Experts in Applied Functional Science

Applied Functional Science ®, a term coined by the Gray Institute in Michigan, led by Gary Gray – who the American Physical Therapy Association once called “The Father of Function” during an achievement award they bestowed on him, is a key foundational piece to understanding human function that is missing from the PT programs everyone is graduating from. Sure, most PT’s are pretty expert in isolated, single joint or muscle performance. The challenge is that in real-life there is no time when your body parts get to function in isolation, independent from their “nextdoor neighbors” and even influenced by other more distant body parts that are “down the street” or “around the block” so to speak.

Our bodies function within what’s called a “kinetic chain” – meaning we are connected and one body part integrally effects the other. You can’t be a knee expert without fully knowing foot function (your ankle bones include the tibia and fibula, which happen to “be” the bottom part of your knee joint!)…or hip function (your hip’s bottom bone is the femur, which is the top bone making up your knee)…and so on and so on. Too often doctors and therapists alike have come from training that views each body part in isolation and/or from a perspective of a cadaver on a lab table.

That’s just not how we function! Our muscles cross multiple joints. The fiber orientations and attachments often reveal complex multidirectional influences that are often neglected in traditional texts and classes. For those reasons and more, traditional testing methods and exercise designs often disregard key actions and roles our various joints and muscles play in our day to day activities, whether that be home life, work life, fitness, recreation and hobbies, or sports.

So many of the patients we see at Peak who were deemed “failed PT” or “failed conservative care” cases actually had normal, standard…really otherwise acceptable and appropriate, “traditional” treatments done. But too often the focus was solely or proportionally too high at the symptom area, working mainly the joint or tissue that was diagnosed, and not addressing (or even looking for) the key contributors above and below where the pain was occurring. Other times very astute practitioners did attempt to address some of those areas, but ended up using cookbook style protocol-like approaches without actually testing to see if an issue existed, relying on patterns they were taught at a course or read somewhere but never confirmed for that patient. Sure, patterns often do exist in human function and performance, and injury. But, every patient IS UNIQUE. You are unique. Excellent testing is the foundation for successful therapy outcomes! Other times the exercises a provider chose did, in fact, stimulate the right muscle but were done in ways that really aren’t authentic to how a body part functions in real life. No surprise then that once “real-life” demands occurred their exercise induced training effect was never really there to make the desired difference. Remember…even something pretty darn close – like throwing a baseball…is still different enough to be different from throwing a football or hitting a volleyball, even though the motions and muscle actions are very similar!

All of our providers are at least Certification level trained in AFS and several are Fellowship trained. That means that any provider you see at Peak Performance has an understanding of functional biomechanics beyond the limited training all PT’s go through in school. It provides us a unique starting point in how we assess pain and performance, as well as develop exercise programs to help safely, comfortably, and effectively restore motion and enhance key qualities like strength, endurance, balance, and acceleration/deceleration (explosive power).