Glossary of Terms

Certified Polestar Practioner: a Pilates trainer certified through Polestar Education. This rigorous certification program integrates current advances in orthopaedic, biomechanical, sports medicine research into the traditional Pilates curriculum.

Core Control (Trunk Control, Torso Control): strength, endurance, and control over abdominal, pelvic floor, and intrascapular muscles to ensure a solid foundation against which your arms and legs can move with more accuracy and less work.

Function: may be defined specifically as activities of daily living (e.g., washing hair, climbing stairs, driving a car), but may also be defined by client’s desired outcome (e.g., able to jump in ballet class without pain; able to run 3 miles without difficulty).

Functional Fitness: training to improve strength, flexibility, and coordination during specific tasks (e.g., running, kick-boxing, dancing, figure skating, golf) as opposed to traditional training that focuses on one muscle group at a time, but may ignore habitual muscle recruitment patterns that may occur during a desired task.

Manual Physical Therapy: a subset of orthopaedic physical therapy that recognizes the benefits of appropriately applied massage, joint mobilization, myofascial release, and other hands-on techniques in the restoration of optimal biomechanics.

Orthopaedic Physical Therapy: rehabilitation that addresses musculoskeletal injuries and for which the desired outcome is improved function and diminished pain.

Performance: refers to the ability to execute high level, complex functional activities with maximum efficiency.

Pilates: An approach to exercise developed by Joseph H. Pilates that emphasizes core abdominal control, movement through a complete range of motion, integration of multi-joint movement patterns, and incorporation of mental imagery and breath control to learn new, more efficient movement patterns.

The Rehab-Fitness Continuum: an approach to practice that recognizes that rehabilitation and fitness are simply different points on a path towards a healthy lifestyle. This approach brings the musculoskeletal expertise of therapy into the fitness world to prevent injuries, maximize the efficiency of workouts, and ensure that the functional goals of clients are met. It emphasizes client and patient responsibility, but recognizes that motor learning and movement integration are complex tasks that require highly skilled verbal, tactile, and visual cuing to achieve the desired outcome.

Whole-istic: describes an understanding that the entire musculoskeletal system must be taken into account when rehabilitating an injury or advancing fitness. We cannot treat one isolated joint at a time nor train one isolated muscle group at a time and expect that our bodies will integrate new motion or strength in a habitual movement pattern without specific training to change that pattern.