Medically Focused Fitness - Donna McCook

01/08/2025

August Clinical Workshops – Shoulder & Cervical Spine Rehab
Heading to CANBERRA & PERTH

Ready to sharpen your clinical skills and level up your rehab outcomes?
Join me this August for a full-day, hands-on workshop designed specifically for rehab professionals looking to confidently manage shoulder and cervical / thoracic spine presentations.

📍 Canberra – Saturday August 9 (Shoulder Rehab)
📍 Perth – Saturday (Shoulder) & Sunday (Cervical), August 23–24

You’ll walk away with:
✅ A refresh on relevant pathophysiology
✅ Simple, effective clinical assessment techniques
✅ Real-world case studies to apply what you learn
✅ Clinical reasoning tools to prioritise & problem-solve
✅ Exercise progressions that actually translate to outcomes
✅ Time to practice and refine your skills before Monday hits

This workshop blends evidence, experience, and practicality—so it’s ready to use the moment you’re back in clinic.

Spaces are limited. DM me or pick your course and register via https://medfit.co/courses-2025 to secure your spot!

29/06/2025

Heading for Melbourne on July 5th (Malvern East) to present my Shoulder Rehab Intensive course -
A full day of shoulder biomechanics, injury presentation patterns, clinical assessment, rehab starting and progression points, and case based applications.
Designed for EPs & Ex Scientists with rehab completely in focus.
Heaps of Practical elements included & small group training - so will be geared to exactly what you need from the day.
8 CPD points and ESSA accredited.
EOFY discount with early bird rate maintained & Places still available.
Check it out and come and join us! https://medfit.co/courses-2025

08/06/2025

Brisbane and Melbourne Spine and Shoulder Rehab Courses are coming up super fast -

Time to move out of your online learning bubble and get back into practical skill development, network, ask questions, check your techniques, apply what your learning. We are in a profession where we are working with people., we need to be good at it - in person.

4 hour "just the prac" in Brisi in just a couple of weeks.
This is the Lumbar Rehab 1 prac elements focusing in on clinical assessment pre rehab and also early phase lumbo-pelvic stability assessment and sequencing to get a solid base to build on.
June 21 is the date for this one and it is likely to be in the north side of Brisbane.

Melbourne and Brisbane then follow with the Shoulder Rehab and Advanced Lumbar Rehab full day courses. Both 8 hours of CPD and can be pretty confident you will come out with a new perspective on working with shoulders and lumbar injury / pain or dysfunctional presentations.

These are designed for EPs / ExScientists, but I welcome other allied health rehab professionals to also attend including Osteos, Chiros and we do occasionally have a Physio coming along too. Cross professional collaboration in an educational space is always a brilliant experience.

More details for the rest of the country ahead but I have attached a summary of the sites
Website for more though -
https://medfit.co/courses-2025

01/06/2025

If you are prescribing exercise for people with shoulders and backs… whether in targeted rehab or simply as a secondary “niggle” then my shoulder and back rehab courses are designed with you in mind.

Let’s revisit your knowledge on sequential loading; your understanding of identifying your key starting points; your pattern recognition of injury presentations; your structural biomechanical and healing know how; and of course - how to pull it all together.

Warning - this Is not simply an academic exercise - this is what I do clinically and with practice - it works.

July is Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide - full day face to face, prac and theory; and a fair bit of fun.
Come and join us!

Details and registration links here -
https://medfit.co/courses-2025

01/06/2025

If you work with people - injured or not, well - they all have backs and shoulders - and a lot of them will have niggly pains.

So - Lets talk about progressive loading, tips to identify your key starting points for your clients, key injury characteristics that may impact your exercisese choices, and how to develop solid rehab plans that can deliver results time and time again.

Warning! This isnt just an academic exercise; this is how I clinically practice.

Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide are the “hot spots” for training In July.

My - Full Day (In person) Intensives focused on shoulder and advanced back rehab are heading to Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide through July.

