Deviant Gait – Compensation
Compensation is necessary when there is injury or a necessity of making up for something unwelcome or unpleasant. Compensation can be perceived as a negative or positive situation. With injury the dichotomy is will there be recovery or compensation? Salamanders are fascinating animals that are capable of regenerating lost limbs, as well as other…
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Body Proportions – Musculoskeletal Pain – Sports Performance
The importance of knowing how tall we are is somewhat obvious. What is less obvious is the importance of knowing the proportionality of our vertical height. The ideal proportionality of a human body’s stature was defined by Leonardo da Vinci. The “Vitruvian Man” or “drawing of proportions of man” is the ideal human proportions…
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Pain on Bottom of Heel: Too Much Big Toe Motion
Pain on the bottom of the heel (Plantar Heel Pain) is a complex problem with variable diagnoses and explanations. And with variable diagnoses there should be variations in treatment. Unfortunately, the common treatment recommendations do not recognize such variability. For example, the universal suggested treatment for plantar heel pain is calf stretching and stretching of…
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Aging Muscles & Tendons: Achilles/Calf Strain
As we age muscles and tendons will change. Calf muscles in older individuals are weaker, smaller, shorter, less stiff, and not as coordinated. Older athletes may experience greater incidence of injuries (Tauton 2003, McKean 2006). Two most common repetitive use injuries in older runners are Achilles tendonopathy and strained calf muscle (Marti 1988). A greater…
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Gait Analysis – Gait Training for Achilles Tendon Pain
The manner you walk or run can be one of the contributing factors to the development of Achilles tendon problems. If you are experiencing pain in the Achilles when walking or running working with your Physical Therapists and using slow motion video analysis the following model can provide a beginning point to solve the problem.…
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Strengthening Exercises for Intrinsic Foot Muscles
Exercises to strengthen the foot are frequently used to treat injuries to foot, ankle, knee, hip and low back. Toe curl or toe scrunching exercises is not appropriate for strengthening the muscles intrinsic to the feet. Muscles about the foot and ankle are described as either extrinsic muscles or intrinsic muscles. Extrinsic foot muscles have…
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Osteoarthritis – Bad News More Than Good News
Osteoarthritis occurs in a joint when there is more degeneration of the joint cartilage than regeneration of the joint cartilage. Cartilage is a soft tissue on the ends of bones. Cartilage provides a smooth surface to allow free movement of joint, provides a cushioning, and for joint stability. Cartilage tissue is poorly designed for repair…
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Mugged – Smacked and Common Sense: Exercise In Dark Outdoors
The short dark day of winter pose a challenge for the exercise enthusiast who prefers to exercise out doors. Most everyone has some fear walking/running in the dark. There are justifiable concerns related to safety. On the positive side there can be significant benefits and rewards from getting outside in the dark winter days and…
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Don’t do that
A widely held belief among health care professionals is that it is a waste oftime to recommend to an injured runner to stop running. The assumptionis a dedicated runner will not follow recommendation of “don’t do that”. With a few exceptions most injured runners do not need to be told “don’trun”. The exception is a…
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