Sunday, May 15, 2011

"Bailing Out", better known as compensation




According to Fryette's laws of spinal motion, if motion is lost in one plane, it will steal it from the other two planes.  Here I'm affording the thoracic spine increasing degrees of rotation by way of positioning the lower extremity.  In throwing, the eyes are a powerful and important driver of motion, so its important for them to focus on the target.  Take a look at the position of the head in relation to the shoulders.  The increasing degrees of thoracic spine rotation require greater degrees of cervical counter rotation as so the eyes can remain on the target.  The cervical spine is compensating into left side bending. What do you think?  Where do I go from here?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess my first thought is how is the athletes movement throughout his Cervical and Thoracic spine? Is his cervical posture 'forward head;? Are the lower segments and upper segments 'fighting each other' causing there to be more demand on the C spine? If his mobility is impaired he may need to be rotating more at his lumbar, which furthering the problem, as well. Though this has always been the difficulty that I have had with QB throwing issues. It would be great if he could alter his foot pattern, but depending on circumstances he may not have the time to move his feet before he gets 'nailed' by a hungry LB.

Those are my initial thoughts.

Always good thoughts Joe, thank you for doing this!

Joe Przytula said...

Thanks for the response JV.

You got me thinking-I haven't evaluated his upper cervicle ROM...there could quite possibly be an issue there. Especially considering he does play a collision sport. T-spine is definately ornery, especially in the frontal plane.

The problem is, he IS altering his foot pattern, maybe in a subconscious effort to keep his eyes locked on the target.