What We See Is Not What We Get!

I can still hear the resounding tones of my old Clinical and Remedial Massage Therapy teacher ringing in my ears!

“Treat what you see and treat what you feel”

And yes, I did this for a few years until I realised that this was a futile exercise IF we actually want to solve client problems for them.

Here are some facts that might surprise you:

(1) The vast majority of client problems have their root cause nowhere near where a client has symptoms

(2) The root cause of the vast majority of client problems is somewhere where there are NO symptoms at all i.e. in an asymptomatic area of the body

So, what is it that we are SEEING or FEELING if it’s not their real problem?

When we ask a client where they feel pain or have symptoms, what they are FEELING is their body’s REACTION and RESPONSE to what is actually going on elsewhere in their body.

Also, when we perform a postural assessment, gait analysis or some other movement assessment on a client, again, what we are SEEING is their body’s REACTION and RESPONSE to what is actually going on, elsewhere in their body.

If we dive in to “Treat” what we are seeing or feeling, by massaging, stretching or releasing that area, all we are doing is sticking a plaster over that symptom.

Yes, their symptom might reduce, or even disappear, but for how long?

The chances are, in the vast majority of cases, that their symptoms will reoccur, either in the same place or a different place, or both.

Hence why clients return time after time for the same “apparent” problem.

“Treat what you see and treat what you feel” is a total fallacy and is failing our clients massively.

All we end up doing is chasing symptoms around their body.

Yes of course we need to relieve a client’s pain. That goes without saying. 

But, getting a client out of pain is only the START of the process.

I remember chatting with a registered healthcare professional at a conference some years ago about what our role is as professionals, and they were adamant that their role was to get a client out of pain and out the door.

When I challenged them around ‘finding the root cause of their problem’ and solving this for them, they replied “That’s not my job”.

And here lies a major problem with our industry. We do not spend time finding the resolving the root causes of client problems. 

We are not TAUGHT to find and resolve root causes. We are simply taught to stick plasters over symptoms.

You only have to look at 2 things to see that this is the case:

(1) The number of clients who return (to see us or another professional), time and time again, with the same or similar issues, and

(2) The training courses out there are typically geared around “How to assess and treat the XXX”; where XXX is an area of the body that is often painful e.g. the neck, the shoulder, the back, the hip, the knee etc. 

There is an indisputable link between (1) and (2) above - (2) leads to (1).

Importantly, we cannot get a client out of pain AND find the root cause of their problem in a single session. 

This is why my clients now typically sell “bespoke programmes” not treatment sessions. 

Programmes are where we take total control over building a bespoke schedule for a client, designed to truly solve their problem. We decide when sessions take place, not the client. We book sessions for clients in line with what we are discovering, sessions that are specifically designed to progressively arrive at a real solution. 

And in session 1, after my clients have taken their client’s history and full details of their issue, they will then conduct a full body screening and assessment (comprising the cranium, the neck, the shoulder complex, the thorax, the spine, the pelvis, the hips, the knees, the feet AND the nervous system). 

In subsequent programme sessions, they will methodically and systematically identify WHAT IS CAUSING the client’s problem. 

This methodical and systematic process is called Clinical Analysis. 

Clinical Analysis is the process of methodically and systematically WORKING OUT the WHAT, WHY and HOW of a problem. It is NOT about making assumptions about the WHAT, WHY and HOW

Nobody else out there is teaching methodical and systematic Clinical Analysis like we do. 

But the results my clients get, stand up to scrutiny. 

Their clients don’t keep returning with the same problem. They understand what was going on and why it happened. 

To build on what I said in my blog entitled “Stop Using Bad Language” - When a client’s SYSTEMS are all performing their correct function, at the correct time, in the correct way, for the correct reason, problems do not return AND clients stay injury-free. 

So remember:

(1) The vast majority of client problems have their root cause nowhere near where a client has symptoms

(2) The root cause of the vast majority of client problems is somewhere where there are NO symptoms at all i.e. in an asymptomatic area of the body

What we are SEEING and FEELING is not their real problem. They are merely REACTIONS and RESPONSES to what is going on across their entire body.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to locate what is actually going on, bearing in mind that what is going on is more than likely ASYMPTOMATIC i.e. the client will have no idea about it and will not report it in the history taking or subjective assessment phases. 

What is actually going on is also typically well hidden, under multiple layers, hence the need to methodically and systematically peel back these multiple layers, in the correct order, to finally reveal the problem root cause. 

In the next blog instalment, I will be exploring how we are conned and misguided by the various models, patterns, tests and assessments we are all taught to use. 

If you’d like to understand more about all this, here is a link containing free learning resources for you to watch in your own time

https://learning.theintegratedfitpro.com/masterplan