Playing change of direction sports is a well-known risk factor for athletic groin pain. Yet most clinicians don’t look at this. I believe this is the case because most clinicians aren’t sure what they’re looking for. This means they are often treating the symptoms but not changing the largest risk factor.
I’m hoping this tool can help you:
- Feel more comfortable evaluating cutting and changes of direction
- Get to the root cause of your clients groin pain
- Build better treatment plans and get better results
Get better results with the Cutting Movement Assessment Score (CMAS)
The CMAS is a movement assessment tool that evaluates an athletes cutting ability.
I recently had an athlete present with chronic adductor-related and inguinal-related groin pain. In games, anytime he started going hard he’d have pain. To manage, he had been doing a ton of strength work. He had great groin strength and good hip mobility. On a global movement screen, he moved well with some ankle mobility restrictions. A year ago, I would’ve told him to continue strengthening and gave him some ankle mobility work.
But I used the CMAS to look at his cutting quality which is where he had a lot of issues.
Rather than give him more Copenhagens, we worked on changing his cutting.
One of the most common flaws I see in athletes with groin pain is they tend to reach with their cutting leg. This puts a ton of stress on the pelvis, abdominal muscles and groin muscles.
The first thing I typically work on is getting them shifting their weight onto their cutting leg. Once they are able to do this well, I’ll add resistance, speed and then move to more complex exercises.
I use the CMAS to minimize the stress on the groin
Cutting and change of direction sports put a lot of stress on the groin. This is why we often see overuse groin injuries in these sports. Unfortunately, groin strength exercises are adding unnecessary stress to an overuse injury.
My goal with a lot of my athletes with groin pain is to minimize groin stress in cutting. By evaluating their ability to cut, I can make changes to lower the stress on the groin.
This tool has been a game changer for me. I’m confident it can be a game changer for you as well.
PS: Here’s the link to the CMAS paper
PPS: I have 100+ exercise videos on my YouTube page, including those I use to treat groin pain in athletes from cutting sports.