Brain, Pain & Stability Course
Learn how to integrate fun cognitive skills, drills and exercises into all your exercise programming.
Presenter: Francine St George.
PLUS: The Online Course – plus 2.5hour Practical Session with Francine St George
This provides you with the opportunity to practice all the Neurofitness exercises that are covered in the online training course.
Practical Sessions Details:
Location:
Physiotherapy Posture and Fitness Clinic
Wales Medical Centre
Level 4, 66 High St
Randwick NSW 2031
To book a Session or Inservice for a 1:1, 2:1 or a larger group – please contact us.
Course includes:
- 6 Modules
- 4 hours self-paced Training
- 6 interactive videos
- Comprehensive Course notes
- Pre-reading and Abstracts
- 30+ fun cognitive skills, drills & exercises
- 20+ Stability & Strengthening exercises for the Cervical & Lumbar spine
- Certificate on Completion for CPD points
In this course you will learn how to use the cervico-ocular and vestibular ocular reflex (COR & VOR) to improve your treatment and management of any musculoskeletal pain. There is specific focus on the effects of pain inhibition on both the cervical and lumbar muscles and how this can be altered utilising vision and balance retraining. This information can be used in either the clinical setting, for rehabilitation or for exercise programming. These innovative ideas are suitable for all ages and levels of fitness.
Learn More
A note from Francine:
“With a background treating athletes I have always been somewhat surprised that the information in this level of training is not used for clients of all fitness levels. For this reason, I developed this course.
There is no reason to change how you are working with your client. But there is always room to broaden your current knowledge base as our profession continues to evolve and grow – with a combination of advanced clinical findings and evidence-based research.
The term Neurofitness refers to using cognitive tests to reduce pain and improve balance and fitness. Research has shown that there is a direct correlation between balance and cognitive health. No matter what discipline of Physiotherapy you work in, integrating cognitive skills is looking after your client’s brain health as well as their physical and mental agility.
The term Neuroathletics means a client’s sport needs to be taken into consideration to be sure the cognitive skills you teach are appropriate and matched to the biomechanical and neural demands of the specific sport. Whether your client does recreational fitness, grade or competes at an elite level, you will be able to alter and adapt the skills you learn to match their specific goals.
As Physios we use neural testing as part of our clinical repertoire to identify and clarify what is influencing pain. We will also be using the term Neurodynamics in this training as you will be using cognitive skills and exercises to mobilise the neural system dynamically. Research has also demonstrated that there is both local muscle inhibition and brain changes associated with neck and back pain. Learning how to engage, automate and use neurofitness skills to pre-set the inhibited muscles is a key focus of this course.
As a health professional treating the local area of pain is important for healing to commence. Introducing Neurofitness skills from Day 1 both accelerates the client’s recovery as well as minimises the risk of the injury or pain recurring – or better still, prevents a compensatory pain developing.
If you are keen to take your clinical and exercise programming skills to the next level – this course is for you!
All the skills you learn in this course, both your client and you will see immediate results – and you will both have a lot of fun along the way!
Francine
Course includes:
- 6 Modules
- 4 hours self-paced Training
- 6 interactive videos
- Comprehensive Course notes
- Includes Pre-reading
- Certificate on Completion
Module Details:
Module 1: Pain, Brain & Stability
Module 2: Level 1: Balance & Baseline Testing
Module 3: Level 2: Cognitive Balance & Agility
Module 4: Cervical Stability & Strength
Module 5: Lumbar Stability & Strength
Module 6: Level 3: Skills, Drills & Performance
What You’ll Be Able to Do After Each Module
- Module 1 – Pain, Brain & Stability
- Understand how pain alters brain-body control and use COR and VOR to assess and explain movement problems for both neck and back pain.
- Module 2 – Level 1: Balance & Baseline Testing
- Run simple Neurofitness balance tests, establish clear baselines, and start retraining stability relating to pain or for deconditioned clients.
- Module 3 – Level 2: Cognitive Balance & Agility
- Identify left–right imbalances, challenge fear-avoidant movement, and build confidence using cognitive-driven balance and agility tasks.
- Module 4 – Cervical Stability & Strength
- Activate deep neck stabilisers, relax overactive muscles, and progress patients from easy exercises to learning how to improve functional cervical strength.
- Module 5 – Lumbar Stability & Strength
- Know how to use a dynamic approach for a locked back. Learn how to assess and retrain deep spinal stabilisers (including multifidus) and build progressive lumbar control for both acute and chronic back pain.
- Module 6 – Skills, Drills & Performance
- Apply Neurofitness to real-world rehabilitation and return-to-sport using vision, balance, and coordination drills with equipment-based progressions.
Course requirements
The main items and pieces of equipment used in this course are:
- Dots; approximately 20 (3 or 4 different colours is ideal)
- A numbers chart: this is provided as a PDF when you enrol – or you can create your own numbers chart.
- Chi or soft Pilates Balls
- 2 firm balls for throwing or x 2 tennis balls
- Foam beam
- Gym ball: 55, 65 or 75 cm
- Therabands – easy and intermediate strength
- A Pilates box
- Light weights 1.5 – 5 Kilo dumbbells
- Optional: a dura disc or Bosu
Summary of Learning Outcomes:
At the completion of this course, you will:
- Have an overall understanding of the brain changes and radiological finding associated with pain, with particular focus on the cervical and lumbar spine
- Understand the reason for the importance of addressing head and neck posture due to the high muscle spindle count of the upper deep cervical muscle extensors and learn how to recruit these muscles effectively using COR & VOR.
- Learn how to identify which stability muscles that are inhibited with neck or back pain.
As a practitioner you will be able to:
- Use COR & VOR testing to identify if this has been compromised by pain
- Commence with basic VOR & COR testing and then progress this so it is more challenging for the client
- Assess if there is segmental inhibition of either the cervical or lumbar deep stability muscles and learn how to teach a client to recruit these muscles
- Learn how to progress from stability to strengthening to overcome chronic neck or back pain
- Use cognitive skills to assist a client who is ‘fearful’ to move due to pain.
- Modify and innovate to adapt the cognitive training to be sure it is applicable to the specific sport your client plays.
