Functional Exercise Prescription. Supporting Rehabilitation in Movement and Sport

1.Introduction
2.Exercise prescription: a functional approach
3.A process model for exercise prescription
4.Supporting repair processes
5.Supporting adaptation processes
6.Supporting alleviation of symptoms
7.Shared management principle
8.Developing self-care programmes
9.Summary

In Functional Exercise Prescription Eyal Lederman presents a revolutionary new approach for exercise prescription that uses the individual’s own movement repertoire. The book demonstrates how daily activities (“the life gym”) can be amplified to provide the necessary movement challenges to support movement rehabilitation in many musculoskeletal and pain conditions. Hence, all activities can become remedial without the need to prescribe unfamiliar exercise; in other words, ‘how to exercise without exercise’ or ‘how to rehabilitate without exercise’.

People recover from most musculoskeletal and pain conditions through three key processes: repair, adaptation, and alleviation of symptoms. The author explains how to identify the individual’s recovery process and how to select the appropriate daily or sporting activities, and, how they can be modified to support recovery.

Functional Exercise Prescription is a dramatic departure from the traditional strength and conditioning models that have been used for rehabilitation. The book explores the limitation of these models and explains how they can be replaced by functional daily activities. It provides the practitioner with practical tools to construct a tailor-made plan for each individual to help expedite and optimize their recovery. Most rehabilitation can be constructed from a small familiar set of daily or sports activities.

All human physical activity is exercise. Life is your gym.

Eyal Lederman graduated from the British School of Osteopathy in 1986. Since then he has been practising as an osteopath in London. He completed his PhD in physiotherapy at King’s College, London, where he researched the neurophysiology of manual therapy. He has also researched and developed Harmonic Technique, Functional Neuromuscular Rehabilitation, Functional stretching and a new clinical model in osteopathy called Process Approach.

Eyal is currently a Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Health, University College London, where he is involved in researching the clinical application of stretching, functional movement rehabilitation and the science underpinning manual and physical therapies.

In addition to his clinical work and his research interests Dr Lederman is the director of CPDO, a UK-based centre providing continuous professional development for manual and physical therapists. Several of the manual and physical therapy approaches he developed are now taught as part of undergraduate and postgraduate training both in the UK and elsewhere.  He has published articles in the area of manual and physical therapy and is the author of the books: Harmonic Technique; Fundamentals of Manual Therapy; The Science and Practice of Manual Therapy; Neuromuscular Rehabilitation in Manual and Physical Therapy; and Therapeutic Stretching: Towards a Functional Approach. He has also contributed chapters to many other books in the areas of osteopathy and physical therapies.