The Evaluation Process

The Need for an Evaluation?

A comprehensive evaluation is required to begin your journey at the Bowskill Clinic. This is because your body is a complex system of systems and close knowledge of how these systems are functioning allows us to be very precise in how we create your rehabilitation or wellness programme. It also enables us to direct you to the right practitioners in the right order.

From a global perspective we use a Health Appraisal Questionnaire (HAQ) to assess the overall health of your human system. This provides us with an overview of 28 of the body’s systems and can direct us to where the major problems may lie within them. This information also then allows us to understand what role hormonal balance may play in your health, or perhaps kidney function, digestive health or indeed mood parameters. Knowing the role that each of these systems plays in the overall health of the body provides us with an understanding of where we need to start in terms of your health. This may be with an exercise strategy, a nutrition and lifestyle plan, a programme of naturopathic supplements or some performance mind coaching. Our goal with this process is to direct you to the most useful practitioner for the problem that you have. In this way we ensure the fastest possible progress.

From a biomechanical perspective, which is where our practice has grown from, there are commonly two areas that create problems in the human body. These are muscle imbalance and instability of the body’s joints as a result.

Muscle imbalance is commonly caused by our every day habits and postures, pain syndromes and surprisingly, even emotions. Muscle imbalance can be caused by tight back and hip muscles overpowering the lower abdominal and hamstring muscles, for example. This creates a lot of strain on the joints of the lower back as well as negatively affecting the posture of the upper body as a secondary effect. Our tests allow identification of which muscles in your body are out of balance so we can create a treatment and coaching programme to correct this as the strategy for each individual may be vastly different.

The better balance your body is in, the better it can handle the pressure of gravity as well as the everyday tasks you ask of it.

Spinal and postural stability is also vitally important to your recovery and by testing certain important muscles we can identify if these are doing their job correctly. They should act as a form of flexible scaffolding to support the joints of the body. By improving the way these muscles work we can improve recovery from injury and also significantly reduce the risk of recurrence.

Once we have identified exactly which muscles need to be stretched and strengthened we will create a comprehensive programme to address all of the issues identified in your individual case.