
51:36
In their football boots, on the grass surface with some of these assessments as well.
51:40
So again, trying to bridge that gap and take people back further,
51:43
you know, for return to sport or as part of the screening sort of process as
51:48
well to make it more specific to the individuals.
51:50
And so, look, while you look at the research and the evidence and they'll say,
51:53
look, Steve, there's no evidence for that, you know, all the research is done
51:56
in this specific environment.
51:58
You know, typically like a basketball court or something like that for these types of tests,
52:01
I'm thinking, what does each individual need to achieve their
52:04
goals and how can we make it more specific you know in
52:07
regards to the environment that we're performing it in you know the
52:09
footwear they're performing it in the fatigue state you know
52:12
that they're performing it as well because we see a lot of research and you
52:15
know a big thing and the reason why i think we see a lot of
52:18
re-injuries is a lot of time we do assess people when they're
52:21
fresh but there's lots of research showing that you know
52:23
there's a really nice study with 19 acl individuals who all
52:26
meet return to sport criteria for both
52:29
their power-based testing and strength-based testing when they
52:32
they actually go through a really simple fatigue protocol 60 of
52:35
them actually fail those cutoff points for return
52:38
to sport so i think it's another you know
52:40
thing that we can do a little bit better in practice is thinking about how we
52:43
can reproduce the demands of what they need to achieve their goal whether it
52:47
is sport or you know that occupational you know task of someone who's getting
52:51
back pain lifting in the factory or something you know how can we get those
52:55
demands so we can actually get some
52:56
more information about you know what's meaningful to them you know not.
52:59
Just what the evidence says and that's bringing science into
53:02
practice and try and put that research i guess to that specific individual
53:06
that you're working with very nice yeah makes total
53:09
sense and again it ties in nicely with what john was
53:11
saying last week in the sense that he said like i
53:14
think he finished off asking therapists just saying look
53:17
next time you're kind of assessing someone just drop all
53:20
of the tests and stuff you've learned previously and just
53:23
think right what do i need to do to get this person to see
53:26
what would i if i knew nothing about all these other tests what
53:29
would i get them to do which would replicate what they're doing in
53:31
the sport or something and there's your test and that's probably a lot more
53:34
reliable and and functional to use the word than some of the other things which
53:38
sit down in there and you know like you say push your leg against my arm and
53:42
see if that hurts or not so it's all getting just get on the couch when really
53:46
they could do all of this on the floor standing up or sitting down or so.
53:49
Yeah good stuff genius love it i can't help thinking as well i think it's something
53:54
that's it's worth saying that this, talking about context,
53:59
I mean, if you are running a business and you've got people coming in,
54:01
and it depends, some people like the spit and sawdust that I'll just get a chalk
54:04
line on the floor and mark it off.
54:06
And that is, if you've got that market, you're probably better off doing that
54:09
than having some kind of like posh stuff.
54:12
But if you are trying to produce a clinic or workspace of some form,
54:17
which does look a bit more pucker and a bit more kind of like impressive,
54:19
and that's going to sell, then this stuff does look cool as well.
54:22
I mean, rather than just getting cones out or tape, you know,
54:25
clients do feel looked after and therefore you get that buy in that compliance,
54:30
which is all an important part of it with this gear, I guess.
54:34
Look, 100%, I think that, you know, it's probably the success of, you know, my practice.
54:38
I think when we launched it, I think we went from zero patients to 150 patients
54:42
per week in the space of four months.
54:44
And so, you know, it was about trying to, you know, stand out and differentiate
54:47
yourself, but also going above and beyond, I guess, you know,
54:50
what other people are doing. I think that spreads messages.
54:54
And, you know, we tried to continue that with, you know, development of measures
54:57
app and stuff now where patients actually, all their data automatically syncs
55:01
to the patient app. So as soon as you finish your assessment,
55:04
they've got something there.
55:05
They then take that away. Their phone's always in the pocket.
55:08
And they say, oh, look, I went to see the sports therapist, went and saw the physio earlier today.
55:12
Check out these results. And that sort of can become self-perpetuating as well
55:17
in regards to sort of referrals and that type of thing.
