A biomechanical assessment measures how your body moves to find the movement problems, muscle imbalances, and postural issues that may be contributing to pain or limiting performance. At Indian Trail Chiropractic & Rehab, Dr. Gentile uses Kinetisense 3D movement screening, functional testing, and gait analysis to objectively measure your movement, guide your treatment plan, and track your progress as you improve.
What Is Biomechanical Assessment?
Biomechanics is the study of how your body moves. A biomechanical assessment looks at the quality of that movement, identifying restrictions, asymmetries, and compensations that may lead to pain and injury.
Pain care often focuses on where it hurts. A biomechanical assessment also asks why it hurts, since the painful area is sometimes overloaded because of a problem elsewhere in the body.
Understanding your specific movement problems helps us build treatment plans aimed at the cause rather than just chasing symptoms.
Why Biomechanical Assessment Matters
It’s hard to fix what you can’t measure. A quick visual check can miss subtle movement problems that affect your health and performance.
Objective movement data offers several advantages:
- It can reveal restrictions and imbalances before they become painful
- It shows which areas need attention
- It tracks your progress objectively over time
- It highlights factors that may raise your risk of injury
Why Symptom-Focused Care Sometimes Falls Short
When treatment focuses only on the painful area, it may bring temporary relief without changing the movement patterns that caused the problem. That’s one reason some people deal with recurring pain despite several rounds of treatment.
Our Biomechanical Assessment Technology
At Indian Trail Chiropractic, we use technology alongside hands-on examination to evaluate movement quality.
Kinetisense 3D Movement Screening
Kinetisense 3D technology captures your movement patterns without any wearable sensors or markers. You simply perform specific movements while the system analyzes your mechanics in real time.
The system provides objective measurements of posture, symmetry, range of motion, and movement quality, revealing details that aren’t easy to see with the naked eye.
Functional Movement Testing
Functional performance testing evaluates how you perform basic movement patterns like squatting, lunging, and reaching, identifying mobility restrictions, stability issues, and compensations.
Gait Analysis
Gait analysis evaluates how you walk and run. Your gait affects everything from your feet through your spine, and we look for issues like overpronation and an uneven stride that may contribute to pain.
What Biomechanical Assessment Reveals
Postural Deviations
We measure forward head posture, shoulder asymmetry, pelvic tilt, and spinal alignment, which can add ongoing stress to joints and muscles. Seeing objective measurements often motivates patients to take posture work seriously.
Movement Asymmetries
Most people have some asymmetry. Larger differences between left and right sides can point to compensation patterns worth addressing.
Range of Motion Restrictions
Limited mobility in specific joints affects the whole movement chain. Restricted ankle mobility can contribute to knee pain, and limited hip rotation can affect the lower back. We measure these restrictions and track improvements as treatment progresses.
Movement and Muscle Control Patterns
Muscles should work together in a coordinated way during movement. When that coordination breaks down, compensations develop, and we look for movement patterns that suggest it so we can retrain them through targeted exercise.
Stability and Balance
Poor stability can raise injury risk and limit performance. We assess static and dynamic balance to identify areas that need work.
Who Benefits From Biomechanical Assessment?
People With Chronic Pain
If you’ve dealt with recurring pain despite trying several treatments, an assessment can reveal a missing piece. The movement problem driving your pain may be away from where it hurts.
Athletes Looking to Move Better
Even pain-free athletes can benefit from finding and correcting movement restrictions, which can support performance and lower injury risk.
Injury-Prone Individuals
If you keep injuring the same area, movement problems may be contributing, and an assessment can help identify them.
Post-Injury Recovery
After an injury, an assessment helps confirm you’ve restored normal function, not just eliminated pain.
Pre-Season Athletes
Pre-season screening can highlight risk factors before your season starts so you can address them early.
How Assessment Guides Treatment
Assessment findings help guide our treatment approach, showing which joints may need adjusting, which muscles may need releasing, and which movement patterns need retraining. They’re always combined with your history and a hands-on exam.
Targeted Chiropractic Adjustments
We adjust the specific joints showing restricted motion. Corrective chiropractic care is more targeted when guided by objective assessment.
Specific Soft Tissue Work
Assessment helps identify which muscles are tight and overactive. Active Release Technique and Graston Technique target those restrictions.
Customized Exercise Programs
Your corrective exercise program addresses your specific weaknesses and movement problems, rather than following a generic protocol.
Progress Tracking
We reassess regularly to track improvements objectively. Seeing measurable progress helps keep you motivated and lets us adjust treatment as you improve.
The Assessment Process
A comprehensive biomechanical assessment takes about 30 to 45 minutes. Here’s what to expect:
- Movement screening: you perform specific movements while Kinetisense captures your mechanics. It’s non-invasive and needs no special preparation.
- Functional testing: Dr. Gentile guides you through basic movement patterns, watching for restrictions or compensations.
- Strength and mobility evaluation: specific tests assess strength in key muscle groups and mobility in important joints.
- Gait analysis when relevant: for runners or people with lower body problems, we analyze walking and running mechanics.
- Results review: we go over the findings together, and visual data makes them easier to understand.
Using Assessment for Injury Prevention
Asymmetries, mobility restrictions, and poor movement patterns are factors that may raise injury risk. Research on how well movement screens predict injuries is mixed, so we use the findings alongside your history and training to guide prevention, not as a guarantee.
Pre-Season Screening
Pre-season assessments help athletes spot and address potential risk factors before competition starts.
Periodic Checkups
Even if you’re pain-free, periodic movement assessments can catch developing problems early, when they’re easiest to address.
When Pain Needs a Medical Evaluation
A movement assessment isn’t designed to diagnose serious medical problems. See a doctor promptly for pain after a significant injury, pain with fever or unexplained weight loss, numbness or weakness that’s getting worse, or pain that wakes you at night.
Biomechanics and Performance
Better movement isn’t just about avoiding injury. Many athletes find that improving movement quality helps them move more efficiently and train more consistently.
Our sports performance optimization program uses biomechanical assessment to identify and address movement inefficiencies that may be limiting you.
Why Choose Indian Trail Chiropractic for Biomechanical Assessment
A biomechanical assessment is only as useful as the interpretation behind it. My background in sports performance and biomechanics shapes how I read the data and turn it into a plan.
As a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with more than 20 years working with athletes at all levels, I understand how bodies move and how to help them move better. We don’t just show you graphs. We translate the findings into a treatment plan you can act on.
Discover How Your Body Moves
If chronic pain, recurring injuries, or performance plateaus are frustrating you, a biomechanical assessment might reveal the missing piece. At Indian Trail Chiropractic & Rehab, we help patients and athletes throughout Union County move better and reach their goals.
Ready to see exactly how your body moves? Call us at (704) 821-3222 or schedule your appointment online.