Check out the website for more info.
Come and join us! It’s always fun!

https://medfit.co/courses-2025

28/04/2025

A pretty extensive - updated summary on rotator cuff management. Practice guidelines. Published Aprill 2025

Good news though - exercise and rehab do have an important part in rehab and recovery. Found in Section 3.2 embraces exercise and motor control focused interventions.

Could be a good one to do a deep dive into for one of your CPD points for 2025!

https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2025.13182S

This evidence-based clinical practice guideline (CPG) aims to guide clinicians with recommendations covering the assessment, treatment, and prognosis of adults with shoulder pain with suspected rotator cuff (RC) tendinopathy, the nonsurgical medical care and rehabilitation of adults with RC tendinop...

15/04/2025

Cute article for Shoulder Rehab review - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11613131/

In summary - by adding in a squat to a band pull apart exercise when targeting the scapular stabilisers can result in increased activation of the lower and middle traps; and a relative reduction of the upper traps and SCM. This could be a good adaptation to use for clients in their home / rehab program if these muscles are being targeted. It can be hard to decrease the activation of those dominant upper thoracic / cervical muscles when there is some dysfunction - whether postural or other.

I suspect it may be attributed to the forwards posture positioning of the torso (although not directly discussed in the article) - so you may not get the same in a wall squat for example where the torso is upright and not requiring the mid thoracic and scap extensors to contribute to the overall torso position against gravity.

Enjoy! Full text is accessible via pubmed with link above.

24/02/2025

Nice wee article summary on IMAT - intramuscular adipose tissue. Some great stuff happening in this space.
New article
https://apple.news/AmmmMmtrJQkOjas_noRVlfA

Original article
https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehae827/7958241

You want this fat in your steak, but not in your muscles

18/02/2025

Musculoskeletal Rehab - heading your way in 2025:
Lumbar and Shoulder are in Focus this year with
Full Day Intensives, "Just The Theory" - a 6 hour Online course at your own pace; and "Just the Prac" - half day prac intensives running around the country. Something for everyone!

More Detail on my website - https://medfit.co/courses-2025 Early Bird Discounts available + Pre-launch discount option available for the new "Just the Prac" Shoulder and Rehab courses.

Get great at what you do. Musc Rehab is challenging but is also an absolute blast. How could I not be passionate about it!

Hope to see you there!

15/02/2025

Simple concept of replacing an hour of sedentary behaviour with sleep or exercise impacts BMI in young people. Nice wee study released from ACSM

model. Methods Self-reported BMI (height and weight), sleep duration, weekday SED, walking activity, and MVPA were obtained using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and International Physical Activity Questionnaire. Results Among participants (n = 1533, 20.1 ± 1.5 yr old), sleep duration (r = −0....

27/01/2025

2025 already!
I have just updated my website with a release of new courses and course dates for the bulk of the year.

It’s going to be a busy year ahead for me with a return to post grad study and continuation of my clinical passions of changing both clients through rehab and clinicians lives through sharing the research and clinical expertise I have developed through my career.

Having put a lot of thought into the changing CPD environment; I have included in some online options including a couple of “done with you” and “at your own pace” training series on the lumbar spine and shoulder; and some 4 hour practical intensives into the mix.

Check it out on the website; and a few more posts will emerge this year to help to keep you in the loop!

15/11/2024

Changing it up a bit for the end of the year some Live - Virtual Workshops for Nov / Dec including 3 x FREE Case Study sessions on Lumbar Spine and Shoulder Injury presentations & my Shoulder Rehab 1 Course that will be presented over a number of evenings to complete 8 hours of PD over the next month.

The case studies are new and 1 hour in length. I am keen to see how these run and get some constructive feedback on how they land with attendees - hence am offering them for free. I will revisit their format and your recommendations for 2025 with a view of integrating their format into my future programs available.

#1 Discal Injury (Lumbar Spine) 18/11
#2 Scapular Stability 20/11
#3 Facet Joint Strains (Lumbar Spine) 25/11

So - whether you have attended some of my courses before or have no idea who I am - come and join in and lets see how they roll! Hopefully hiccup free...

More details and enrollment links are available on my website -https://medfit.co/
Hope to see you there!