The assessment process has undergone many changes going from basic medical prescreening such as resting heart rate and blood pressure though to advanced orthopedic assessments.
Then there are those in the industry who claim that there is no real need for assessing, the workout itself is the assessment. This can be true to a degree especially when monitoring progression and recovery however it is important to have a foundational assessment from which to develop a strategy or programming guidelines.
The assessment process provides the basis for making educated decisions about exercise and acute variable selection and provides an ongoing retrieval of information, allowing the practitioner to make any necessary adjustments to the training protocol that may be needed to optimize the intended results.
The program or strategy that you develop for your client is only as good as your assessment that you perform. It is important to ensure accuracy with all recordings for future comparison.
Without this foundational information the ability to correctly identify the clients needs cannot be met (remember that what the client wants and what the client may actually need can sometimes be two different things, however with the right approach it is possible to attain both).
The assessment process may be different for every individual. It must be based on the medical screening and the individual’s goals and required outcomes initially but also needs to adapt and the need arises.
There are several thousand assessments that you could perform however what is also needed is a systematic approach that also adapts to the assessment findings as you progress.
There are usually fundamental assessments that can be used to start the process but then should follow a “flow-chart” type process where a result on one assessment determines the following assessment.
The Assessment Process
Pre-Assessment:
- Interview
Basic level assessments:
- Medical (Basic)
- Physiological (Basic)
- Postural (Basic)
- Movement (Basic)
Advanced level assessments
- Medial (Advanced)
- Physiological (Advanced)
- Postural (Advanced)
- Movement (Advanced)
- Performance (Advanced)