Rehab Masterclass: How to Load Anything and Anyone
Rehab Masterclass: How to Load Anything and Anyone
Exercise of all forms — including therapeutic, corrective, and fitness-oriented — has emerged through decades of clinical research as one of the most important interventions we can offer our patients for the majority of their ailments. And yet, our patients are often relegated to a few low-load theraband exercises which they seldom perform. This must change if we truly want to improve patient outcomes, increase compliance, and become experts in our field.
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Course Locations 2025
If you've taken every course out there , this course is for you.
This 12-hr course aims to offer a robust framework for prescribing exercise to our injured and pain-experiencing clients. We will focus on the tools of the trade, evidence (informed by experience and logic), and the principles that will allow us to load anyone with any ailment at any time.
Clinicians will leave with the skills required to create tailored exercise interventions for every client. Fitness/S&C coaches will understand the necessary alterations to work with clients who are in pain, while both will gain an understanding of how pain makes us move, how movement influences pain, and how all humans adapt to resistance exercises.
Good Questions = Valuable Answers
Instead of focusing on proprietary information, marketing gimmicks, or complex systems, we will focus on providing insightful answers to such fundamental questions as:
- When do we focus on structures, when do we focus on “movement quality”?
- How long should we expect to spend in each part of MSK rehab?
- When should we load heavy and when should we back off?
- What principles apply to all populations/injuries, and what principles are specific to each context?
- How do the various adaptable human systems change as a result of loading?
- Which matters more, what we do or how we do it?
- How do we integrate the dozens of systems and certifications that are now prevalent in our industries into one cohesive plan?
- How do we get our clients to take charge of their own progress, do their homework, and buy into the process?
- When do I improvise, when to I follow the formulas and steps I already know?
- Which “rules of thumb” actually hold true?
- When everything is a mess, where do we start?
At the core of this course you will learn one important skill: IMPROVISATION.
Once you understand a logical, evidence-informed framework (not an algorithm, not an intervention library, not a technique) your goal as a therapist is to create a tailored exercise intervention for each and every client, regardless of age, equipment, fitness, co-morbidities, or other roadblocks.
Let us show you how to take all those valuable principles, certifications, and ideas and put them to use immediately for the patient in front of you.
If you find yourself frequently offering low-load elastic-band exercises as "Rehab", this course is for you.
Why Improvisation?
We expect our experts to improvise.
The ability to listen, clarify, and decide on a best course of action is the basis of being a good practitioner. Heck, it's the basis of being good at any job where you interact face-to-face with clients who have problems to be solved.
This course aims to provide health professionals in the MSK/Rehab space with the skills required to master the art of improvisation in exercise creation.
You will be taught how to flex your creativity for the benefit of your patients.
We won't show you exercises. We won't answer the question "what's the best exercise for X?". We will offer a framework, reasoning, guidance, and evidence to support you in improvising your way to the creation of a specific set of exercises for the patient right in front of you.
Delivery Style
In our opinion, live courses are best served by getting in there and doing the damn thing. You won't find any multi-hour lectures on these weekends.
We learn primarily through doing.
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20% Lecture
Where we introduce important principles, contextualize them from the research, lend evidence to their utility, and tell stupid/funny stories.
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10% Demonstration
Where we show you what we mean, give you pertinent examples, and embarrass ourselves endlessly.
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70% Breakouts & Application
Where you work through the material, create your own applications, expand the way you think, and apply the principles across a broad domain of cases.
Objectives/Schedule
Day 1 General Outline
9:00-10:00 - Lecture
- To Load, or Not To Load…that’s not really the question
- Whose Spine Is It Anyway? Creativity and Improv in exercise prescription
- All Anatomy = “Functional Anatomy"
- "There is always something in the box"
- Local, Regional, and Global Exercise Integration
10:00-11:00 - Case Study 1
- The Photo vs Video approach to assessing human movement
- Think Global, Act Local: The “Human” Adaptations to Exercise
- Sets And Reps: How do we adapt to different mixtures?
- Sparing loads vs Straining Loads (and when to use both)
- The Joint-by-Joint Approach to stability/mobility and when it's useful
11:00-12:00 - Case Study 2
- Adherence: Do What I Say, Not What Every Other Patient Does
- Depth vs Breadth: When exercise specificity matters
- Tools of the Trade: Know the time and place
- Meaningful Movements
- Fundamental Human Movement Patterns for Global Exercises
- Stabilize Centrally, mobilize/load peripherally
12:00-1:00 - Lunch Break
1:00-2:00 - Lecture and Case Study 3
- Load Heavy(er): Strength as the King Variable
- Clinical Spectacles: Look through multiple lenses for a clearer picture
- The Tri-Planar Approach AKA "Lock-'N'-Load"
- Every joint has two sides to load from
2:00-3:00 - Case Study 4
- Where It Hurts Matters…sometimes.
- Constipation by Comorbidity: How do we objectify “other” issues?
- Same Same but Different: When to change exercises
- Progression, Regression, and Lateralization
- How load changes movement patterns (acutely and chronically)
3:00-4:00 - Case Study 5
- Perfect vs “Sloptimal” Loading Strategies
- The Language of Empowering and Effective Therapists/Coaches
- Reactive Neuromuscular Training (RNT)
- Positive Constraints to Movement
Day 2 General Outline
9:00-10:00 - Lecture
- OATs: When is “Good Enough”…good enough?
- The Language of Cells: Internal vs External Load
- Pattern Assistive Loads
- Center of Mass (COM) Alterations
10:00-11:00 - Case Study 6
- First Do No Harm…but what about hurt?
- The Body Remembers: The Immune System’s Role in MSK pain
- The 4x4 Approach to Movement
11:00-12:00 - Case Study 7
- Breathe, Squeeze, and Resist: When everything else is kind of hard.
- Hardcore History: Nature Vs Nurture Timelines.
- Primary Variables in Exercise Performance
12:00-1:00 - Lunch Break
1:00-2:00 - Lecture and Case Study 8
- Special Topic: Arthritis and Degeneration
- Secondary Variables to alter loading and adaptations
2:00-3:00 - Case Study 9
- Special Topic: Tendinopathies
- Involving (more of) the brain in MSK Care through secondary variables
3:00-4:00 - Case Study 10
- Integration across the spectrum
Instructor
Dr Benjamin Stevens
DC, BS-Kin, CSCS, etc
As the owner-operator of Somatic Senses Education, Dr Stevens has seen it all. Having attended 200+ seminars and delivered over 100 courses/lectures himself, you won't find a more entertaining and engaging educator.
Drawing from over a decade of clinical and education experience in a variety of settings – including the NFL, NHL, UFC, CFL, Crossfit, NCCP, and many others – not to mention two decades as a personal trainer and strength coach, Dr Stevens teaches with a highly improvisational style, an attention-grabbing pace, and a deeply researched topic matter.
