Top IASTM Practitioners: Secrets to Choosing the Best Seminars | IAT®
What Do the Best IASTM Practitioners Know About Choosing Seminars That 99% of People Don’t?
As an IASTM practitioner, you're always looking to enhance your skills. But with so many seminars available, how do you choose the right one? Based on over a decade of teaching thousands of manual therapists worldwide, here's what sets top IASTM practitioners apart. From seeking systems to demanding relevance, these insights can guide your next training decision.
Introduction
Having traveled around the world meeting, teaching, and working with thousands of amazing IASTM practitioners, we can tell you that you aren’t alone. At some point in their career, almost all manual therapists—chiropractors, osteopaths, and massage therapists—find themselves wanting to make a change and learn a new skill set.
However, with over a decade of experience successfully hosting and teaching IASTM seminars, we’ve noticed that the very best IASTM practitioners share characteristics that others don’t. In this blog post, we'll explore these key traits and how they can help you select seminars that truly elevate your practice. Whether you're new to IASTM or an experienced practitioner, understanding these principles can lead to better patient outcomes and career growth.
For a foundational overview, check out our free Introduction to IASTM seminars.
#1. Look for Systems in IASTM Seminars.
The first characteristic that unites the best IASTM practitioners is that they ALWAYS look for seminars that teach systems. There are plenty of courses that teach a collection of unconnected techniques. While each individual technique has some worth, because it isn’t part of something greater than itself, it has limited value.
However, system theory states that the system is worth more than the sum of its parts. Or to put it into perspective for IASTM practitioners, the best in the world know a treatment system has more benefits than the individual techniques it comprises. It’s the interconnections that add the extra value. Those connections define the boundaries of each technique, how to move between them, and when to do so. Because systems lay out a precise road map for IASTM practitioners to follow, they lead to more efficient and effective progress.
The IAT® Treatment System taught in our Advanced IASTM Practitioner Certification does just that. It lets the practitioner flow through the clearly defined system of six interconnected manual therapy techniques, helping them not only elevate their treatment outcomes but do so in a way that saves them time and energy.
#2. Find Out Why IASTM Seminars Work.
Once they’ve found a system, the second trait that we’ve seen is that the best IASTM practitioners become super focused on finding out why the system works so well. They’ve realized something that many don’t stop to consider.
The challenge isn’t getting positive results without knowing why—that’s called getting lucky. The problems start when the good luck dries up. The best IASTM practitioners have figured out that without knowing the “why,” practitioners often end up repeating the same thing again and again, hoping for a different outcome “because it worked before.” That’s Einstein’s definition of insanity. It won’t achieve the results their clients deserve nor will it help the practitioner’s reputation.
The unfortunate reality is that many manual therapy courses do not do a good enough job of explaining why the techniques they teach work and how to avoid Einstein’s insanity. We believe that to achieve quick and effective results, IASTM practitioners need to know how to take advantage of the body’s neurological and physiological systems. It is the “why” of how our hands-on treatment system works so well, and we make sure you have all the information you need to take full advantage of it in the lessons of our IAT® Mini Course and advanced programs.
#3. Look for Relevance in IASTM Training.
The third characteristic that the very best IASTM practitioners share is looking for seminars that contain high-quality, relevant lessons that will help them achieve their goals. They know that many seminars contain a lot of fluff and filler to bulk them out and, understandably, don’t want to waste their time.
Here’s an example: There’s a degree for a particular manual therapy profession that contains in-depth information on innervation of the tongue, which they use toward the exam and the students' final grades. Now, maybe someone out there found that information so inspiring they went on to become the world’s only tongue manual therapy specialist, but for everyone else, it’s completely useless—devoid of any real relevance to IASTM practitioners of all professions and what they actually see on a daily basis.
Rest assured, all the information in our IASTM seminars is 100% relevant to help you maximize the results from the hands-on techniques we teach and is explained at a level of detail that you won’t find anywhere else. Not only that, but the feedback from the IASTM practitioners who we’ve taught is that it’s also relevant to the majority of the other techniques they use and has helped them better understand how to get the most out of those skills as well.
To learn about tool selection and relevance, explore our Introduction to IASTM Tools seminar.
Conclusion: Choose Wisely as an IASTM Practitioner.
As an IASTM practitioner, investing in the right seminars can make all the difference in your career. By focusing on systems, understanding the "why," and prioritizing relevance, you'll join the ranks of the top 1% who achieve exceptional results for their clients.
Ready to apply these principles? Browse our premium IASTM tools to complement your training, or dive into our full range of IASTM seminars for hands-on learning.
