Knowledge

Skeletal muscle is increasingly understood as much more than simply a means to achieve movement. Emerging perspectives highlight the importance of skeletal muscle as an organ system with endocrine, metabolic and homeostatic functions vital for health and wellbeing. Significant benefits to health can be gained from maintaining and strengthening skeletal muscle. This session explores the traditional and extended understandings of the role of skeletal muscle with emphasis on practical nutritional and exercise measures to conserve, enhance and optimise skeletal muscle structure and function.

In this lecture, you will learn about the common definitions of fatigue before understanding how different mechanisms of fatigue can be measured using lab-based stimulation techniques. Thereafter, the interplay of such mechanisms of fatigue will be covered, I will use an evidenced-based approach to cover athletic performance, sex differences, and extreme environments (altitude & heat). Most of the data will be drawn from the sport science area but inferences will be made to clinical populations throughout.

Whether you're a physical therapist, athlete, coach, or fitness professional, understanding training specificity is critical to optimising movement performance and recovery. This lecture dives deep into the principles of specificity - how training that closely mimics your goal activity can dramatically enhance outcomes, while poorly matched interventions can stall progress or even lead to injury.

This event will introduce the field of functional neurosurgery, where targeted incisionless interventions within neural circuits are used to modulate brain function and treat disorders of movement, pain, and mood. The session will focus on how these interventions work, when referral is appropriate, and what is known about their safety and effectiveness. Special attention will be given to focused ultrasound - a technology that combines imaging and energy delivery to offer functional neurosurgeons a precise, incisionless therapeutic option.