Your employees show up every day and give it everything they’ve got.
They may be lifting, reaching, bending, and standing for hours. Some are hauling gear or stocking shelves. Others are probably hunched over a desk or behind a counter.
But whatever the job itself looks like, one thing is true across the board: your employee’s bodies are their most important tool.
And just like any tool, when the body starts to wear down in the wrong places, things break. And they can break fast.
Our team at Axis Sports Medicine has spent a lot of time helping people recover from injuries. But our favorite work? Helping people avoid getting hurt in the first place.
That’s where Functional Movement Screening — or FMS — can make a huge difference for people of all ages.
What is a Functional Movement Screen?
Think of it as a check-up for how your body moves, not just how it feels.
A Functional Movement Screen is a short, structured series of seven fundamental movement tests. It includes things like squatting, stepping, lunging, and reaching.
We’re not looking for how much you can lift or how fast you can go. We’re watching how your whole body works together as a system.
When we run a Functional Movement Screen, we’re not focused on one muscle or one joint. We’re watching how everything talks to each other. We find that that’s where the real story is
The movements are intentionally designed to put your body in slightly challenging positions. Through those movement, we surface the subtle imbalances, mobility restrictions, and stability issues that a standard checkup would completely miss.
The best part of an FMS? The whole screen takes about 15–20 minutes. That’s a small investment to help you prevent and avoid potential injuries.
And for business owners, this is well worth the time to keep your best people feeling great.
Your Employees Are Everyday Athletes
We work with a lot of skiers, mountain bikers, and trail runners here in Eagle and Summit County. After years of helping athletes perform better and recover faster, we’ve realized that this work is just as important for everyday individuals.
Think about the physical demands of most jobs – they aren’t so different from those of sport.
- A warehouse associate does dozens of lifts per shift.
- A ski resort employee shoveling and carrying equipment for eight hours.
- A construction worker on uneven terrain all day.
These are athletic demands — they just don’t come with a coach. That’s the gap FMS fills to keep your best people feeling great.
What We’re Looking For in FMS
During the screen, our physical therapists are watching for two things: movement faults and asymmetries.
A movement fault might be a knee that caves inward during a squat, or a shoulder that compensates by hiking up during an overhead reach.
An asymmetry is when one side of the body moves meaningfully differently from the other — the left hip is more restricted than the right, for example.
Both patterns have been consistently linked to a higher risks of injuries such as strains and sprains. They’re the early warning signals your body sends before it raises a white flag.
The screen produces a simple score and movement profile for each employee. That gives us — and you — a clear, objective baseline to work from.
What a Screen Actually Looks Like
Here’s what a typical FMS session might look like for one of your employees — let’s call her Sarah, a lift operator at a local resort who’s on her feet for eight-hour shifts. She spends a good chunk of her day in and out of awkward positions.
Sarah comes in, and one of our physical therapists walks her through seven movements, one at a time:
- Deep Squat — Sarah holds a dowel overhead and squats as low as she can. We notice her heels lift slightly and her torso tips forward more than it should. That tells us her ankle mobility and hip flexibility deserve some attention.
- Hurdle Step — She steps over a bar set at knee height. Her right hip hikes up to clear it. A small thing — but a left-right asymmetry that flags her right side as the weaker link.
- Inline Lunge — Stepping forward onto a narrow line, she wobbles slightly to the right. That instability shows up again.
- Shoulder Mobility — She reaches one hand up her back and one down. Both sides reach comfortably — no issues here.
- Active Straight Leg Raise — Lying on her back, she raises one leg at a time. Her left side is noticeably tighter through the hamstring.
- Trunk Stability Push-Up — A single push-up that tests core control. Sarah holds her form well.
- Rotary Stability — On hands and knees, she extends opposite arm and leg. A little wobble, but nothing significant.
We personalize the FMS to each individual – making sure that every assessment is tailored to the person’s unique strengths and weaknesses.
What Happens After the Screen?
This is where the real value kicks in.
Once we have each employee’s results, we build a targeted corrective exercise program based on what we found.
But these aren’t hour-long gym sessions. We typically build out a strategy of focused, practical movements your team can do in just a few minutes a day, before a shift or during a break.
The goal is simple: fix the weak link now – before the weak link becomes an injury.
And because the program is built around each person’s specific results, it’s not generic advice that gets ignored. It’s actionable, and it addresses the exact issues that put that individual at risk.
Why Invest in FMS for Your Business?
Let’s talk numbers for a moment. We realize that HR and leadership need more than a wellness pitch to invest in these types of programs. But the benefits far outweigh the investment.
Studies show that work-related musculoskeletal injuries (back, shoulder, knee, and repetitive strain) are one of the leading drivers of workers’ comp claims and lost productivity across nearly every single industry.
And in mountain resort communities like ours, the physical demands of the work make those risks even higher.
FMS-based programs are specifically designed to get ahead of that curve. By identifying and correcting movement problems early, you’re reducing the likelihood of the costly injuries that follow.
What that translates to in practice:
- Fewer missed shifts and workers’ comp claims
- Less overtime spent covering for injured employees
- More consistent output from teams that feel good while doing their jobs
- A stronger safety culture — one that shows your team you see them as people worth investing in
That last point matters more than people often expect. In a tight labor market, offering something like FMS signals that you’re an employer who genuinely cares. That’s a retention and recruitment advantage, plain and simple.
Proactive Wellness – A Smarter Approach to Workplace Safety
Traditional workplace safety is reactive: something goes wrong, and then you deal with it.
FMS flips that model. It treats your team the way a great sports medicine program treats an athlete — with proactive screening, an individualized plan, and ongoing tracking to measure improvement over time.
At Axis, we’ve spent over a decade helping mountain communities stay active and healthy. We know that proactive work today prevents a number of issues down the road.
Your employees deserve that same care — and your business benefits when they get it.
Ready to Screen Your Team? Let’s Chat!
If you’re an employer in Eagle or Summit County and you’re ready to take a proactive approach to your team’s health and safety, we’d love to talk.
Our team will work with you to understand your workforce’s specific demands and build a Functional Movement Screening program that fits your schedule and your team’s needs.Reach out to us today — let’s build a plan that keeps your people moving well, working strong, and ready for whatever the mountain throws at them after the shift ends.
