Clinical Clarity Through Inhibition Tests

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Where should I treat first,” this is the episode for you.

This episode of the Unreal Results podcast, is all about one of my favorite tools that’s simple to implement and wildly effective at uncovering what’s actually driving pain: inhibition tests.

You’ve probably heard me reference inhibition tests in past episodes and today I’m breaking them down into what they are, how they work, and why they can be a game-changer in identifying hidden drivers of pain, mobility limitations, and strength loss.  You’ll hear me talk about what makes a good inhibition test, why so many people get it wrong, and how this approach can take you from guessing to knowing exactly where to start treatment.

Whether you'rve been using the LTAP™ for some time or just starting to question traditional orthopedic thinking, this episode will show you how to listen to the body in a whole new way and get those jaw-dropping “holy cow!” moments in your sessions.

Resources Mentioned In This Episode
2025 Birthday Sale! Get the savings HERE
Episode 6: The Mysterious, Misunderstood, and Mistreated SI Joint
Episode 9: Left Sided Sciatica or Right Sided Shoulder Pain?
Episode 16: Why The Shoulder Comes Last
Episode 54: A Better Way To Assess The SI Joint
Episode 77: The Controversy of the Gillet SI Joint Test
Get the book Visceral Manipulation II by Jean-Pierre Barral
Learn the LTAP™ In-Person in one of my upcoming courses

Considering the viscera as a source of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction is a great way to ensure a more true whole body approach to care, however it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start, which is exactly why I created the Visceral Referral Cheat Sheet. This FREE download will help you to learn the most common visceral referral patterns affecting the musculoskeletal system. Download it at www.unrealresultspod.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Clinical Clarity Through Inhibition Tests
• 2:51 Understanding Inhibition Tests
• 6:28 Practical Applications of Inhibition Tests
• 13:48 Common Inhibition Tests and Their Uses

Transcript

Anna Hartman: Hey there and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone, even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs in the nervous system on movement, pain and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole body assessment and treatment really looks like.

I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Unreal Results Podcast. Um, man, it's always like, you know, I do this every time, like, what should I talk about today? And I was gonna talk to you about a case I had yesterday, but I haven't been able to. Give the rundown to the clinician who referred me on the case yet.

So I want to do that first before I share it with the world. Uh, so that will be upcoming. But when I was reading a little bit about the visceral organ that I thought I was gonna be talking about because of that case I came across, um, some information in one of the visceral manipulation books, actually the Visceral Manipulation two revised edition textbook, and which I'll have Joe link in the show notes.

Um, if you haven't looked before, a lot of the visceral manipulation books, especially those older ones, um, don't buy them on Amazon. They're like crazy expensive. Buy them directly from the Barral Institute, much cheaper. Um, granted it's not quite as easy as purchasing something on Amazon, but saves you money direct from the source.

Um, they ship really fast, uh, at least in my experience, so definitely advise. So, so, um, anyway, so when I was doing some reading, I was like, oh look, it's talking about inhibition tests. And a couple weeks ago when I was thinking about. What I wanted to talk about on the podcast, I was like, well, I should talk about inhibition tests because I mentioned them quite a bit.

Um, especially when I do share podcast episodes that are like cases, and I wanna talk more about 'em because they're so powerful. They're super powerful in getting buy-in to our clients, getting buy-in to yourself. And confirming what you're feeling with your hands often, um, to see how the visceral organs or just really any body part affects movement, affects strength, affects mobility, affects pain, and this can be really powerful because it gives you some insight into.

How your results will be after treatment. So the, the, the naming of the inhibition test fundamentally makes this very confusing for people because we think of inhibition in the sense of like the negative of like making things worse. Like turning things off. And, um, that is actually not what the inhibition tests do for us.

So it's a, it's a little confusing in that sense because we're looking for a positive change, not a negative change in things, but basically what an inhibition test is is. When mobility, strength or performance is influenced by, more than likely, we don't know this for sure, but the hypothesis is that is influenced by sensor information from another area to determine if that area is a driver of important information for how the body organizes itself for output.

So a lot of times when you learn inhibition tests in these osteopathic courses or in osteopathic book. Um, they're like, we don't know why this works, but it does. And like many things, we're still learning. We're learning a lot in how the body communicates, how the body organizes itself, how the body moves, and what we've learned, especially over the last 20 to 30 years with the rapid evolving base of knowledge and research in science in the world of fascia, um, confirms that we are sensory beings, right? One of my favorite quotes from Jill Miller, our body thinks and feels right, in sense. And so, um, we know that we have many more sensory nerves, many more sensory receptors than we do motor nerves, motor output, motor control things.

