Skip to product information
1 of 1

Rehab Masterclass: How to Load Anything and Anyone

Rehab Masterclass: How to Load Anything and Anyone

Regular price $795.00 CAD
Regular price $895.00 CAD Sale price $795.00 CAD
Sale Sold out
CE Hours
Location

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. 

View full details
  • CALGARY 2025

    May 3-4, 2025

    9:00-4:00 Daily (subject to change)

    Calgary, AB, Canada

    Venue: TBA

  • KELOWNA 2025

    Jun 28-29, 2025

    9:00-4:00 Daily (subject to change)

    Kelowna, BC, Canada

    Venue: TBA

  • PORTLAND 2025

    Oct 4-5, 2025

    9:00-4:00 Daily (subject to change)

    Portland, OR, USA

    Venue: TBA

  • EDMONTON 2025

    Nov 8-9, 2025

    9:00-4:00 Daily (subject to change)

    Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Venue: TBA

  • VICTORIA 2025

    Nov 22-23, 2025

    9:00-4:00 Daily (subject to change)

    Victoria, BC, Canada

    Venue: TBA

  • COMING IN EARLY 2026

    Vancouver, BC

    Seattle, WA

    Halifax, NS

1 of 6

If you've taken every course out there (including all the 3-letter acronym brand name ones), this course is for you.

This 12-hour course aims to offer a simple yet robust framework for prescribing exercise to our patients. 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. No proprietary information, marketing gimmicks, or complex systems here. Just the why, what, and how of prescribing targeted exercises to every single patient that walks through your doors.

If you find yourself frequently offering low-load elastic-band exercises (which your patients usually neglect to do), this course is DEFINITELY for you.

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.

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 not-so-humble opinion, in-person 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.

  • 20% Lecture

    Where we introduce important principles, contextualize them from the research, lend evidence to their utility, and tell stupid/funny stories.

  • 20% Demonstration

    Where we show you what we mean, give you pertinent examples, and embarrass ourselves endlessly.

  • 60% 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.

Course Objectives

Principles

What we aim to understand

  • 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"
  • 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?
  • 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
  • Load Heavy(er): Strength as the King Variable
  • Clinical Spectacles: Look through multiple lenses for a clearer picture
  • Where It Hurts Matters…sometimes. 
  • Constipation by Comorbidity: How do we objectify “other” issues?
  • Same Same but Different: When to change exercises
  • Perfect vs “Sloptimal” Loading Strategies
  • The Language of Empowering and Effective Therapists/Coaches
  • OATs: When is “Good Enough”…good enough?
  • The Language of Cells: Internal vs External Load 
  • First Do No Harm…but what about hurt?
  • The Body Remembers: The Immune System’s Role in MSK pain
  • Breathe, Squeeze, and Resist: When everything else is kind of hard.
  • Hardcore History: Nature Vs Nurture Timelines. 
  • Special Topic: Arthritis and Degeneration 
  • Special Topic: Tendinopathies

Applications

What we aim to implement

  • "There is always something in the box"
  • Local, Regional, and Global Exercise Integration
  • Sparing loads vs Straining Loads (and when to use both)
  • The Joint-by-Joint Approach to stability/mobility and when it's useful
  • Fundamental Human Movement Patterns for Global Exercises
  • Stabilize Centrally, mobilize/load peripherally
  • The Tri-Planar Approach AKA "Lock-'N'-Load"
  • Every joint has two sides to load from
  • Progression, Regression, and Lateralization
  • How load changes movement patterns (acutely and chronically)
  • Reactive Neuromuscular Training (RNT)
  • Positive Constraints to Movement
  • Pattern Assistive Loads
  • Center of Mass (COM) Alterations
  • The 4x4 Approach to Movement
  • Primary Variables in Exercise Performance
  • Secondary Variables to alter loading and adaptations
  • Involving (more of) the brain in MSK Care through secondary variables

The Schedule

Day 1 General Outline

8:30-9:00

  • Arrive on site

9:00-10:00

  • Lecture

10:00-11:00

  • CASE STUDY 1

11:00-12:00

  • CASE STUDY 2

12:00-1:00 LUNCH

Nomnomnomnomnomnomnom

1:00-2:00

  • Lecture
  • CASE STUDY 3

2:00-3:00

  • CASE STUDY 4

3:00-4:00

  • CASE STUDY 5

Day 2 General Outline

8:30-9:00

  • Arrive on site

9:00-10:00

  • Lecture

10:00-11:00

  • CASE STUDY 6

11:00-12:00

  • CASE STUDY 7

12:00-1:00 LUNCH

Nomnomnomnomnomnomnom

1:00-2:00

  • Lecture
  • CASE STUDY 8

2:00-3:00

  • CASE STUDY 9

3:00-4:00

  • CASE STUDY 10

Instructor

Dr. Benjamin Stevens

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 experience in a variety of settings, 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.

Oh, and he's done a shit-ton of those 3-letter certifications he's talked about (DNS, FMS/SFMA, NDS, ART, FRC, FR, CES/PES, CSCS, etc etc).

What's with the Astronaut?

There are many mental models and perspectives to use when approaching knowledge acquisition. One such approach involves asking the question, "What if the opposite were true?". For this course, outer space provides the answer to the questions, "What if we remove load entirely?" or "Do we even need loading?"

Year over year, aerospace has become an increasingly important area of research, not just because we might end up needing to vacate this planet in the future, nor because space exploration is cool. We study humans in space because it is a vacuum of normal inputs. Human physiology is designed to interact with and adapt to earth's usual environment, so space becomes a great place to answer the question "What happens if we don't have X?". In the context of this course, we are studying load and specifically what happens when we nuance how we apply it in the context of a normal human.

In outer space, due to the lack of gravity, our bodies don't experience almost any load. And guess what happens? Nothing good. Our immune systems crash, our bones become brittle, our muscles atrophy irreversibly, our digestion changes, and nearly every marker of health gets worse.

Space travel has helped us answer the question: Do we really need to load and exercise? Well, the answer is not exactly rocket science...Yes we do.