The method
After 10+ years of clinical work, we found that nearly every chronic pain pattern traces back to one of three foundational movements being broken. Find the broken one, retrain it, and the pain pattern goes with it. This page walks you through the framework, how we score it, and what the score becomes.
The Movement Paradigm
Breath. Brace. Hinge. Every chronic case we see runs through one of these three — and most run through more than one.
The framework didn't come from a textbook. It came from watching ten years of patients tell us where care didn't stick — and tracing it back to one of three things going quietly wrong.
Reset the nervous system. Reduce neck strain. Restore shoulder mobility. The first thing we look at — and often the first thing we fix.
Build a stable spine. Decompress disc bulges. Protect against injury. The bridge between breath and movement under load.
Move from the hips. Take load off the knees, neck, and low back. The single most underused movement in chronic pain.
The scoring system
Each pattern is scored on the first visit. We're not looking for what hurts — we're looking for what isn't moving the way it's supposed to. The score doesn't go on a chart. It becomes the care plan.
65 points across 7 movement-core tests, with a 16-point upper-extremity foundational sub-score.
How we evaluate
We watch where the breath actually starts. Is the diaphragm doing the work, or are the small muscles around the neck and shoulders compensating?
Tiers
What the score becomes
Apical breathers get diaphragmatic retraining first. Most patients feel the difference in the neck and shoulders by visit two.
How we evaluate
Can the trunk pressurize 360 degrees before load goes through the spine? Front, sides, back. Does the brace stay on under load, or fall apart?
Tiers
What the score becomes
A failed brace explains most chronic low-back we see. The plan rebuilds it from the ground up — diaphragm first, then bracing, then load.
How we evaluate
Watch the patient sit, bend, pick something up. Where does the motion happen — the hips, or the low back? At what load does the pattern fall apart?
Tiers
What the score becomes
A working hinge means the spine stops being a load-bearing wall. For chronic low-back, hip, and knee pain, the hinge is often the rehab direction the body's been waiting for.
The full 5.0 rubric
The keystone patterns above sit inside a longer assessment. Below is every test we run on visit one. We'll walk you through your specific scores in plain language while we go.
Movement core · 65 points
Upper-extremity foundational · 16 points
Movement Paradigm Scoring is a proprietary clinical tool developed at Move Better. The rubric above is the current (5.0) version — we update it as the clinical work teaches us what to refine.
How the patterns show up
What looks like back pain, shoulder pain, or headaches almost always traces back to a breakdown in Breath, Brace, or Hinge. Here's how we apply the Method to the most common conditions we see.
Most low back pain comes from overusing the spine and underusing the hips. We retrain the brace and the hinge so the load goes where it belongs.
Read more →
The pain shows up in your head, but the source is usually the neck, shoulders, and breath. We work upstream of the symptom.
Read more →
Most shoulders hurt because the shoulder blade isn't doing its job. The fix is teaching it to move again — not just adjusting the joint that's complaining.
Read more →
Knee pain rarely starts in the knee. It usually starts at the hip or the ankle, and the knee — stuck in the middle — pays for it.
Read more →
Your feet are the foundation of everything above them. When they don't load well, the rest of the body compensates.
Read more →
Even low-speed collisions generate real forces. Recovery is active, not passive — movement, vestibular work, and a graded return to the things you stopped doing.
Read more →
Pregnancy and recovery change how the body braces, breathes, and hinges. We work with patients carrying years of unnecessary pain because no one helped them rebuild after birth.
Read more →
See it in practice
Three patients, in their own words. Filmed at the clinic with their permission.
Next steps
The two-hour first visit is the test. We'll score the three patterns, tell you which one is broken, and write you a plan — or refer you to someone better suited if it isn't us.