Biokineticist

What we do:

1. Comprehensive Health Assessments and follow-ups – as per Once Active Gym methodology
2. Medical Aid Fitness Assessments (Discovery Vitality, Momentum Multiply Health and Fitness Assessment, Bestmed and Medscheme)
3. Orthopedic Injuries – prevention and treatment of injuries with a specific focus on injuries of the ankle, hip, knee, shoulder, and lower back
4. Pre- or post-surgery rehabilitation – Pre-habilitation before surgery to ensure a faster return to function following surgery; post-operative rehabilitation and return to function
5. Chronic/Disease management – a focused approach on chronic disease management, including obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, pulmonary diseases, stroke, cancer, and neurological conditions
6. Postural screening and biomechanical assessments
7. High-performance testing and conditioning

A Biokineticist is a clinical exercise specialist who:

• Functions within professional alliance to health and medicine, and is recognised by and registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa.
• Improves a person’s physical well-being and quality of life through individualised scientific assessment and the prescription of exercise in rehabilitative treatment to prevent or intervene with certain ailments and the enhancement of performance (sport and work).
• Evaluates & Measures: body posture, body composition, blood pressure, glucose levels, lung function, heart rate, fitness, muscle strength, endurance, power, flexibility and other health screenings.
• Is a health professional who through health promotion and wellness create a better quality of life for people they work with.

Movement is an essential part of everyday life, for people of all ages. Movement affects development, learning, communicating, work capacity, health, and quality of life.

Movement permits people to navigate and stay oriented within their environment. It allows people to interact more fully in their work and recreation. It is a defining element of quality of life.

Movement may be diminished or lost due to heredity, ageing, injury, or disease. Such loss may occur gradually, over the course of a lifetime, or traumatically in an instant.

Conditions of movement loss that are linked with chronic and disabling diseases pose additional challenges for patients and their families. From the public health perspective, the prevention of either the initial impairment or additional impairment from this environmentally orienting and socially connecting functioning, requires significant resources.

Prevention of movement loss or the resulting disabling conditions, through the development of improved disease prevention, detection, or treatment methods or more effective rehabilitative strategies, must be a global priority.

The profession of Biokinetics has evolved as a primary care health profession responding to the universal need for quality, accessible, cost-effective health care.

• Biokineticists are widely distributed in communities around the world;
• They provide economic value for the services they offer;
• They detect a wide spectrum of conditions at a savings to the health care system;
• They provide entry into the health care system for many patients who would otherwise not seek care;
• they prepare our children for the competitive marketplace by assuring their physical fitness and preparedness for learning and achievement;
• They maximize employment productivity and benefit economic stability; and they promote quality of life and individual independence, rather than more costly institutionalized and supported care.