Dr. Andy Galpin

And so an elbow has a few ranges of motion.

A shoulder, though, can go up and down and front and back.

It can rotate and kind of roll itself internally.

And so each joint has a different range of motion it can go through.

So can you go through all those range of motions in a way that's appropriate without being too much range of motion?

The second thing we want to pay attention to here is rough symmetry, like we've talked about a couple of times already.

So symmetry means, again, am I okay moving front and back within one range?

joint or groups of muscles.

And then how does that compare to the contralateral or opposite side?

So if I can lift my, say, right shoulder straight out in front of me, and I can lift it all the way over my head so that it's pointing directly in the sky, but my left shoulder can only go 80% of the way, then I have some sort of asymmetry.

Is it the front and back?

So my shoulder on the front side of it is twice the size of the backside of it, things like that.

So we want to look at, do I have global asymmetry, especially when we're doing what is called bilateral movements.

So imagine doing like a squat.

Picture a basic air squat or a goblet squat where you're holding an implement in front of you or you're squatting down like you would do to hold a child or a baby or something like that.

In doing that, I would want to be looking at all of my joints and I would do this one by one.

So starting at the ankle joint, I would say, okay, great.

Can my ankles go through a full range of motion or are they restricted and then therefore causing a movement compensation at the knee or hip or some other joint?

Are they symmetrical?

Is one facing a different direction than the other one?