Your body is a single, continuous mechanical system. A problem in your foot changes how your knee loads. A restricted rib changes how your shoulder moves. A jaw that doesn’t sit evenly affects how your head balances on your neck. At Pursuit Physical Therapy, our biomechanical assessment reads the entire system — from the ground up, from the periphery inward, and through all three planes of movement — because meaningful, lasting correction requires understanding how every part of you is connected to every other part.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

Before we look at your spine, we look at what your spine is sitting on. The lower extremity has a specific and underappreciated job: it makes an uneven world flat for the structures above it. Every time your foot contacts the ground, your ankle, subtalar joint, and foot arches are making thousands of micro-adjustments to absorb the irregularities of the surface beneath you — distributing ground reaction forces upward in a way that protects the knee, hip, and spine from impact.
When that adaptive system is working well, the forces of walking, running, and standing travel cleanly upward and the spine stays level. When it breaks down — when a foot pronates excessively, an ankle lacks full mobility, or a hip loses its ability to extend at push-off — the compensations travel upward through every joint in the chain. A foot that rolls inward creates an internal rotational force at the knee and hip that, by the time it reaches the pelvis and lumbar spine, is contributing to asymmetries and compression patterns that feel completely unrelated to the foot.
Our assessment maps gait mechanics, single-leg stability, foot and ankle mobility, and hip loading patterns. Treatment works to restore the lower extremity’s ability to do its own job — so that the spine above it can do its job, and locomotion becomes what it’s designed to be: an efficient, whole-body drive that propels you forward without creating mechanical debt with every step.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

Anterior-Posterior: Front to Back

In the sagittal plane — viewed from the side — we assess whether your body’s natural curves are balanced or have shifted. Forward head posture, rounded shoulders, an exaggerated lumbar curve, and a pelvis that tips forward or tucks under all represent front-to-back imbalances that increase compressive load on specific joints and set off compensations above and below. Treatment in this plane restores the natural curve relationships of the spine and rebalances the muscles that hold you upright.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

Lateral: Side to Side

In the frontal plane — viewed from the front or back — we assess symmetry from left to right. Uneven hip heights, a shoulder that sits higher on one side, or weight that loads consistently through one leg generate uneven forces through every joint in the chain. These lateral imbalances are often the least obvious to a patient and among the most mechanically significant. Our assessment identifies where the asymmetry originates — most often the pelvis or hip — and treatment works from that source outward.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

Rotational: Through the Chain

In the transverse plane, we assess how each major segment — foot, knee, pelvis, lumbar spine, thoracic spine, shoulder girdle, cervical spine — is oriented relative to the one above and below it. A pelvis that is rotated forward on one side changes the mechanics of every step. A thoracic spine that can’t rotate freely forces the lumbar and cervical spine to take on rotation they weren’t designed to bear. Treatment restores the mobility and motor control needed for each segment to carry its own rotational demand rather than borrowing from its neighbors.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

The shoulder girdle is often misunderstood as a shoulder problem when it is really a spinal problem. The arm has only one true bony connection to the axial skeleton — the sternoclavicular joint, where the collarbone meets the sternum. Everything else is muscular: the shoulder blade is held against the rib cage and moved through space by the serratus anterior, trapezius, rhomboids, and rotator cuff. That means the position and mobility of the thoracic spine directly determines the position and mobility of the shoulder blade — and the shoulder blade determines what the shoulder joint itself can do.
We assess the scapular resting position, scapular movement through the full arc of arm elevation, and how the shoulder blade tracks in relationship to thoracic rotation during reaching and overhead activity. We also look at how arm swing during walking contributes to — or disrupts — the counterrotation between the shoulder girdle and pelvis that makes gait efficient. Treatment restores the thoracic mobility and muscular balance that allows the arm to connect cleanly to the body, so that reach, lift, and carry don’t load the cervical spine or compromise the shoulder.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