55:19
The other great thing about this data and incorporating technology
55:23
and this type of stuff is people can't go down the road
55:25
or to the clinic next door and get the same level of service and
55:28
care or have them collect the same data
55:31
often because they're not bringing this stuff in and so once people
55:34
do start to you know collect this data they realize how much you
55:37
know guesswork there is you know and how much you know potentially they're missing
55:40
and other people have seen before so from a
55:43
business point of view you know it's yeah really successful and you
55:45
know i work a number of different businesses in helping them implement this
55:48
stuff and bring technology in not only in regards to this
55:51
type of technology but things like you know how
55:54
you can bring sort of you know video communication in and stuff
55:57
to try and even before someone walks in the door to
56:00
get a great outcome you know one of my sort of you know big secrets
56:03
i guess in clinical practice is you know before someone comes
56:06
in i already want them to know like and trust me a little bit so that
56:09
starts from you know your social media and your marketing there obviously from
56:12
your website but as soon as they book on the website they'll then get like a
56:16
video explaining the process of the clinic and how it differentiates and then
56:20
at 24 hours later or 24 hours before they come in i'll send them a little personalized video message.
56:26
And explaining you know introducing myself a little bit to
56:29
them they've already filled in their new patient details remotely by then
56:32
so i can talk a little bit specifically about what they're coming in for and
56:35
then ask them to you know if they've got any questions or anything before they come
56:38
in and so rather than you know as a new grad i come out as you know as an osteopathic
56:43
grad and hi mr smith are you here you know already i know exactly what they're
56:47
coming in with because i've got all the information before they come in they
56:51
already know exactly what i'm going to do because i've seen the sort of process
56:54
what's involved there and they already you know hopefully know,
56:57
you know, like and trust me a little bit because they've already had some sort
56:59
of interaction with me as well.
57:01
And so, you know, for me, technology can really revolutionise.
57:04
And I said, for me, assessment starts before someone actually walks into the practice.
57:08
If your assessment's only starting after you're taking your subjective history,
57:12
you know, you've missed the mark a little bit, in my opinion.
57:15
Good point. Love it. Very good. Right. Look, time is beating us.
57:19
So what I'm interested is if people are listening to this, imagine someone now
57:23
clicks and goes to matassessment.com.
57:25
What should they be looking for on your website, including details of courses?
57:29
Like you said, there's a few videos on there they can already get their teeth
57:32
into. But yeah, where would you guide people to look at?
57:35
Yeah, look, we've got sort of a free resources section on the top of the website.
57:39
I think that's a great place to start. We've got lots of different webinars
57:42
that we've done over the years, some sort of podcasts in there,
57:44
some different PDF downloads and infographics and things.
57:47
So there's probably 15-plus hours of free resources on there that you can start
57:51
to go and get your teeth into to learn a little bit more, I guess,
57:55
about what we're about and how you can bring more data into practice.
57:58
And going into a lot of those, you'll probably learn 20 or 30 new assessments
58:02
at least, probably more, that you can start to bring into your practice both
58:05
physically or if you're doing remote consultations like you do, Matt.
58:09
We've also got some specific things about how you can bring more data into some
58:12
of those remote sessions. So that's great.
58:14
Also got our new measures app, which is, as I said, there's 800 different tests
58:18
in there now around 22 different capacities.
58:20
So you can literally pull your smart device out at the start of your assessment.
58:24
You can actually use voice to text and do all your notes in there too.
58:27
But you can go through, you can perform all the different assessments,
58:30
set up your own templates.
58:31
And as soon as you're finished, your notes are done, all your data's in there
58:34
from all your different assessments, and you're on to your next patient or client.
58:38
So you literally never have to write notes again. So that's what I'd recommend going there.
58:42
In each test in the app, there's a little information button which links to
58:45
a page with a description of how to perform the test, a video on most of it.
58:50
Look, I haven't recorded all 800 yet, but I'm working on it,
58:53
as well as some of the research about it as well.
58:55
So there's probably 500 different tests where you can learn the protocol,
58:59
you can watch the video, you can see the data that we have to date there.
59:03
So there's heaps of free resources if you download the app and start to work there.
59:07
As well as lots of cool tools, like things like just simple tools.
