How to Create Better Exercise Programs

Whether you are a physical therapist, strength & conditioning coach, personal trainer, or like me, a rehab-based Doctor of Chiropractic, exercise programming is an essential—if not the most important—part of my service.

A key goal of any program I design is to make sure exercises are safe, effective, and cause no injury. If I do my job right, I can help my clients prevent injury.

The Basics: A Functional Movement Assessment

If you are like me, before you design any exercise program, you perform a functional movement assessment. You are looking for:

Overall flexibility through range of motion
Side-to-side imbalances and asymmetries
Functional strength and weaknesses

My Old Way of Doing Assessments

For most of my professional career, I had been performing functional movement assessments the “old way.” I used rudimentary tools (like a goniometer) and relied on my visual interpretation.

My data set was relatively small, and I was definitely subjective. It’s probably fair to say that I was inconsistent from one assessment to the next on the same client.

Example of goniometer

There Must Be A Better Way

In 2021 Kinotek’s Chief Product Officer, David Holomakoff, asked me to give product feedback. A biomedical engineer, David spent years studying virtual environments, 3D visualizations, and how to better map human dynamic movement.

He showed me how Kinotek was using machine learning and AI-driven models to measure human movement.

When I saw what they were doing,
I was immediately blown away.

The platform was super fast, the data objective, and included metrics where I could only estimate (like loaded ankle dorsiflexion). The visualizations were amazing, and it made documentation easy: copy and paste.

Example of client screening with the Kinotek system.

A Powerful Personal Experience

Full disclosure: I have since become an advisor to Kinotek. Even so, I wanted to share my clinician’s experience with anyone interested in upping their game with better assessments.

Last year, Kinotek was asked by the Maine Department of Transportation to use its technology to perform assessments on employees throughout the state. Their ages ranged from 18 to 70, both men and women. The goal: better conditioning to prevent injuries.

I assisted MDOT personal trainers to develop a 6-week exercise program based on Kinotek assessments.

Not only did Kinotek make it fast and easy for me to perform a functional assessment (each employee was assessed in 5 minutes), it also allowed me to document and discuss the findings with the trainers. Once they saw the data, developing the customized, appropriate exercise program was easy.

With my recommended conditioning program, we saw score improvements ranging from 10.5% better for spinal flexion to 12.6% improvement on right lunges.

Some Specific Findings and Exercises

I want to share just two highlights of our findings that directly informed the exercise program:

Ankle Dorsiflexion Restriction

Most employees lacked ankle dorsiflexion and raised their heels when squatting. I couldn’t see this easily from the frontal view, but Kinotek flagged it for me. I was able to quickly recommend calf stretching and lunges as corrective exercises and improve mobility by the second screening.

Asymmetrical Hip Adduction

Most employees also displayed asymmetrical hip adduction or inward knee tracking during their squats. This often occurred briefly and was easy to overlook, but Kinotek easily identified this and helped me quickly recommend stabilization exercises like single leg balance and resisted hip abductions.

Here’s one of the best parts of the whole program: 76% of MDOT employees said they were motivated to raise their Kinotek score as they participated in the program.

So What?

Kinotek’s speed, objective data, and personalized scored report elevated my own game. Maine DOT employees were motivated. Best of all, the results left the trainers thrilled at how we were quickly able to help them support their employees.

5 Great Reasons Why

Until recently, this type of accuracy and specificity in performing functional movement assessments was cost prohibitive for most practices or gyms. I love what Kinotek is doing, and at the risk of sounding too enthusiastic, I want to offer my “5 Great Reasons Why” you should consider the platform for your practice:

It’s fast, affordable and easy to use.
It offers an objective and rich data set including amazing visuals that engage your clients, and provide a common platform for clinicians, coaches and personal trainers to co-manage client progress.
It helps make sure you don’t overlook less apparent movement dysfunctions.
It can help you gain new revenues—I’ve seen where a gym sets up their Kinotek platform at an event, and walk away with a whole new set of members.
It will differentiate your practice, gym, facility…and up your personal game.

Faster. Easier. Highly engaged clients. Better informed exercise programs. What fitness instructor or physical therapist wouldn’t want these results too?

About the Author

Andrew Bruns is a Doctor of Chiropractic and Certified Medical Examiner based in Portland, Maine. He is also an advisor to Kinotek.