Your head doesn’t just sit on top of your spine — it is actively positioned there by a sophisticated righting system that integrates input from the vestibular apparatus in your inner ear, visual information from your eyes, and proprioceptive signals from the joint receptors and muscle spindles of the cervical spine. The goal of this system is to keep your eyes level with the horizon at all times. It achieves that goal regardless of what the rest of the spine is doing, which means that when the pelvis is tilted or the thoracic spine is rotated, the cervical spine and head compensate to maintain level gaze — often creating chronic muscle tension, restricted rotation, and headache patterns as the price of that compensation.
We assess head and cervical position in three planes, suboccipital tension and mobility, and the relationship between lower-body alignment and where the head ultimately has to sit to keep the eyes level. Treatment addresses the full chain, because correcting only the cervical spine while leaving the pelvic or thoracic driver in place produces results that don’t hold.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

The jaw hangs from the skull at the temporomandibular joints, and the position of the jaw is inseparable from the position of the head. The suprahyoid and infrahyoid muscles connecting the jaw, hyoid bone, and sternum create a continuous soft-tissue chain that links jaw mechanics to cervical and thoracic posture. When the cervical spine is held in a forward-head position, the jaw must adapt — often through asymmetric muscle loading, altered resting jaw position, or joint mechanics that produce clicking, locking, or pain over time.
We assess jaw opening range and symmetry, lateral deviation during opening and closing, joint behavior, and the relationship between jaw position and cervical spine mechanics. We also look at chewing function — whether the jaw tracks symmetrically through the chewing cycle and whether one side is carrying disproportionate load. Treatment addresses both the jaw mechanics and the head and cervical patterns driving them, because resolving a jaw problem while leaving the cervical driver untreated produces exactly the same incomplete result as treating any other compensatory structure in isolation.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

Proper breathing is a mechanical event, and it requires mechanical freedom at every level of the rib cage and trunk. On inhalation, the diaphragm descends, the lower ribs flare outward and upward, the anterior chest lifts, and the abdominal wall gently expands in all directions to accommodate the descending diaphragm. On exhalation, the whole system recoils. That three-dimensional expansion — front, back, and sides — requires thoracic mobility, rib joint mobility, and an abdominal wall that can yield appropriately without collapsing.
When this system is restricted — by thoracic stiffness, rib fixation, an abdominal wall that has lost its normal compliance, or chronic postural patterns that compress the thorax — the body recruits accessory breathing muscles in the neck and upper chest instead. Scalenes, sternocleidomastoids, and upper trapezius become primary breathing muscles rather than postural ones. The breathing pattern shifts upward and the cycle of upper-quarter tension, cervicogenic headache, and limited shoulder mobility follows.
We assess three-dimensional rib cage excursion, diaphragmatic movement, breathing pattern under rest and load, and abdominal wall function. Treatment restores thoracic and costal mobility, retrains diaphragmatic breathing mechanics, and reconnects proper breathing to the postural and movement system it’s part of — because the diaphragm also attaches directly to the lumbar spine through its crura, making breathing mechanics a lumbar issue, a pelvic issue, and an autonomic regulation issue all at once.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

No part of this picture is independent. The foot makes the surface flat so the spine can stay upright. The spine stays upright so the head can stay level. The head stays level so the jaw can function symmetrically. The rib cage moves freely so the diaphragm can breathe efficiently. The arm connects to a thoracic spine that rotates freely, which means the shoulder doesn’t have to compensate, which means the cervical spine doesn’t have to compensate for the shoulder.
When one part fails, the whole system redistributes. Our assessment finds where the redistribution started, not just where it ended up. And our treatment works back toward the source — restoring the mechanical coherence that allows every part of you to do its own job, in all three planes, from the ground to the top of your head.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

Biomechanical therapy is approached through a combination of evidence-based techniques and patient education. Pursuit Physical Therapy’s goal is to ensure that we’re not only alleviating symptoms but also empowering you to maintain optimal biomechanical function, supporting your long-term musculoskeletal health and overall well-being.

Tailored to individual needs, biomechanical exercises aid rehabilitation, injury prevention, and overall physical well-being

By understanding the body’s biomechanics, we can develop tailored interventions that may include targeted exercises, manual therapy, and ergonomic advice.

Pursuit Physical Therapists apply meticulous analysis of your posture, gait, and joint mechanics to identify abnormalities contributing to pain or dysfunction.

Your treatment plan will reflect a holistic consideration of the symptoms you’re experiencing, underlying symptoms, and lifestyle influence. In other words, your full physiological picture.

With this approach, we can ensure we are treating and correcting the causes and not just temporarily alleviating symptoms. 

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