The one muscle that seems to consistently create great debate and excitement amongst the MSK professions is the psoas and we really need to start asking why? For some reason, it gets a lot of attention and a lot of the blame for so many problems. However, we really need to start looking at why one muscle could get blamed for so many things.

Psoas Obsession – Eric Purves

I haven’t seen much of this in my practice, so it’s definitely a topic I need to learn more about. Thankfully we have some great people putting content together so we can understand Hypermobility and how to help patients better.

Understanding Hypermobility – Matt Phillips & Bonnie Southgate

For some reason, we are always looking to ‘blame’ a certain thing for a person’s pain. While it’s true that patients like getting a diagnosis, it’s also important for us to realize there are many more factors that contribute to a successful treatment. We need to look past the biomechanical and also try taking a collaborative approach.

Joint Pain Treatment: Beyond the ‘Bio’ and ‘Silo’ – Nick Ng

This is just a REALLY creative and entertaining review of the organ systems in the human body, I applaud their creativity.

How To Learn The Organ Systems In Under Five Minutes – Fundamental Raps

There is many pseudoscience interventions being peddled within musculoskeletal therapy. Now, it’s even being used with animals! If you didn’t see it a zoo used kinesiology tape on an elephant, I’ll let you guess what the outcome was.

Nonsense For Elephants: The Houston Zoo Promotes Kinesiology Tape – Clay Jones

Tony Gentilcore makes some great points about beliefs surrounding “bad” workouts and self-efficacy with one’s routines. We can likely translate these points very well when it comes to programming home exercise programs for clients as well.

Do Bad Workouts Exist? – Tony Gentilcore

We wrote a similar blog to this one a few weeks ago, but the content bears repeating. The words we say and the way we say it can have a major impact on the outcomes we have with our patients. Let’s start to change not only the narrative around what we do, but also what we say.

Words Matter – Eric Purves

We talk lots about patient safety, but our safety is just as important (if not more). So when I saw this shared by one of our friends I knew it was worth the share (well…also cause I’m a firefighter).

Oily Linens – Massage Therapy – Fire Safety – Megan Crozier

Pretty cool review of the receptors in our bodies and what they do.

Types Of Receptors – Dr. Matt & Dr. Mike

There is many a frustrating debate online, no matter what the topic is. This is a pretty cool little flow chart on how we could handle some of these discussions. While Taylor meant this for himself, it might be something I use as well.

On Discussions And Debate – Taylor James Laviolette

We’re not here to fear-monger. However, as manual therapist who spend some of the most time with patients among all of their healthcare practitioners, we need to be very aware of red flags with back pain and what they could mean. A good reminder of some of those basic questions that we learn in school and might be forgetting to ask.

When to Worry About Low Back Pain – Paul Ingraham

We’ve been hearing a lot of dialogue against the use of static stretching these days, but why? This article gives us a great explanation of the research method errors made in years past while reminding us of some of the evidence that does still support static stretching in certain circumstances.

To stretch or not to stretch before exercise: What you need to know about warm-ups – David George Behm

It’s been a tough year and I’m sure there are people coming in for treatment simply to experience human touch. Touch has a huge impact on our physical and mental well being, so this is an interesting read at how this pandemic has affected some.

Lost touch: how a year without hugs affects our mental health – Elanor Morgan

Talking DOMS again! A lengthy study to read, but one that suggests that post-exercise muscle soreness may have much less to do with muscle fiber microtrauma and more with neural microdamage. Hopefully, this new direction of research will begin to suggest different strategies for mitigating the pain.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness – Have We Looked in the Wrong Direction for More Than 100 Years?  – Sonkodi et al.

You have likely heard of exercise-induced analgesia, in which exercise creates a pain-dampening effect in the body. A very interesting study was done, however, that looked at the ability of suggestion to create a nocebo effect that directly counteracted this benefit.

Exercise Blocks Pain, But Only For Believers – Alex Hutchison