A client came in this week with sore shoulders when playing golf. Through our assessment we found that the left shoulder was weak and painful in abduction past 90' and the right shoulder was weak and painful in adduction and Internal Rotation.
Not very helpful for a right handed golfer as these movements are very important to a successful swing.
I chose to interrogate the movement using the P-DTR assessment process. P-DTR allows me to understand what is causing the nervous system to feel threatened to the degree that it will either reduce movement capability altogether, or give pain.
We started by using Manual Muscle Testing to let us know what was going on in some of the important muscles in the shoulders. All muscles should have the ability to contract and relax, if they can't then this is a sign of dysfunction.
Through our assessment we found separate Golgi Tendon Organ dysfunctions in both shoulders. These receptors are found in tendons and ligaments and they react to stretching of the joint.
We had two issues present and we could treat these individually, but we wanted to see if there was anything connecting the issues. The body is one complete system, and both arms are used together to complete the task of swinging a golf club.
If issues have appeared in both shoulders then there may an underlying cause connecting the two issues. There might not be, but the beauty of working with muscle testing is that we can Test, not Guess.
If we ignore this and just treat the shoulder, then it is very likely that the issue will come back very quickly.
In the client's history we noted that he has suffered head trauma on many occasions, both through sport and through injuries, so we decided to assess the vestibular system to see if this was effecting his swing.
To start, we simply got him to close his eyes and then retested the shoulders. This shuts down feedback from the visual system. When we did this the shoulders actually improved. The muscle tests which had previously been dysfunctional now tested normal. There was still some mild pain present but it had greatly reduced and the client could feel the improvement.
We then got him to move his eyes rapidly from side to side to restimulate the visual system. This caused weakness in all muscles in the shoulders.
So this confirmed to us that there was a common cause to the issues in the shoulders and it was coming from the head. Possibly the visual system or a head injury causing dysfunction in the Visual System.
To find out the cause we can 'fire up' the dysfunction and then use touch as an Anti Stim to find something that negates it's effect and cancels the dysfunction.
We found this to be a point just below the right eye, on the Zygo-Maxillary Suture. This is just below the right eye. This point related to an old injury caused by a punch. This had created a Nociception dysfunction, which is a 'Pain' or 'Danger' dysfunction. By temporarily reducing this dysfunction we had brought normal function back to the shoulders. This means that we were perfectly placed to go ahead and treat. We knew that we had the root cause of the issue.
After treatment the client felt great. Smoother shoulders, aches and pains were gone and he felt more powerful when practicing his swing.
Don't just treat what hurts, ask why. Dig deeper, let's move therapy forward into the 21st Century.