NSCA Personal Trainer’s Conference 2010 Review - Part 1
March 30 2010
The 2010 NSCA Personal Trainer’s conference was held in Las Vegas on April 7 & 8. For people who are unaware of NSCA, they are the the world’s leading authority in strength & conditioning. In fact, NSCA sets the standards and guidelines in the strength and conditioning field and the rest just follows them like a good dog.
NSCA usually has a number of conferences year round. Their biggest one is usually held in Florida in Summer which is mainly for strength and condition specialists. Anyway, I felt like I should go since I would like to present a topic someday and wanted to meet some of the Trainer’s council members since I happen to be one of them.
So here I am off to Las Vegas.
The conference was for 2 days and went from 8.00 am in the morning to 5.00 pm and each presentation lasted for 90 min. They had 4 presentations each in the morning and evening. All the presentations were repeated several times during the days so that everyone can attend all the lectures.
I will go through each lecturer and a give a synopsis of their presentation..
Anthony Carey
Anthony Carey was the first speaker I attended at the conference. His talk was “ working with clients with musculoskeletal challenges”. He runs a company based on corrective exercises for pain and has a few DVD and books based on it. It was all about the usual how muscle imbalances, structural misalignments and altered movement patterns, all of which create undo stress on your body, resulting in pain.
I have written in the past about how there is very little causative role for the biomechanical model in pain. I wouldn’t say there is none, but the evidence is certainly nowhere to the level of what all these pain experts try to make you believe. In athletic population, the bio-mechanical model might have greater implications.
At the question-answer session, I asked him about the posture pain concept. I asked him why the posture-pain link is pretty weak in the scientific literature and if he has come across any studies which atleast shows you can change person’s posture. He said his “18 years of anecdotal experience has taught him..” But to give his due, he admitted there is not a strong link between posture and pain in the literature after all his talk.
Bill Sonnemaker
This was a hands-on presentation titled “movement preparation”. The concept is that the fascia is structured in the body to work globally(and not in isolation) to facilitate movements. So he had a lot of functional-stretching type exercises that supposedly targets the different fascia tissues in a global fashion. This is supposed to better performance, prevent injury and pain.
I don’t think these dynamic stretching sort of movements will make any changes to the fascia considering even the ability of manual therapists to change the plasticity of connective tissues by applying direct pressures is now seriously questioned.
Guido Van Ryssegem
And I thought my name was hard. The presentation was titled ” Return to Training after Shoulder Pain”. This was one of the best presentations at the conference. He talked about a very relevant topic and everything he had on his slides were referenced.
He talked about how all shoulder injuries have certain things in common such as postural dysfunction, scapular dysfunction, lower trap weakness, scapulothoracic weakness. There is some recent interest in scapulae dysfunctions in people with shoulder pain. But the interesting point is that even after the pain is fixed, the scapular dysfunction still prevails( nice example of correlative evidence) .And I asked his if he had come across any studies which showed the postural and scapulae dysfunctions to improve after the pain has resolved. I haven’t seen any and I was almost sure there wasn’t any. And he said he hasn’t seen any either (atleast he is up to date in his field I thought).
He made some comments though which cut right through his scientific approach and raised my eyebrows. One was about how the best test according to him to observe shoulder dysfunctions was to sit on a table and raise yourself by pushing your hands against the table. What about the validity and reliability of the test, sir?
Conclusion
The part that stood out the most about the conference ,even during the first day, was the lack of critical thinking among the trainers. None of them really bothered to question the science behind some of the concepts presented, and NSCA ,mind you, is all about science.
Anywa, in the next part, I will review Eric Creesey and a few others.
Related Articles
| Fri April 02, 2010
Dear Anoop,
Thanks for the positive comments you made on my presentation in Vegas.
I am sorry I was not clear to you involving my Kinetic Integrations “sitting hand press-up test” to detect scapular dysfunction. This test is based based on research, although validity nor reliability results are available right now. Also, presently I am involved in comparing this test with the Kibler scapular slide test and see which test shows more scapular dysfunction. More information will come out soon. In the mean while I strongly encourage you to try this test with your clients. I have used this innovative test since my MLB days with the Texas Rangers in 1994.
