Book Review: Assessing Neuromotor Readiness for Learning by Sally Goddard Blythe

You must be thinking “why would a fitness expert pick up a book on how to improve children’s learning?” No, I’m not making a career move to education. Nor do I or my staff work with children.

But I see some very interesting applications to helping my clients improve their performance.

In Assessing Neuromotor Readiness for Learning, the author, Sally Goddard Blythe explains that improper development during infancy and childhood may result in learning difficulties later on in life. In school, it’s manifested as trouble reading, writing, dyslexia, inability to sit still, and more. But who cares about school? That’s not who I’m working with.

Original source: here.

In the gym, my theory is that problems learning movements can come from the same root. So improper development in childhood can result in poor balance, poor technique, and some peculiar movements. For instance, with some clients, when I ask them to rotate their ankles, it seems that their hand comes along for the ride. They can’t discriminate between ankle motion and shoulder/forearm motion. And yet when you ask them “what are you doing with your hand?”, they always answer “I don’t know.” I suspect it has to do with brain centres that control one motion would also control another. Hopefully during infancy, they learned to differentiate that, but in many cases, that doesn’t happen.

So in Assessing Neuromotor Readiness for Learning, Sally Goddard Blythe gives a series of tests to take your clients through to assess the presence of certain neurological reflexes.

This is followed up by precise instructions on specific exercises to do in order to correct faulty reflexes.

My theory is that the exercises are used to flood the nervous system with rich, sensory and proprioceptive information that dramatically improves movement.

Sometimes we, as fitness professionals try to improve a client’s posture, with no success. We stretch what’s tight and strengthen what’s weak. And it works. In some people. But not everyone. Could correcting certain neurological reflexes be the answer to postural correction?

After all, posture isn’t just about muscles. It’s also about the nervous system. This would consist of the visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems, and unless you address any dysfunctions in these systems, you’ll have a very hard time correcting posture by just training muscles.

In short, I’m looking forward to implementing what I learned in Assessing Neuromotor Readiness for Learning to see if it has the desired effect on posture, balance, and coordination.