D-Day, June 6 1944

I always think of my dad on this day. He passed away over 11 years ago, yet not one day has gone by that I don't think of him.

These gangsta rappers that you hear on the radio singing about how tough life was growing up had a cake walk compared to my mom & dad. Mom grew up through the great depression as an orphan; my dad without a father.

On his 17th birthday my dad and my Uncle Dick dropped out of school & joined the army to send money home to support their mom. They joined the old horse calvary together. It was the only way two poor kids from Brooklyn would ever get to ride horses. Within a year, their unit was mechanized, & at 19 years of age my dad & my Uncle Dick were storming the beaches of Normandy. Omaha beach, dog green sector. As my dad said it, the source of his wildest dreams soon became the source of his worst nightmares.

The calvary unit, which was now 102nd recon, was supposed to set up communication systems once the 1st & 29th cleared the way. Things didn't go that way. The beach got jammed up & they became sitting ducks on the water. They wound up jumping over the side to avoid fire, with 80 pounds of equipment on their backs. Fortunately, dad & uncle Dick were strong swimmers from their summers at the city pools. Others were not so lucky, & drowned.

Only 8 of the 60 soldiers from that calvary unit made it back home alive from world war 2. Fortunately for me, both my dad Joseph sr. & my Uncle Dick were two of them.

It's Tricky

...an old Run DMC song, and also a reference to back pain.

JOSPT June '09- "Fitness, Motor competence, and Body Composition Are Weakly Associated With Adolescent Back Pain"

Here's what I get out of this article.

1. This is not the first study to find a correlation between low back pain & increased trunk flexor strength (Newcomer et al in Acta Paediactrica, '96)
2. Watch that waist line
3. I don't think you can have a healthy back without strong, powerful 3D leg strength.
4. The Sit & Reach Test is a waste of time.
5. I said this before in previous posts, but I believe that athletes in sports of a repetitive nature should spend some time in the recovery-restoration process running backwards, throwing with the opposite arm etc.

There is no such thing as "muscle confusion"

Muscles, & the human body are extremely adaptable. I have worked with students with a myriad of so called disabilities that not only expand their envelope of function, but rip it right open. This athlete is not one of mine, but a great example:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/sports/ncaabasketball/26hoops.html?ref=sports

Don't miss this

SAGE publications, the publishers of the American Journal of Sports Medicine, Clinical Rehabilitation, Foot & Ankle Specialist, the European Journal of Hand Surgery, & Sports Health is offering free online access until July 31, '09. Dig in.

Marty's Response

"My take on anterior innominate dysfunctions is that they are usually hypermobilities that arise secondary to restricted hip and/or trunk extension, or due to weakness/inability to load the abs and glut max. Your exercise seems to load the abs by extending the hip and trunk, so it sounds good to me. I would also consider using bilateral UE drivers to drive the trunk even further and progressing to a lunge pivot, moving between hip and trunk extension for abs and hip and trunk flexion for back and butt. Similar thinking for upslips (FP dysfunctions) and torsions (TP dysfunctions)."

...hey Jonathon- didn't consider the BUE drivers. Good call. I'm jealous.

Our next question. Notice Marty recommends an anterior pivot lunge combo, perhaps using our BUE drivers anterior this time. Anyone take a guess why?

Corrective Exercise for Anterior Innominate

Thanks Jerimiah for getting us started here. You have the right idea, getting out on one leg. However, we need to remember iliosacral motion is relative motion. That is, all the bones of the pelvis are moving in the same direction; but, one is going faster than the other. In this case, the motion is driven from the bottom up, so the L ilium is going faster than the sacrum in a counter clockwise fashion.

What I'm getting at is you have the right idea of going after the core, but we need ground reaction force to get the right chain reaction biomechanics going on in the pelvis.

Jonathon, you & I are thinking along the same lines. Use the same side arm to turn on the abs to keep that ilium from going too deep into the zone. I chose a LLE posterior lunge c/ a LUE posterior @ overhead reach. I realize you chose an anterior lunge. Who is right, me or you? Or are we both right- or both wrong? I will have to consult with Marty Lambert on this one. He is a functional P.T. with a background in osteopathic medicine.

Weekend from hell

Sorry I haven't posted in the last few days. I worked all day Friday, Saturday, then Monday. The worst part was baseball got knocked out of the state tournament. Track was a surprise though, with a good # of athletes moving onto the state champioship meet. I will post as soon as I get caught up here.