Gait Deviation – Excessive Inward Rotation of Hip Joint
Excessive inward rotation of the hip joint can be a contributing factor to development of repetitive use injuries of: Lateral hip pain (gluteal muscle tendinopathy) Buttock pain (piriformis syndrome) Anterior knee pain (patella femoral arthralgia) Lateral knee pain (IT band syndrome Shin pain (posterior tibial tendinopathy) Plantar heel pain This video first illustrates the gait…
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Shoe drop – how the pendulum swings
Put on your high-heel sneakers, Lordy Wear your wig-hat on your head Put on your high-heel sneakers, child Wear your wig-hat on your head Ya know you’re looking mighty fine, baby I’m pretty sure you’re gonna knock ‘em dead – Tommy Tucker Growing up in the 1960s, I remember the song, “Put on Your High-Heel…
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It’s not hip to be in pain – Gait analysis & training can improve those pains in the backside
Are you experiencing pain in the lateral aspect (outer side) of your hips and/or buttocks when you walk or run? If so, using slow-motion video to identify gait deviations and working on your gait with a physical therapist can help solve the problem. Gait deviations are movements that differ from the norm. A deviation can…
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How to do the analysis of slow-motion video of human movement
Smart phone video technology provides significant opportunities to analyze human movement. There are four steps involved in using smart phone video for slow motion video analysis. Each step has considerations, challenges and barriers that need to be addressed. The four steps are recording movement; analyzing the movement; storing the video data; and retrieving the video…
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Slow motion video (Smart Phone) analysis is under-utilized, & under-valued
Being an old Physical Therapist I have had the good fortune of being around to observe significant changes and advances in the technology available to perform motion analysis. When I began analyzing the gait of runners many years ago, I used analog video cameras which required large VHS tapes and separate VCR playback units. The…
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That’s a Stretch: Why Stretching May Not Always be the Solution
It’s good to stretch a dollar. It’s bad to stretch the truth. But what about stretching your calves? That might depend on whether you believe Dr. Google every time a search result says to stretch sore calves. Calf stretching aims to increase the range of motion (ROM) for ankle dorsiflexion. “Dorsi” is a prefix meaning…
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Keeping the Spring in Your Step: Ankle Joint Power & Aging
As we amass more birthdays and get older we tend to walk/run slower, take shorter steps, and fewer per minute. Why do we seem to have less spring in our step the older we get? Kids move fast and crash elderly move slow and crash. One factor is kids have good ankle power elderly…
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Lateral Pelvic Tilt Sitting
When oriented normally, the pelvis appears level and symmetrical. But in individuals with a lateral pelvic tilt (also called pelvic obliquity), one side of the pelvis appears lower than the other side. Lateral pelvic tilt can both cause and compensation to avoid musculoskeletal pain. It can be a contributing factor to jaw pain, headaches, shoulder,…
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Musing on Empathy and Pain
Empathy is more than compassion and caring. Empathy is putting oneself in another person’s shoes and actually feeling what that person feels. Recently, I experienced a flare of rheumatoid arthritis with significant disabling hip pain. Deep in misery, I searched for the positive side of my suffering. I thought: “This means I will have more…
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