If you’ve used even a few of your Thoracic Ring Skills in the clinic you know the power of treating the Thoracic Rings when your patient has a Primary Thoracic Ring Driver.

But some patients have more injury history, play sports that create strategies that load the shoulder as well as the thorax, and more areas in their ConnectTherapy Driver Profile.

This course builds on the foundational Thoracic Ring Approach™ & ConnectTherapy™ assessment & treatment skills from ConnectTherapy & the Thorax course and gives you the clinical reasoning and skills you need to determine if your patient has a Driver in their Neck, Shoulder, or a combination of Primary / Secondary Drivers between the Thoracic Rings and these Regions – or – the common scenario of a CoDriver between the Rings and the Shoulder.

This is also a key course in the new ConnectTherapy Series curriculum – that is, if you’ve taken the ConnectTherapy & the Thorax, this course continues your Series journey and counts towards the ConnectTherapy Series Graduate designation.

This course will give you the skills to:

• determine if Neck symptoms referred pain from the Neck are just victims of a Thoracic Driver and / or a Shoulder Driver? Or is the Neck the Primary Driver?
• determine why your patient’s shoulder pain tends to “switch” from left to right, and whether or not the shoulder is a Primary Driver, a Secondary Driver at certain ranges or movements, or not a Driver at all
• do detailed Functional Movement Analysis and identify whether the behaviour of the C0 to C7 vertebrae is optimal or non-optimal for the patient’s meaningful tasks, along with “correction” skills to rule in and rule out the neck as part of the Driver Profile
• learn the pitfalls of common techniques to assess the glenohumeral joint and why these are not reliable or valid; learn how to use your hands accurately to assess the behaviour of the glenohumeral joint through upper extremity function and reason through the mechanisms of shoulder pain generators
• do Functional Movement Analysis of the glenohumeral joint and relate to the function of the Thoracic Rings (the foundation for the shoulder and shoulder girdle) to figure out how and why your patient is having any upper quadrant symptom
• review the key tests to determine if your patient’s symptoms are related to neural tension and how to test the impact of the Driver corrections on neural tension
• learn the signs that indicate the Foot/Ankle complex is a potential Driver for the patient’s neck / upper quadrant symptoms
• give simple cues to restore the optimal, healthy spinal curves between the neck and thorax as well as address the true underlying reason for forward shoulders and head forward posture – the answer is NOT to sit up straight and NOT to pull the shoulder blades down and back!
• learn Vector Analysis skills for Neck Drivers, Shoulder Drivers, and how to release CoDrivers between the Thoracic Rings and the Shoulder
• Discuss key exercise progressions and key differences in how to progress exercises for different Driver Profiles – we will cover the differences between exercise progressions for Neck Drivers vs. Thoracic Ring Drivers vs. Ring-Shoulder CoDrivers

Neck pain and Shoulder pain are so common in our patients’ experience, and this course will give you what you need to assess and treat the neck, shoulder and thoracic rings in a functional clinical reasoning framework that not only looks at each region, but enables you to see the connections between dysfunction and symptoms, and know what is the Driver vs. the Victim – making your treatment far more effective and increasing your job satisfaction and confidence.

For the most effective and efficient treatment pathway for these conditions and more, we need a whole body, whole person reasoning framework that provides an algorithm to differentiate true Drivers from symptomatic areas.

This virtual course includes 10 hours of self-paced online content – lectures and demonstrations that you have access to for 12 months from your registration date. You can watch these at your own pace, and access a Resource Library of practical videos that illustrate the techniques and concepts covered in the course.

Note: the Prerequisite for this course is completion of both the Virtual and In-Person components of the ConnectTherapy™ & Thorax Course.

The New ConnectTherapy Series Format:

Did you know? LJ has changed the structure of the ConnectTherapy Series to make it easier for you to take all the Series content when and where it fits for your life and schedule!

Do you want to take the full ConnectTherapy Series? If you have taken the ConnectTherapy & the Thorax course, you already have started the Series!

LJ has broken The Series down into short courses – so you can learn the content on different Drivers in the body with more flexibility and options. 

We’ve designed this new format based on feedback and requests for more flexibility than the old Series format could provide. 

This course, ConnectTherapy™ & Neck Drivers, Shoulder Drivers and Co-Ring Shoulder Drivers includes content from what was previously “Part 2” and “Part 3” of the ConnectTherapy Series. More options to help more patients Feel Better, Move Better and Be Better.