Sometimes we need to clarify that not having pain on the Functional Movement Screen doesn’t equate to “no pain” ever. A pain-free screen tells us that we can proceed with further fitness and capacity testing.
Further testing and assessment can evoke pain, and as Gray wrote about in Movement, much of his work has been related to the compartmentalization of pain to enable greater opportunities for treatment.
Much of the systematic thought process comes down to asking the right questions at the right time - and pain always brings the same set of questions to Gray’s mind:
Are they in pain because they’re moving poorly?
Are they moving poorly because they’re in pain?
If you don’t have enough information to answer those questions, then you simply need more information before you can attempt to treat the individual.
At the same time you want to get more information, you also want to limit your variables. Don’t work patterns that are dysfunctional and painful. However, patterns that are dysfunctional and non-painful can be fertile ground for improvement. Don’t overlook them . . . seek them.
This treatment plan is often at odds with our biases for symptoms over signs and structure over function. But maybe these biases are part of the weakness of the current model we’re up against.