Friday, October 15, 2010

Transitioning/Sequencing


Come on, its happened to the best of us.  An athlete has a muscle injury, you tested them well, you thought they were ready to return to play and they wind up with a re-injury.  It could mean you didn't transition them well and sequence their return to the activity.  The example here is a grade 2 rectus femoris strain of the right leg.  The plane here is to transition to straight ahead running by sequencing what movements we do in what planes, in what directions, in what tempo, in what speed, at what amplitude, and at what degree of fatigue environment is appropriate for that degree of healing. On ground, the athlete is doing frontal/T-plane with a sagittal plan bias.  That include activities like lateral lunges, slide board, and icky shuffle in the agility ladder.  I'm using the accomodating resistance of aquatic therapy for my sagittal plane work.  The exercises pictured here are deep water pikes/rotational pikes, and B-skips in the low end of the pool.  With the help of the water, you can get pretty agressive without concern of re-injury.

5 comments:

Jack Martin said...

Joe,
I was going to comment on your motor control blog but this one is probably closer to my question and comments. I just read another blog about structural fitness lagging behind metabolic fitness. We have seen an increase in nagging knee pain among our best runners, None have experienced this in the past. They are all very fit (aerobiclly) racing and training well-but the inflammation has crept in. We have regular circuit traing to prevent some of this but still is too common. Your thoughts on trying to prevent thig in structural fitness?
By the way we had a jump rope shuttle relay yesterday at the end of practice. The fellas loved it. You can easily see improvement in ground contact. Martin

Joe Przytula said...

not sure if structural fitness is the right term Jack, it implies something that is achieved, is curtailed, then you move on to the metabolic. Rather, it's something thats got to be interwoven throughout the plannned performance training module. In high school this is a lot more challanging because you're pressed for time. I always felt the physical education class would be a great way to address the in season strength base and any necessary remedial work.

Granted,kids in general just don't have the bone density, strength, and physical competency that they had back in the early 80's when we first met. Kelvin Giles has done an excellent job of putting together his PCA as an evaluation tool to assess what the author calls, "structural fitness".
Am I correct in assuming the knee pain you speak of is patellofemoral? If so, there is no magic bullet, but the miniband routine comes close.

Kevin Moody said...

Joe,

As you you know, I'm a big proponent of the mini band routine for anterior knee issues - you can really work the legs without putting the knees in too deep an angle of stress.

If time allows, I might also add 4 way Theraband kicks.

Jack Martin said...

Joe,
My terminology-structural fitness- is probably incorrect. Does structural changes make more sense? My point really is that the boys are ready (aerobically) to train and race fast but the muscles, tendons and ligamnets are not. Does that make sense?
We us the mini bands. Are the theraband kicks the same that I did at PT following knee surgery?Can you guys give me some specifics that I can use with the team?
Thanks, as always. Martin

Joe Przytula said...

You can download the routine here:

http://www.performbetter.com/
catalog/assets/Exercisesheets/PDF/
Exercisebands.pdf

Buy a mix of the green and the blue. They're cheap. Your local PB rep lives in Westfield, you can probably get a good discount too!

I'll put up another good quad PFP rehab exercise manana.

Take the plunge Jack! Join us in Houston this June- you would be a good fit. Gary Winkler is a probable, Dr. Lederman from the UK a maybe.