What can we learn from this? Certainly not that every high school training room should have a Nintendo Wii. I think the P.T. said it all when she says, "now the patient is excited when they bowl a strike on the Wii, not that they lifted a 3 pound dumbbell." You don't need to tell a suprasinatus or teres minor what to do. Rather, give the body a task that challanges the cuff within the context of their envelope of function.
I just read some dopey article on training the supraspinatus for pitchers. The secret, you see, is only doing the "empty can" exercise to 60 degrees as to not cause subacromial impingement. This gem appeared in a peer reviewed journal. Come on everybody, we can do better than that. The 4 rotator cuff muscles function synergistically to depress the head of the humerus in the glenoid to counteract the elevation effect of the deltoid. THEY ARE NOT PRIMARY MOVERS. Histological studies back that up. I have to dig up a good EMG study done on swimmers a few years back. Motions that you would think would activate one cuff muscle over another did not happen in real life.
2 comments:
I played a Wii for the first time yesterday. I could see it benefitting someone who was completely sedentary. It will get them to move. The down side I see is that it encourages a person to be stationary (with their feet) while playing a game. And for the price, it's easy to simulate these games in the yard for much less.
Why do we need a Wii? Why can't we be creative enough to think of this stuff on our own? To bowl, grab an orange and knock over some 16 oz waster bottles.
Here's a great article that really backs up what Joe was saying.
JOSPT, vol. 39, #2, Feb 2009
Current Concepts in the Scientific and Clinical Rationale Behind Exercises for Glenohumeral and Scapulothoracic Musculature
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