You already know what hurts.
The important question is why.

Why this matters for your caseload

GBD 2021 Low Back Pain Collaborators, Lancet Rheumatology 2023

You already know how to think like a clinician. This course doesn't teach you how to reason — it gives you more to reason with: movement, fascial, and reflex patterns that may never have been part of your training.

From clinicians who've used this approach

Hear it from someone who's applied it

Why this method exists

Where component-based training stops, systems thinking begins.

You'll stop hoping your treatment works … and start knowing why it will.

Does this sound like your caseload?

If any of these sound familiar, this course was built for you.

Inside the course

How the course works

It's simpler than it looks. The Introduction through Chapter 4 lay out the framework — movement, fascial, and reflex patterns. From Chapter 5 on, every chapter covers one specific problem that creates pain somewhere else in the body, and every one of those chapters follows the same three-part pattern:

1. 1
   Test

   A specific test for this pattern

   A hands-on or observational test that tells you whether this particular problem — anterior femoral glide, femoral anteversion, a scapular pattern, and so on — is present in this patient.

2. 2
   Interpret

   What the result actually means

   How to read the test result and understand why it matters to the entire movement system — what it tells you about where this patient's pain is really coming from.

3. 3
   Correct

   The fix — exercise, taping, or habit change

   The specific correction for what you found: a corrective exercise, a taping technique, a habit change, or a manual therapy recommendation, demonstrated on video.

That same pattern repeats, chapter after chapter, for every region covered in the course — from head to toe. And then you learn how it all fits together: how a femoral anteversion pattern from Chapter 10 changes how you'll interpret the glutes test in Chapter 11, how a sidebending pattern from Chapter 7 can be quietly feeding a scapular pattern in Chapter 14. You'll learn how these individual findings compound and mix — because that's how chronic pain actually gets created and sustained: not by one broken part, but by problems that feed each other.

The three case studies then show you how to combine findings across multiple chapters into one coherent plan for a real patient — and every chapter, case study, and the final review ends with a scored quiz (80% to pass) before your certificate is issued.

Course outline

What's covered, chapter by chapter

Because this is a systems course, it covers the body head to toe, not just one joint. Fourteen chapters build the framework — the Introduction through Chapter 4 lay the foundation, and starting with Chapter 5, each one covers a specific problem that creates pain somewhere else in the body.

• Intro
  Why Chronic Pain Requires Systems Thinking

  The scale of the chronic pain problem and why treating the site alone stops working once pain becomes chronic.
• Ch 1–2
  Patterns of Movement

  Movement-impairment problems driving back and sciatic pain.
• Ch 3
  Fascial Patterns

  Fascia as a continuous, force-transmitting, sensory network linking distant regions of the body.
• Ch 4
  Reflex Patterns

  Primitive neurological reflexes and how they shape posture and movement into adulthood.
• Ch 5–6
  Flexion & Extension Problems

  A simple test and what to do about them.
• Ch 7
  Sidebending Problems

  Testing 2 ways, why this is mistaken for leg-length discrepancies, and how to quickly solve them.
• Ch 8
  Compensation

  How to understand if you're looking in the right place for pain.
• Ch 9
  Thigh Muscle Length

  A hidden generator of pain above and below the femur.
• Ch 10
  Thigh Bone Shape

  Measuring femoral anteversion and retroversion and their role in foot, knee, hip, and back pain.
• Ch 11
  Gluteals

  Testing during gait, timing, and their role in anterior femoral glide syndrome (AFGS).
• Ch 12
  Calf & Soleus

  Functional testing and how to link the calf/soleus up the kinetic chain.
• Ch 13
  Bending

  Identifying bending mechanics and their relationship to pain patterns.
• Ch 14
  The Scapula

  Scapular landmarks, taping and strengthening for elbow, shoulder, cervical pain, and headaches — plus trigeminal neuralgia.
• Cases
  Three Applied Case Studies

  Chronic sciatica, hip, and neck pain and headaches — each with a full evaluation form, case-reasoning video, scored quiz, and patient-explanation video.

What you get

Everything in the course

Here's everything included with your enrollment — organized to be worked through at your own pace, and simple enough to start using with patients right away.

Continuing education details

Contact hours & CEU status

30 CEU / PDA contact hours — approved by APTA Colorado (Course #CEUL180048).

Built for physical therapists — and just as valuable for every professional who works with pain and movement.

CEU contact hours apply to licensed PTs and PTAs (Colorado). The framework itself has no such limits.

A working knowledge of anatomy and injury assessment is assumed; there are no other prerequisites.

Need to petition your own state board or employer for credit? A full documentation packet — including the instructional-hour breakdown, syllabus, and instructor CV — is available for download in the FAQ below.

Common questions

Questions people ask before they enroll

Before you go

Somewhere on your schedule this month is that patient.

The one who's already tried what you know how to offer. Not because you did it wrong — because the plan was aimed at the site, and the site was never the source. They're not looking for another round of the same exercises. They're looking for someone who can finally explain why the pain keeps coming back.

Right now, without a different way of testing, that visit ends the way the last few did — and somewhere underneath the polite nod, that patient is quietly wondering if someone else could help them instead.

You didn't get into this work to hand someone the same protocol that already didn't work. You got into it to find the answer. This is how you stop guessing.

That patient isn't hypothetical. They're real, and they're either on your schedule now or will be soon. The only variable is whether you have the tool to help them when they show up.

Who's teaching it

Taught by someone who's treated exactly these cases.

Rick Olderman, MSPT

Licensed Orthopedic Physical Therapist · 30 Years in Practice · 2025 NIEA Award Winner