3 Ways Offering Therapeutic Exercise Can Grow Your Wellness Practice

Kate Fox, CMT, CLMA. Kate Fox is the owner of NewPath Wellness in Los Angeles, California.

I have been integrating the Symmetry system into my therapeutic bodywork practice since becoming a Symmetry Professional Practitioner in 2015. I see cases of chronic pain to acute injury alike on a daily basis. Not only has this system made me a more informed and effective practitioner, but the individualized treatment plan I can create for client self-care has been the game-changer for their recovery.

Since the beginning of my massage therapy career in 2001, it has been evident to me that movement, and the correction of inefficient movement patterns and postural compensations, are key to true rehabilitation and the prevention of injuries [1]. As a former professional dancer, and holding a credential as a movement analyst (CLMA), I have deeply studied and explored how the body moves. It was not until learning the Symmetry system that I was able to bring to my clients a comprehensive, user-friendly program to effect the greatest amount of trackable change.

The Symmetry interface offers a simple and repeatable process: We take 20 measurements to create a score report, educate our clients on how their structure is compensating, correct these misalignments with corrective exercise therapy, and the empowered client uses the app to fulfill their routine daily and communicate directly with us!

Here are three ways therapeutic exercise can grow your wellness practice.

Demonstrate Results

Measurements allow your clients to see the effects of your work with them.

What other means do we use? How they feel? How they look? These are subjective and rarely encapsulate all that we are bringing to the table or mat when it comes to our session goals.  Measuring gives concrete information, and works great as a comparable. Especially at the beginning of a series of sessions, or before and after a single session.

Use the reports to set new areas of focus and goals, so your clients stay motivated and encouraged by the journey toward balance and progress. My clients drop their jaws at the changes they see in their before and after photos!

Also, clients absolutely get hooked on their scores! Which helps with compliance and the consistency that gets results. They’ll be rushing back to get measured again to see how their hard work, and your recommendations, have gotten them closer to alignment. Unless your clients are addressing their postural misalignments, they will not get beyond their compensation patterns which will hold them back.

The Symmetry app allows clients to review their reports at any time. They can show it to other practitioners, friends, family members - all of whom could be potential referrals to grow your practice.

Offering the Symmetry program allows you to be an additional resource for lasting results

-    Personal trainers will not get far with clients who have alignment compensations

-    Massage therapists and bodyworkers will have short-term results with clients with inefficient movement patterning

-    Chiropractic adjustments will not hold with acute or chronic muscle imbalances 

Be More Effective

Using this system means an individualized approach to the client every time.

How many times does a client walk in and you just “know” what to work with them on? Cool. How many times do you not know where to start? Or what to do for that 3rd, 4th, or 8th session? Or how to keep them coming back now that they’re “feeling better?”

Take out the guesswork. Being effective means getting results, which is key to retaining clients. With the Symmetry system, you have a lot more to offer.

The measurements give a detailed postural alignment assessment, but what information do we get from that? We can see how functional units are out of balance. We are mapping compensation for muscle underuse and overuse. We can extrapolate how certain joints are bearing more weight or force than others. We can see how one side or part of the body is being favored or avoided, often due to injuries that happened over the client’s lifetime [2]. The reports will offer you a map to help your clients avoid future injury, understand their own bodies, and see how your targeted, individualized, and informed approach is key to their success [3].

The huge catalog of corrective exercises offers variety and is specifically for postural alignment training. The major piece that is missing from most wellness practices and wellness certificate programs is correcting the position of the skeletal framework. An imbalanced body will get injured, will not reach peak performance, will not heal maximally.

Whether you are using the Symmetry app for a few exercises to supplement your program, or immersing them into the full potential of the exercise therapy routines created by the patented algorithm, you are arming your clients with an easily accessible tool to supplement and expand yourself as a resource.

Many people recognize that a multi-modality approach to their health and pain management is essential [4]. The best way to optimize this is to offer these services under one roof. By integrating the Symmetry program into your practice, you now have varied options and programs to meet the needs of your clientele.

Have Answers

Educated practitioners create educated consumers.

Too many clients have experienced partial results, plateaued, or taken steps backward as a result of practitioners not addressing postural alignment - a fundamental cause of so much dysfunction and pain [5]. They relate that their issues seem hopeless, their money spent in other places, wasted, and nothing they’ve done before has really been the answer they were seeking.

The Symmetry system identifies and targets postural alignment imbalances strategically, with demonstrable results. The reporting and tracking of the changes over time give you and your clients answers to how they are progressing, feeling relief for chronic issues, and why they may be experiencing old symptoms or different aches and pains. The “mystery” is gone, and so is their pain.

Client compliance with exercise therapy is another obstacle that the online and app integrated platform help to overcome. With this program, clients are able to access their reports and postural alignment training routine with ease of access, and they check a box each time they complete a routine so their compliance can be tracked. Within that same field, they can write a quick note to their practitioner if they are having an issue or a question. This note goes right to an inbox within the system that allows the practitioner to easily get back to them, and keep them on track.

These interfaces are very intuitive and simple, so clients and practitioners alike don’t have to waste time or energy with technology. My clients utilize this feature often with quick questions and feedback. I’ve been much faster with my response rates given the ease of the system. I can also quickly send encouragement and check-in to see how things are going.

Don’t forget your clients are also motivated to get those new scores! They want to see their results, and the motivation is built into the reward of seeing their numbers drop.

I have seen a definite increase in client progress, satisfaction, new client growth, and higher referral rates since joining the Symmetry community. I wish this and more to your practice.

Kate Fox, CMT, CLMA
Owner, NewPath Wellness
Los Angeles, California.

References:

[1] Park, Sehun et al. ‘Effects of Biofeedback Postural Training on Pre-existing Low Back Pain in Static-posture Workers’. 1 Jan. 2018 : 849 – 857.

 [2] Cosma, Germina et al. ‘Physical Exercise and its Role in a Correct Postural Alignment’. Physical Education, Sport and Kinetotherapy Journal Vol. XI no. 1 (39) 2015

 [3] Wernli, Kevin et al. “Movement, posture and low back pain. How do they relate? A replicated single-case design in 12 people with persistent, disabling low back pain.” European journal of pain (London, England) vol. 24,9 (2020): 1831-1849. doi:10.1002/ejp.1631

 [4] Thomas, Donna-Ann et al. “Role of Alternative Therapies for Chronic Pain Syndromes.” Current pain and headache reports vol. 20,5 (2016): 29. doi:10.1007/s11916-016-0562-z

 [5] Ribeiro, Sânzia Bezerra, Cárdia, Maria Claudia Gatto, and Almeida, Lais Cristina. ‘Biomechanical and Organizational Risk and Prevalence of Low Back Pain in the Old Adults Caregivers of a Nursing Home in Joao Pessoa/PB’. 1 Jan. 2012 : 1933 – 1939.