So just proves to you that we are very sensory driven. So more than likely, these inhibition tests work because of the improvement of sensory information into the nervous system, into the brain. That gives us a clearer message from the body of where things are coming from and whether or not the body should care about them in a, from a protection pattern standpoint.

So in an inhibition test, the way we use it within the LTAP is it can be a manual muscle test. It can be range of motion, active or passive range of motion, can be a movement quality test, or even pulse rate. Not the rate, right? Not beats per minute, but the quality of the pulse rate. So whether the pulse is very resonant or not the now.

So that's what the tests are. We're looking at traditional orthopedic objective measurements that we can see in real time or feel in real time and and then have a change. In fact, that's what I, the, the thing that makes a good inhibition test is going to be a test that has the ability to change. So if we're looking at shoulder range of motion as an inhibition test, if we've got crazy good shoulder, external and internal rotation range of motion, that's not a good inhibition test because it doesn't have a opportunity or doesn't have a very clear o option opportunity, um, possibility for change. I guess technically it could get worse, but we're looking for things that are going to improve the output.

Right, because we're looking for things that are going to confirm that if we do treatment in this other area seemingly not related, we're going to have a positive effect of what we care about, which in that sense is the shoulder. So a good inhibition test from a shoulder standpoint would be like if you're lacking external rotation.

So if you're like, okay, go to externally rotate and you can only go to here, that's like an ability to change. Then, so that's our inhibition test, shoulder external rotation. Then the actual act of inhibition is placing your hand or the clinic patient's hand a prop, like a, a weighted, like a very light weighted ball, a piece of tape, a towel.

It can be our breath. It doesn't have to only be our hand, but typically it is the clinician's hand. You place that over an area. It can be over an organ, a specific part of an organ, a specific joint, another joint. It can be over a nerve, it can be over tattoo, a scar, whatever it may be. You're gonna place your hand on that, and then you're going to retest the inhibition test to see if it changed.

So, this test is like the test that my athletes will look at me and be like, what? How did you do that? And then even your brain sometimes will be like, what? How did that change that? And you, you check it by then removing your hand, removing the inhibition, the active inhibition and retesting. For those of you who have taken the results cheat code online course or the missing link course.

Where I go over the first assessment of the locator test assessment protocol, which is the SI joint mobility test. We use a breath hold, we do a little small breath hold and then retest. So in that sense, the inhibition is the breath hold, and then the inhibition test is the SI joint mobility test. Now, I've got plenty of podcast episodes, all about the SI joint and that specific test, and I'll have Joe link those in the show notes too. But for the sake of this podcast, I wanna talk more about the rest of the inhibition test. So within the LTAP, we use inhibition tests to figure out which organ it is. Once we know it is a visceral organ in the thorax, the abdomen, or the pelvis.

And we pick the inhibition test, not based on the person's pain, because we're going to be retesting it a lot. So if somebody does have shoulder pain, I can use it as my final inhibition test to confirm it has an effect on their pain. But I don't like to do it as the inhibition test to give me the information because then I'm just sensitizing the pain.

So let's say somebody has, I don't know left wrist pain, we can use the shoulder, then we can use the right shoulder or the left shoulder. Which shoulder would we use? The one that has the ability to change. So the one that's lacking range of motion. So if it's the right shoulder's lacking external rotation, even though we don't understand how this might relate to left wrist pain, this is a good test to kind of tell us where the body is protecting what's going on from a visceral or other.

Bigger picture protection pattern. So we would take that inhibition test, and then we would lightly put our hand on the organ and then retest it. So, um, and we're looking for, we were looking for a positive change. Also know that this doesn't have to be done only in the supine position. It can be supine, seated, standing, whatever.

You can do it on yourself. You can do it on other people. I often do it on myself when things don't feel good to like dictate like, is this a joint thing or is this a muscle thing, or is this a visceral thing? So again, a good inhibition test. Is that the test? As a possibility for change. The in act of inhibition is typically a hand placement, but it can be a breath, it can be a prop, it can be tape.

What you wanna make sure is that it's not too much pressure, so light pressure about the weight of someone's hand, which is less than a pound, even like half a hand. It is all that's needed, and likely it is changing the proprioceptive input into that area, giving a clearer message to the spinal cord and the brain of what's actually causing the irritation or the lack of safety in the area.

And so in that moment when the brain has a clearer message. Mobility is granted back to the entire organism, or strength is granted back the entire organism. We no longer arrange our dynamic alignment around that blurry information. Okay? So, um, the tests that are most common that are described in that visceral manipulation two book.

