First Line is a continuing education company with a wide range of courses taught by health care professionals such as kinesiologists, athletic therapists and physiotherapists. We do not offer certifications following the completion of our courses however many organizations recognize our courses for their required continuing education programs.
We know from experience that the more exposure to guided practice we have from people who work in the field every day, the better our clients perform and the higher their level of satisfaction with us. Ultimately, the more experience we have in quickly identifying and correcting our clients’ issues, the more we are able to effectively build our businesses through our clients’ referrals. With solid client results we gain more respect from our health care peers.
We recommend that, if you are new to First Line, you begin working through our courses in a specific order. If you are new to the therapeutic exercise/fitness business, it may be helpful to begin with our comprehensive Business Management Skills for Health Care Professionals course. This course is available either in a class environment or as a correspondence course. Completing this course will give you an excellent background to starting off right as an employee or consultant and building your client list or fitness business intelligently from the ground up.
Next we recommend completing the Level 1 Functional Movement Screen (FMS) course called Functional Movement Screening and Corrective Exercise. The Level 2 course presented by FMS is called Advanced Corrective Exercise. Two other courses taught by the FMS group to further your expertise are: Selective Functional Movement Assessment Levels 1 and 2. First Line is affiliated with FMS to bring you these courses to compliment your practice.
As you learn to identify movement imbalances you will then need to understand the need to do the more detailed assessments presented in our Clinical Assessment courses. These assessment courses analyze core stability and very specifically examine the scapula and pelvis for movement impairments that may be causing your clients pain or the inability to progress their exercise programs. In these courses we also teach you how to do a neurological screen; critical to identify the need for referral.
As you examine your assessment findings you will see a path of therapeutic and then general fitness exercise progressions emerging to get your client back to full function and fitness. Students who have taken the Therapeutic Exercise Progression courses first say that they would have preferred to take the assessment courses prior to our exercise prescription courses because they are quite linked.
The remaining courses can be taken at any time or mixed in with the screening, assessment and prescription courses as you wish. These sessions have very particular foci with special population groups. Understanding these special populations in detail is critical as these clients are becoming more common in our practices every day. Every effort is made to keep these courses updated with the latest rehabilitation research and fitness trends to ensure you always feel confident with your clinical knowledge when trained by the First Line team.
CanFitPro has already approved all First Line courses for continuing education credits. We are in the process of having all of our courses recognized for continuing education credits by the National Strength and Conditioning Association and the American College of Sports Medicine as well.
If there are any areas of interest or client groups that you think First Line should address in our courses, or if you would like to design and/or teach a course with our First Line team, please contact Monika Wawrow, Vice President at (416) 405 – 9955 ext 1.