Personal trainers and sports coaches, when starting with a new client, always complete a PAR-Q or similar asking about their general health and well being, but what about their injury status? How useful and professional would it be to identify any pre-existing sports injuries before you start working with a client, so you can ensure that you don't harm your client or aggravate an injury by prescribing inappropriate or unsuitable training or exercise programs? What about being able to answer those three biggest questions from a client:

‘What’s this pain?’

                                     ‘Do I need to worry about it?’

                                                                                             ‘Can I still train?!’

This short seminar & workshop has been designed to help personal trainers and coaches in all sorts of sports and phyisical activities identify those clients who may have some of the most common sports injuries, before beginning any training or exercise program. This will ensure you that you do not presribe any exercise or training that may worsen the injury, and help you explain to your client what the injury is and why they perhaps cannot perform as they would like. 

We will discuss some theory about testing and screening for injury, what you as a trainer or coach can and can’t do, and we will look at identifying the general signs and symptoms of sports injuries that a client may describe. We will cover some of the more reliable, sensitive and easy to apply tests available, which you can have the client perform themselves without using any excessively 'hands on' techniques. 

Learning outcomes

• Recognise scope of practise
• Recognise key ‘red flags’ in clients
• Differentiate ‘injury’ vs. ‘problem’
• Recognise key signs & symptoms of injury
• Understand basic principles of immediate injury management
• Identify the characteristics of a screen
• Understand how to use exercises as tests
• Understand sensitivity & specificity of tests
• Perform selection of tests to aid recognition of injury
• Be able to alter exercise & training programs to avoid aggravating injuries

The workshop is intended to be up to two hours in duration, depending on how many questions we have, how short I can keep the answers, and how much general discussion we have. It is NOT designed to allow you to diagnose or rehabiliate sports injuries, for reasons we will discuss during the seminar, that is the role of a qualified Graduate Sports Therapist or similar. It is designed to help you identify those clients which MAY have a sports injury, and point them in the direction of further assessment & the most appropriate help, and to ensure that you do not harm your client by prescribing innappropriate or unsuitable exercises or training programs. The seminar is not sport specific as sports injuries are identified by the same methods irrespective of sport or activity.

The next date for this seminar and workshop is Tuesday March 1st, 1-3pm approx. Please get in touch if you would like to attend this seminar, or organise a seminar for you and your colleagues.