One of the best things about the information age is the amount of great content out there.  There are so many smart, generous individuals sharing information that can improve your skills and increase your quality of care.  These blogs are accessible, straight forward, and clinically applicable.  Here is my year end summary of some of my favorite stuff from this past year.

I came out of the stone-age and started using Google Analytics, which allowed me to see which of my articles were most popular, and which ones were only read by my girlfriend.  It wasn’t what I expected.

Keep in mind that these lists are in no particular order.  And also, this is just a small amount of the great articles out there.  It’s just the ones I enjoyed the most from a years worth of Hits.  If your favorites weren’t listed here, please feel free to leave a comment with your Top Reads.

Top 5 Theoretical Reads

1. Zac Cupples – The End of Pain
2. Placebos – Nicholas Humprhy, Todd Hargrove, DPPT
3. Todd Hargrove – A Systems Perspective on Chronic Pain
4. Andreo Spina – Functional Exercise
5. Our Kids, Our Species – Eric Cressey, Seth Oberst, Angela Hanscom

Top 6 Clinical Reads

1. Morphology – The Gait Guys (1, 2, 3a, 3b, 4), Dean Summerset, Paul Grilley
2. Jaw Position & The Tongue – Seth Oberst, Zac Cupples, Kathy Dooley
3. Erson – Redefining the Smudge
4. Loading Tendons – Michael Kjaer, Jill Cook
5. Gray Cook – Coaching vs. Correcting
6. Bret Contreras – Hip Extension Forces with the Deadlift, Squat, & Hip Hinge

Top 6 Research Reads

1. The millions of articles on the importance of sleep (see references in this article – constantly updated)
2. The importance of muscle mass in mortality
3. Whether the RTC repair is intact or not doesn’t matter
4. Ice possibly delays healing
5. See a PT and save $2 Million
6. Erson – Top 5 Articles That Changed His Practice

Top 5 Exercises

1. Bret Contreras’s Hip Thruster
2. Mark Cheng’s Sphinx Progression
3. Foot Wave
4. FMS/Strongfirst ASLR Kettlebell Correction
5. Crawl Progressions

Top Course

•  PRI Pelvis Restoration with Jen Poulin

I don’t know if it’s the learning curve, the culmination of the information, chunking, or Jen Poulin.  But this really pulled together the PRI concepts for me.  I was able to use PRI much more efficiently and able to apply the concepts more often in the clinic.

I will say that if you are interested in PRI you have to go to a live course.  The home study courses are good, but they don’t compare to the live events.

2014 AaronSwansonPT.com

What I Thought Were My Most Important Articles

• Everything is Moving Proximally
• 4 Mistakes People Make with the FMS System
• The Art of Recovery (Part 1 & Part 2)

What Were My Most Popular Articles

• An Open Letter to Crossfit: The 2 Mistakes (Part 1 & Part 2)
• The Deep Squat
• Mark Cheng Prehab-Rehab 101 Review

Self Clinical Review

4 Clinical Mistakes I Learned From

1. Letting the patient off the hook (for not listening, not exercising, not living a healthy lifestyle, not taking responsibility, dogmatic beliefs, not trying)
2. Not following up with discharged patients to ensure 100% recovery
3. Using pain science as an excuse
4. Overloading patients with assessment results and information

9 Clinical Epiphanies

1. Forefoot pathomechanics, assessment, and treatment implications
2. Importance of morphology (osseous structures)
3. One way or another, everything comes back to the core
4. How to build true scapula stability
5. Importance of direct communication and laying it all out on the table for your patients
6. And then LISTENING to what they think about it
7. Neck patients are rarely just mechanical/kinesiological patients
8. I finally understand what Sahrmann and Kinetic Control is really about
9. The Vestibular System might be the best way to progress static stability exercises