During this session, I spent 45 minutes doing a shoulder assessment on a player who had previously had treatment with the NHS, they knew what they’re injury was and they allowed me to do an assessment on them to see if I could work out what the issue was. I started by observation looking for any swelling, bruising, symmetry. moving on to palpation, palpating the bony landmarks, muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, etc and moving on to active, passive and resisted range of motion (ROM) assessing the end feel and the range of motion available at each joint them moving on to special tests including apprehension test, sulcus sign test, neer test, Hawkins-Kennedy, O’Brians, speeds test, Yergasons, empty can/full can and lift-off test. The Neer’s test and Hawkins-Kennedy were positive so this suggested a shoulder impingement.

I spent the other 45 minutes getting feedback and discussing how a previous client who has been experimenting with different types of taping for a supraspinatus impingement. He has been finding that the K-tape is the best solution for him as it allows him to feel stable and supported during training and games while allowing him to have enough movement during a game to use correct techniques for his position so until the player is no longer comfortable with this then we can try a different technique of taping to see if that is better suited to the player and their position.

Areas for improvement:

During the session, I did not know that if testing positive for a shoulder impingement the empty-can/full-can is a test for supraspinatus impingement which, was the injury the player had, and therefore I could have narrowed down the shoulder impingement to the exact place the impingement occurs. If I had more experience doing this sort of thing during training sessions it would benefit me greatly.