Which is where I, how I got here in the first place and why I was like, oh, cool. I didn't even know that was a test. But it makes sense is um, they named three tests, I think three tests, but you can, again, you can do it anywhere. We do it anywhere with anything. But the way they first introduced it was through a test called, well, the glenohumeral articulation test.

Um, a Laseague's test, which is a, basically a neural tension test, and then also a gleno, a genitohumeral articulation test. So it is very well documented, well, maybe not very well documented, but it's, it would not be unheard of for someone to get a hysterectomy or endometriosis surgery or an ovarian cyst removed or some sort of gynecological, um, surgery and the doctor tell them after surgery, don't be surprised if you have pretty intense shoulder pain or neck pain. Nothing to be alarmed. It's from, they'll be like, it's from the gas in your abdomen or your pelvic area, or like, basically it's like the lining of your viscera get irritated, right?

The peritoneum gets irritated and that irritation shows up in a viscerosomatic reflex response to the shoulders. Now I have a whole podcast episode. I have a whole course about never treat the shoulder first. And this is exactly why, because the shoulder is a very viscerosomatic referral spot now.

So there this inhibition test, that genitohumeral articulation test would be you and this is common again. So another thing that's really getting more well known is like women in menopause have a high likelihood of getting frozen shoulder. Frozen shoulder has a high likelihood of being driven from some hormonal changes that go on during menopause.

So the test is inhibit the uterus and then check range of motion out the shoulder. And in this sense. You are checking the painful or pathological shoulder, right? That's the difference between this test that's described and the inhibition test that we use in the LTAP. I say let's not use the sensitive thing until the very end.

So I'm using, I'm not gonna use the person's shoulder, I'm gonna use like radial pulse, or I'm going to use hip flex to figure out, uh oh, it looks like the uterus, but then I'm going to confirm, okay, if it's your shoulder that has the problem, I'm going to inhibit the Ute uterus and then go to the shoulder and see how it changes the range of motion.

And this is confirmation that, hey, if I direct my treatment here, I should have a positive outcome on your musculoskeletal issues. So the glenohumeral articulation test is actually an inhibition with the liver. The liver is a very common driver to shoulder pain, and so that's the test they described. Now, why they chose to call the one with the uterus, the genitohumeral articulation test and the glenohumeral just with the liver one, I'm like, in my mind, they should have called it the hepatic humeral articulation test would've made more sense. But nonetheless, you get the point. And then the last test they described, and this, this I've, I've shared on YouTube video on Instagram posts pretty common.

So, um, pretty common sciatic pain. Sciatic nerve pain down the leg, right? Using the Lasegue's test as an inhibition test, you can inhibit the colon or the liver or any other structure. Retest the Lasegue's test and see if it changes the rage of motion of the straight leg race or their sciatic pain. So these are well documented inhibition tests that are classically showing you that the musculoskeletal restriction or the orthopedic thing that we think is orthopedic actually has an underlying driver that might be visceral or visceral somatic, right? This is such a powerful tool. This is literally parts of the LTAP. That's why I wanted to share it with you. The biggest mistake that people make when they're learning the LTAP and utilizing the inhibition test is proceeding with the inhibition test, like proceeding with the act of inhibiting the different organs before they have found a good inhibition test.

And what makes a good inhibition test is a test that has the ability to change. That's it. And then once you understand this concept of inhibition tests, you can utilize it for so many different things to be like, is this connected? Or even like, where should I treat first? Should I treat here first or should I treat here first?

What's gonna be more bang for my buck? Don't let it be a guessing game. Ask the body and ask the body through this way of inhibition tests.

I know it sounds too easy, and I know it sounds like really does this work, but yes, I promise you it works. It's super powerful and it can guide you so well, and the hardest part often is getting your ego out of the way and trusting that the body knows better than you do, and like following it and always going back, checking in with inhibition, tests, check, checking in.

Where do I go next? This is the practice of listening to the body by using very concrete orthopedic tests and then also goes to show you why sometimes restricted range of motion or altered strength at a joint is not a muscle problem, is not a joint problem. And because it's not a muscle or a joint problem, we have to treat it differently. We have to look bigger. We have to consider the whole organism, and that's the whole point.

Right, so hopefully this was helpful, especially for those of you who've gone through the ltap and are understanding a little bit more of what inhibition does. But if you're brand new, like play around with it, the next limited shoulder mobility you have, or limited ankle mobility you have, have them place their hand in different spots of their abdomen and like see if it changes.

It's wild. Had a patient this other day that. Her ankle mobility changed so dramatically after I treated an some genital, um, urogenital organs that I, we were both like, holy cow, this happens every session with people, these holy cow moments. And this makes treating people so much more fun. Promise. So have a great week.

We will see you next time.