STRENGTH. POWER. SPEED. These are all things lacrosse athletes strive for, but in so doing, they are sometimes putting the cart before the horse. These athletic components may, in fact, be the ultimate goals, but they should not be the starting points for an effective lacrosse training program, unless an athlete has been properly screened for movement pain, as well as general and lacrosse-specific mobility and stability. Problems can appear so subtle that athletes, coaches and trainers alike are slow to pick up on the snowball effect that follows.

The right corrective exercises could have averted injuries and sub-optimal play, because, even with "minor" limitations, performance will always suffer. For sustained, top-notch play, weaknesses and imbalances need to be called out and fixed.

Corrective exercises are designed to address and rectify physical limitations that an athlete exhibits during an insightful, targeted screening process. A specific limitation causes a certain motion to be performed improperly.

This "altered" motion leads to muscular compensation throughout the body. These compensations create pain sites and ultimately set an athlete up for injury somewhere down the line, not to mention the fact that they limit the ability to reach athletic potential.

By definition, corrective exercises "correct." In order to establish what it is that needs correcting, an athlete has to begin by going through a properly-designed evaluation or screen. Even in today's exploding sports training world, many young athletes are being deprived of this crucial first step to a successful training program. All too often, "training programs" offer "evaluations" which only look at performance measures — things like vertical jump, shuttle runs, the 40-yd dash, to name a few. It is not that these things are bad; it is that they do not look at the underlying physiology of the athlete to see if things are truly working properly.