59:09
Again you know inclinometers ai video analysis you can perform all your video
59:14
analysis in there and if you don't even need a mat now you've literally got
59:17
a mat in in your pocket with your augmented reality measuring so literally you
59:21
can sort of pull out your phone.
59:23
Measure two points on the ground and he actually performed things like
59:25
the star excursion balance test without the mat all those hot
59:29
tests without the hot mat so you know probably putting
59:32
myself out of business a little bit there but you know for me you
59:35
know i prefer people to have this stuff accessible you
59:38
know and hopefully you know change practice and bringing people
59:40
into the 21st century very cool no it is a
59:43
little landmine people watch out you will get lost in there if
59:46
you start looking and i do it again admire and thank
59:49
you for the heaps of free stuff that's on there as well for
59:51
people to learn and get to know you so it's yeah definite definitely
59:55
worth checking out and then if you are interested in courses
59:58
it's also like is there a membership or private or something there what's
1:00:01
that oh and i've got some online courses uh we've
1:00:04
also got a user group which anyone can join for free as well
1:00:07
that's where i often share some of the latest research and stuff too
1:00:10
so um yeah we've got a facebook group as well as a
1:00:12
community on the back end for the measures app where yeah you can go in there
1:00:16
and ask questions about you know different assessments and stuff too so yeah
1:00:19
we try and provide lots of resources you know we got in this because we wanted
1:00:23
to you know try and improve the industry and you know and we learn as much from
1:00:26
from you guys out there as well so it's um yeah that's the best part of my job i think,
1:00:31
Very cool. That's great. Okay. Well, look, people, we will make sure all these
1:00:34
links go into the notes on Instagram. It's Matt Assessment.
1:00:39
And then on Facebook, if you look up Matt Assessment as well, you'll find it.
1:00:43
But we'll put direct links to that in the show notes on the podcast and all popular podcast apps.
1:00:48
And like I say, mattassessment.com for the website, which links to all of these
1:00:51
places as well. So yeah, amazing. Right.
1:00:55
We're there 10 o'clock or should should I say, seven o'clock in the morning in Melbourne.
1:01:00
You've made it to seven o'clock. Right, thanks people for joining us.
1:01:04
Stephen King, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to listening back to this
1:01:07
myself. Some real gems of advice and information in there.
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People who have joined us in the live lounge, thank you very much.
1:01:13
A bit quiet tonight for questions, but again, that's probably because you're
1:01:16
writing things down and checking out the website and stuff like that.
1:01:19
Next week, if you are listening to this podcast and you like the idea of joining
1:01:22
live and being able to ask questions directly to our guests,
1:01:24
next week we are going to be joined by jane
1:01:28
wigg of the lymphedema training academy and it's
1:01:31
going to be about lymphedema management for manual therapists
1:01:34
really honored and and lucky to have jane wigg in here from the lymphedema training
1:01:39
academy very special guest and very respected around the world so it's going
1:01:43
to be a really useful episode particularly i would say for manual therapists
1:01:46
massage therapists for this tricky and often misinformed area so if you would
1:01:52
like to join us live for that and ask questions to jane directly and do come along
1:01:54
it'll be back at eight o'clock because we're not having another
1:01:57
australian on that'd be way too much we're already out to our quota about four
1:02:01
in a month so yeah so normal time
1:02:04
eight o'clock in the evening if you'd like to if you can't that's fine
1:02:07
just continue listening to the podcast i mean it's getting more popular it's lovely
1:02:10
there's a bit of a lull and now it's picking up again which is great to see but do please
1:02:13
leave a little review five would be great if you're stuck on the number of starters
1:02:17
but five that'd be fantastic it just helps a good word get out to more people
1:02:21
out there which is what it's all about thank you very much that just leaves
1:02:24
me to say once again thank you steven for joining us steven king thank you very
1:02:27
much matt and the sports therapy association the team gary and scott for yeah
1:02:31
getting on here it's been a pleasure,
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excellent and hopefully we'll have a part two maybe to talk about the gait analysis
1:02:36
stuff on there that'll take a whole hour great thanks dude we'll see you soon
1:02:40
and people if you hopefully i'll see some of you again in the live lounge next
1:02:44
tuesday at eight o'clock take care You're listening.
1:02:49
Music.