Anatomy Trains Structural Essentials: Arches & Legs

The Structural Essential series is a set of intensive soft-tissue technique courses divided into functional regions. Combining movement and manual techniques for the most efficient and long-lasting results, and using the latest research on the interaction between skeleton, muscles, joints, and fascial proprioceptors, this series of workshops will take you to a new level in therapy.

Designed with the busy manual therapist in mind, each Structural Essentials event gives you a new understanding of the relevant area. The content will outline how the structural and functional anatomy relates to many common issues as well as to the rest of the body. Based on many new and established approaches this series will give you the skills in palpation, BodyReading and functional analysis needed for the modern multidisciplinary therapist.

Arches and the Legs – Underpinning all of our structure is the foot’s interaction with the ground, imbalances here clearly have consequences further up the body. Effective arch balance can be essential for easy and graceful walking, pelvic stability, low back efficiency and even head and neck support. The feet and legs are literally the foundation for the rest of our structure and this workshop will analyze the bones of the feet and how they conspire to help or hinder the arches. We will look at the forces coming from the leg muscles and create strategies to help maintain better mechanics by dealing with myofascial restrictions and imbalances.

The Knee and Thigh – A complicated hinge in the middle of two long levers is perhaps not the best of designs – but this “elbow designed by committee” is an excellent work of engineering. The knee joint mediates forces coming down from the hip and up from the foot and still allows a wide range of movement in all but the frontal plane.

Objectives

• How to differentiate your analysis of the foot and legs from the rest of the mechanical chain, giving an accurate reading of their skeletal relationships
• How to assess and then provide good foot and leg support through the three (or four) arches of the foot
• How the arches act in walking and standing and their relationship to the pelvis and the AT lines
• How to balance the support the arches receive from the long muscles of the calf
• Effective strategies to unwind rotational compensations in the foot, the tibia-fibula complex and the knee.
• Learn how the structures of the knee and thigh co-operate to achieve this and learn to recognize some of the structural dysfunctions that can occur.
• BodyRead the various imbalances which can occur
• Learn to balance the common rotational movements of the knee

The course is designed for manual therapists