Thursday Thoughts: What is Modern Manual Therapy?

I can always tell who reads the blog regularly, or who follows me on facebook just for the links. I get asked questions like, "You call yourself The Manual Therapist, and you say manual therapy is just a cheat?"

It's what I've been saying for the past 4-5 years in my courses that eventually became The Eclectic Approach. I often say, "manual therapy is just a cheat to get your patient moving threat free, so they can perform their home exercise program."

Anything can work for anybody, but not everything will work for everybody - Charlie Weingroff

To be a Modern Manual Therapist, you do not need to train your hands and psychomotor skills for thousands of hours (or is that 10,000 hours). That certainly helps, what you need to do is

acknowledge that the effects of all manual therapies are transient

if the effects of manipulation, mobilization, etc, last for minutes to hours at most, they must be reinforced actively by the patient

acknowledge that you do not FIX the patient, you enable them to self treat
practice your interactions with the patient, make them more positive, include Pain Science education in each and every visit
stop dabbling in pain science, you can't use Explain Pain for necks, but cling to rotated pelvis, disc bulges, or stuck facets in the lumbar spine
understand that every treatment (needling, IASTM, repeated motions, corrective exercise) are inputs that dissociate and mitigate threat from positions, motions and activities

therefore the most powerful and lasting treatment is patient education, that also must be actively reinforced

most likely use a lot less force for your manual treatments

Integrating pain science is both easy and difficult. It's easy because no matter your approach, you can make it work.... IF you practice your explanations, make them up to date, and remove all references to pathoanatomy.

MDT - forget jelly donut, extension or unilateral loading is most likely a novel movement or position compared to what the patient does most of the day
PRI - forget whatever crazy pathoanatomical model they are talking about with made up abbreviations

use movement patterns, breathing and enabling variability to a movement pattern the patient is stuck in

FMS/SFMA - corrective exercise mitigates threat from the patterns, restore motor control, also, JMD,TED - if that were true, you would not get rapid results, we cannot alter tissues rapidly, only movement patterns

Remember, any expert, and we're all experts at something, can get results. It's making them stick and making the patient understand why they have inefficient movement patterns, pain, etc. They also need to know they need to take an active part in their recovery.

At last count, Modern Manual Therapy, the rebranded former OMPT Channel has 280+ videos, with 45 of those being full eval and treats from various courses. See how I interact, educate patients (who are often expert clinicians themselves) on how to self treat. Many Eclectic Approach participants are surprised that a majority of the time I spend on education, and less on "resets."

I've worked very hard the past month to take the old, antiquated OMPT channel interface and updated it to a new website, with quick and easy search, videos that work well on mobile, tablet, and desktop on every browser. Bonus is that, it's the same price it always was, just $4.99/month or $49.99 year.

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What you get for $4.99/month!

The Eclectic Approach - Novel Takes, often pain free of IASTM, Soft Tissue Work Cases and more
Clinical Practice Patterns - Lectures and live cases teaching you movement patterns that you will find in many UQ and LQ cases. Enhance your clinical decision making, spend more time engaging and educating your patient!
Neurodynamics - Eclectic Instruction and variations on Upper and Lower Limb Neurodynamic Assessment and Tx
Spinal Manipulation - instruction and demonstration on an easier and more comfortable way to manipulate the spine. Both thrust and non-thrust techniques are presented
Assessments - Easy movement screen and repeated motion based assessments, tons of live cases from Eclectic Approach Seminars, and more
Movement and Positional Based Techniques - Think of everything as a tone and/or motor control program rather than some mechanical one. Things are not "tight or adaptively short," in most cases pain free and movement based techniques work just as well if not better than passive "joint" based ones
Eval, Reset, and Stabilize - Coming soon - mini lectures on how to Assess and quickly Reset every area in the body from head to toe.
Webinars and Live AMA (ask me anything) - member get exclusive access to live and recorded Q&A sessions with Dr. E

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