![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninevirtuesOkay, so in lab today, we had Knee Injury 101.
Exhibit A: Everybody who's had knee surgery come up here to the front of the room. Good, now squat for us. (Most of the squatting people leaned on their non-operated leg when asked to do that.)
A few had a knee wobble (the knee goes in and out in a circle on the way down) or what's called a valgus dip (the knee goes toward the midline on the way down). Finding out why it does the latter is tricky, though; there are a bunch of things that could be causing that.
Exhibit B: The anterior versus posterior pelvic tilt. The instructor had one woman come to the front and tilt her pelvis back as far as it would go. Like magic, we could see it; her legs rotated outward. Then she tilted her pelvis forward as far as it would go. Like magic, we saw both legs rotate inward, and we saw the stress and strain that position put on the front of her knees (and, by extension, the patella-- which gets compressed by the quadricep that runs over it anyway).
Exhibit C: My lab partner. (G is a 45 year old, fabulously fit woman who came over from sweden with her husband. She's not in our degree program, but she specializes in body awareness, tai chi, yoga, and Swedish PT, and she is taking a few classes to pass the time. Relevant to this, though-- when she straightens her legs, you can feel tendons snapping in her knees. When we showed the instructor that, G promptly became the focus of the lesson, as the instructor led us through the examination process for patellas (Okay, now you want THIS much space between the patella and the femoral condyle, and you want to press it medially, here, and make sure it pops up laterally, there; and you want to make sure it moves side to side like this...")
Exhibit A: Everybody who's had knee surgery come up here to the front of the room. Good, now squat for us. (Most of the squatting people leaned on their non-operated leg when asked to do that.)
A few had a knee wobble (the knee goes in and out in a circle on the way down) or what's called a valgus dip (the knee goes toward the midline on the way down). Finding out why it does the latter is tricky, though; there are a bunch of things that could be causing that.
Exhibit B: The anterior versus posterior pelvic tilt. The instructor had one woman come to the front and tilt her pelvis back as far as it would go. Like magic, we could see it; her legs rotated outward. Then she tilted her pelvis forward as far as it would go. Like magic, we saw both legs rotate inward, and we saw the stress and strain that position put on the front of her knees (and, by extension, the patella-- which gets compressed by the quadricep that runs over it anyway).
Exhibit C: My lab partner. (G is a 45 year old, fabulously fit woman who came over from sweden with her husband. She's not in our degree program, but she specializes in body awareness, tai chi, yoga, and Swedish PT, and she is taking a few classes to pass the time. Relevant to this, though-- when she straightens her legs, you can feel tendons snapping in her knees. When we showed the instructor that, G promptly became the focus of the lesson, as the instructor led us through the examination process for patellas (Okay, now you want THIS much space between the patella and the femoral condyle, and you want to press it medially, here, and make sure it pops up laterally, there; and you want to make sure it moves side to side like this...")
I made Jeff do it
Date: 2004-10-12 06:37 pm (UTC)If you ever need a control group of teen girls playing a sport, I've got about 125 if you need a fun class project.
bella steph