Audience: Therapists and strength coaches
Purpose: Questioning a common belief with the use of simple joint mechanics and anatomy.
Caveat of Ignorance: This post is probably one that is more about splitting hairs and quibbling about small details than saying anything ground breaking. This post is unlikely to change your training routines, assessments or rehab protocols. Ideally, it sheds some information on how we explain what we do. (more…)
Update: I am not the first to write about this area. I found a great post by Todd Hargrove tackling the same topic and saying much the same (he does it more succintly and I address a few other areas as well). His post is here: http://www.bettermovement.org/2011/does-excessive-sitting-shorten-the-hip-flexors/
The Tight Hip Flexor Bogeyman
We too often tell patients that their pain, dysfunction or poor performance on any movement is due to the great bogeyman of hip function - TIGHT HIP FLEXORS. It is quite a go-to explanation for all things bad. Where this idea started I don’t know but it is certainly propagated by the Lower Crossed Syndrome Theory. This theory contends that dysfunction occurs when your pelvis is tilted forward as a result of tight hip flexors, weak glutes, tight low back muscles and weak abs. At its heart, this theory assumes the body works like a puppet where we can tension and loosen our strings (aka muscles) and watch our pelvis dance into some assumed nasty or happy position. (more…)
Audience: Therapists and Patients
Purpose: This post is video overview of the sample exercise progression I might advocate for patients (primarily runners) who present with persistent longstanding high hamstring pain.
Background
Runners, particularly faster runners, will often present with high hamstring tendon pain. The pain is typically felt where the muscles insert into the bottom bone of the hip (the ischial tuberosity). In addition to the hamstrings the adductor magnus can often be involved.
Audience: Runners and Therapists
Purpose: A quick guide to running injury prevention.
Preamble
Injury prevention for runners is not rock-solidly founded in science… and may not even be possible. With runners it is more injury management. You are going to get injured and you are going to have some aches and pains. The ideal is to minimize your lost training time and avoid some of the nasty injuries that can jeopardize your long term running and goals. (more…)
Rapid Fire Overview
Most of the ideas are from the work of Magnusson. I have been preaching this research for 15 years and was basically motivated because of self intentions. My flexibility is poor and I never thought that stretching the spine made any sense for low back pain prevention. I went out looking for some support and Magusson (1996) was the king in this area. A recent review is here (its free) He also has great research questioning the utility of eccentric loading protocols for tendinopathy as he prefers heavy resistance training (click here). I have a quick post here inspired by his work related to high hamstring tendon pain.
This article is purely conjecture. I have no hard data and would not even know how to create a study to test for it. BUT, I consider it biological plausible.
Tightness is a common sensation for people with pain and for athletes during training. However, when someone reports being tight in a region I find that they rarely are. Their range of motion will be wonderful, perceptually their tissue will feel “loose” upon palpation (warning: highly subjective on my part) yet they report tightness. Main point being there are no objective signs of tightness or limits in their range of motion. So why does the perception of tightness occur? (more…)
Audience: Runners and therapists
Purpose: A reference to compare running technique
Limitations: Many of us assume that there is one right and better way to run. Deviations from that ideal are assumed to lead to injuries and decreased economy. This is still a debatable concept. Everything I write can be questioned so please do so.
Below is a video of Nicole Stevenson (www.nicolestevenson.com). Nicole is Canada’s former number 1 in the Marathon with a personal best below 2:33. Nicole is also a running coach
I wanted to highlight some probably beneficial components of her running gait. Future posts will look a deviations from this gait and how they might relate to injury. (more…)
Audience: Therapists and patients with too much time on their hands
Purpose: Provide a mild critique of the utility of the prone hip extension test
Background
The prone hip extension test (or prone leg extension - PLE) is a very common clinical test in use for more than 20 years. Two influential clinicians have advocated its use although for slightly different reasons. Both Vladmir Janda and Shirley Sahrmann have described its use for decades. This blog will focus more on the clinical rationale that Janda proposed.
Audience: Runners
Purpose: To give a pictorial basic background into the movements that occur in the sagital plane (i.e. looking from the side) of the lower extremity during running at 3.1 meters/second (about a 5 minute km) and “sprinting” at 3.9 meters per second (about a 4.17 minute km). (more…)
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