Please check out my Kinetic Integrations Facebook page that is full with awesome information on exercise and movement.
I hope you find this information constructive and can remove your last paragraph of comments on your blog. Again, I should have been more clear during my NSCA presentation.
Thanks, Guido
See:
- Electromyographic Analysis of Selected Muscles During Sitting Push-ups: Phys Therapy, 1984
- Kinesiology of the Shoulder Complex: J Orthop Sp Phys Ther, 1987
Anoop | Sun April 04, 2010
Thanks for commenting.
From the studies I have looked, it seems like scapular asymmetries are found even in asymptomatic athletes which questions the usefulness of this test. The test seems to be highly sensitivity with poor specificity.
Specificity of the lateral scapular slide test in asymptomatic competitive athletes.
Koslow PA, Prosser LA, Strony GA, Suchecki SL, Mattingly GE.
STUDY DESIGN: A prospective, criterion-based specificity study. OBJECTIVE: To determine the specificity of the lateral scapular slide test (LSST) in detecting shoulder dysfunction in the competitive athlete. RESULTS: Fifty-two of the 71 subjects displayed a difference of at least 1.5 cm in 1 or more of the 3 positions. Specificity of the test was determined to be 26.8%. CONCLUSION: Scapular position was commonly asymmetrical in the asymptomatic subjects. These variances in scapular position suggest that asymmetry does not necessarily indicate a dysfunction. The results show that the LSST has low specificity and its use is not recommended for determining shoulder dysfunction in competitive athletes.
A clinical method for identifying scapular dyskinesis, part 2: validity.
CONTEXT: Although clinical methods for detecting scapular dyskinesis have been described, evidence supporting the validity of these methods is lacking. OBJECTIVE: To determine the validity of the scapular dyskinesis test, a visually based method of identifying abnormal scapular motion. A secondary purpose was to explore the relationship between scapular dyskinesis and shoulder symptoms. DESIGN: Validation study comparing 3-dimensional measures of scapular motion among participants clinically judged as having either normal motion or scapular dyskinesis. SETTING: University athletic training facilities. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS: A sample of 142 collegiate athletes (National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I and Division III) participating in sports requiring overhead use of the arm was rated, and 66 of these underwent 3-dimensional testing. INTERVENTION(S): Volunteers were viewed by 2 raters while performing weighted shoulder flexion and abduction. The right and left sides were rated independently as normal, subtle dyskinesis, or obvious dyskinesis using the scapular dyskinesis test. Symptoms were assessed using the Penn Shoulder Score. RESULTS: Differences were found between the normal and obvious dyskinesis groups. Participants with obvious dyskinesis showed less scapular upward rotation (P < .001), less clavicular elevation (P < .001), and greater clavicular protraction (P = .044). The presence of shoulder symptoms was not different between the normal and obvious dyskinesis volunteers (odds ratio = 0.79, 95% confidence interval = 0.33, 1.89). CONCLUSIONS: Shoulders visually judged as having dyskinesis showed distinct alterations in 3-dimensional scapular motion. However, the presence of scapular dyskinesis was not related to shoulder symptoms in athletes engaged in overhead sports.
And may I ask on what basis do you think the hand press test is a better than than the kibler test. The link you gave doesn’t show anything to indicate the test is for scapular dysfunction.
| Fri June 04, 2010
good archive thanks
| Fri June 25, 2010
That’s some thorough analysis right there.
Is there any thought to Charles Poliquin when we’re talking about world leading authorities in strength and conditionaing?
| Thu January 17, 2013
Anoop,
Here is my publication. Wisdom comes to those who wait and don’t judge: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230158/
Guido
Anoop | Sat January 26, 2013
Hi Guido,
It is good to see that people are looking into it.
And just for your “thoughtful” comment:
1.As I said scapular asymmetries are even found in asymptomatic people.
2. And I wouldn’t call a study “my” publication unless I am the the first or the last author.
3. The hallmark of science of science is skeptical thinking. If you can’t handle that, stick with anecdotes.
>
