Knee hyperextension? Or does this photo suggest something more ?

You walk into the exam room and see a patient standing there just like this, What thoughts immediately flood your head ?
For me, I quickly start to juggle some things like, this:

Screen Shot 2019-05-16 at 2.53.10 PM.png

- anterior-meniscofemoral impingement ? Are his first words going to be knee pain ?
- tibial tuberosity/osgood type traction issue due to quad dominance? Are his first words going to be knee pain?
-loss of ankle rocker? Are his first words shin pain or plantar foot pain?
- tibialis posterior tendinitis ? Is he going to point to the medial ankle gutter or lower medial shin as his pain area?
-likely anterior pelvis tilt (hence weak lower abdominals), weak glutes, low back pain ?
-hamstring tightness, cramps, pain, posterior knee pain?

Just rambling real fast this morning after seeing this picture on an old hard drive.
Train your brain to think fast, think of possibilities top to bottom, don't wait for your patient to tell you where their problem is.
I play this game when i ask all my patients to walk to the back of the office to my exam room. I am watching, thinking, mental gymnastics.
Our jobs are to solve puzzles, put meaningful pieces together, to solve problems.
I use the analogy of building a puzzle. You open the box, search out the straight peripheral edges, then clump together colors, patterns. Your history and examination and gait observation should be about a process of putting together the most likely clinical picture and puzzle. And then you start to execute. Sometimes you have to walk things back, but you have to start somewhere.
But, if you wait until you get into the room, wait for the patient to say, "anterior knee pain" to start your thinking, it is easy to get tunnel vision and forget all of the other possible pieces of the puzzle that might be playing into that anterior knee pain.
REmember this, how your client moves , poorly or well, is not the problem, it is just how they are moving with the pieces and patterns available to them or how they are avoiding patterns that are painful. How they move is not the problem, it is their strategy. It is our job to find out why they are moving that way, and if it is relevant to their complaint.
Start big, funnel to small.

Shawn Allen, the other gait guy
#gait, #gaitanalysis, #gaitproblems, #clinicalthinking, #buildingpuzzles

Knee hyperextension and delayed heel rise in an interesting sport, Racewalking.If you have been in practice long enough, you should know by now that in order to truly help an athlete you have to know their sport, the subtleties and the specifics.  Y…

Knee hyperextension and delayed heel rise in an interesting sport, Racewalking.

If you have been in practice long enough, you should know by now that in order to truly help an athlete you have to know their sport, the subtleties and the specifics.  You have heard us talk about premature heel rise off an on for years. Today, you must consider the opposite, delayed heel rise and the bizarre loading responses that come into the kinetic chains from such a behavior.

Racewalking is a long-distance event requiring one foot to be in contact with the ground at all times. Stride length is thus reduced and so to achieve competitive speeds racewalkers must attain cadence rates comparable to those achieved by Olympic 800-meter runners for hours at a time. Most people cannot truly appreciate how fast these folks are going.

There are really only two rules that govern racewalking:

1-The first rules states that the athlete’s trailing foot’s toe cannot leave the ground until the heel of the leading foot has created contact. 

2-The second rule specifies that the supporting leg must straighten, essentially meaning knee extension (and for some, terminal extension, ie. negative 5-10 degrees !) from the point of contact with the ground and remain straightened until the body passes directly over it. Again, essentially meaning full range knee extension for the entire stance phase of gait (early, mid and late midstance phases). 

Delated heel rise ?

Clearly some folks are going to take knee extension a little more literally. Look at the fella in the red and yellow. Can you say knee HYPER extension ? This is right knee anteriormeniscofemoral impingement looming on the horizon, this is an anterior compression overload phenomenon via the quadriceps. This is often met in this sport with the delayed heel rise that the sport seems to often drive. Prolonging the foot ground contact phase, attempting to abide by Rule#2, “the support  leg must straighten”, can lead to knee hyperextension if one is not careful. This will put a longer stretch load into the achilles and posterior compartment mechanism and this prolonged stretch-contract load can eventually lead to local pathology let alone in combination with the anterior knee compression we just eluded to. These folks will also be at risk for more anterior pelvic tilt, distraction of the anterior hip capsule-labral interval, unique hip extension and gluteal integration, and even possibly altered hip extension motor patterning driving abnormal loads into the hamstrings and low back.  Just imagine the changes in the hip flexor strategies in this scenario. 

To help your athletes, know their sport, know your normal biomechanics and know the pathologies when the rules of clean biomechanics are broken.

Today, on Rewind Friday, we will repost a more in-depth, with video, piece we did a few years ago on Race Walking. You may learn more about normal and abnormal gait than you think, today we translate some of the rules of the sport of race walking into deeper thoughts on gait mechanics.

Here is the link to our more in-depth video assessment and dialogue on the fascinating sport of race walking. If you have never truly looked at this sport before, you should enjoy this Rewind Post. (link).

- Dr. Shawn Allen

Podcast 96: Minimalism Shoes, Toe Trauma, Meniscal Impingement.

The Minimalist Shoe Index, Pincer toe nails, toe problems, anteromeniscofemoral impingement syndrome and much more on today’s show !

A. Link to our server: http://traffic.libsyn.com/thegaitguys/pod_96f.mp3

Direct Download:  http://thegaitguys.libsyn.com/podcast-96

Other Gait Guys stuff

B. iTunes link:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gait-guys-podcast/id559864138
C. Gait Guys online /download store (National Shoe Fit Certification & more !)
http://store.payloadz.com/results/results.aspx?m=80204
D. other web based Gait Guys lectures:
Monthly lectures at : www.onlinece.com type in Dr. Waerlop or Dr. Allen, ”Biomechanics”

-Our Book: Pedographs and Gait Analysis and Clinical Case Studies
Electronic copies available here:

-Amazon/Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Pedographs-Gait-Analysis-Clinical-Studies-ebook/dp/B00AC18M3E

-Barnes and Noble / Nook Reader:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pedographs-and-gait-analysis-ivo-waerlop-and-shawn-allen/1112754833?ean=9781466953895

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/pedographs-and-gait-analysis/id554516085?mt=11

-Hardcopy available from our publisher:
http://bookstore.trafford.com/Products/SKU-000155825/Pedographs-and-Gait-Analysis.aspx

Show notes:

1. New Cameras In Japan Can Detect Drunks At Train Stations
http://www.popsci.com/cameras-japan-detect-drunks-train-stations

2. It takes a lot of nerve: Scientists make cells to aid peripheral nerve repair
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/297854.php
-Scientists at the University of Newcastle, UK, have used a combination of small molecules to turn cells isolated from human skin into Schwann cells

3. The Minimalist Shoe Definition study

http://www.jfootankleres.com/content/8/1/42

A consensus definition and rating scale for minimalist shoes
Jean-Francois Esculier123, Blaise Dubois13, Clermont E. Dionne14, Jean Leblond2 andJean-Sébastien Roy12* http://www.jfootankleres.com/content/8/1/42

modified Delphi study, 42 experts from 11 countries

http://www.jfootankleres.com/content/supplementary/s13047-015-0094-5-s1.pdf

-Results

The following definition of minimalist shoes was agreed upon by 95 % of participants: “Footwear providing minimal interference with the natural movement of the foot due to its high flexibility, low heel to toe drop, weight and stack height, and the absence of motion control and stability devices”. Characteristics to be included in MI were weight, flexibility, heel to toe drop, stack height and motion control/stability devices, each subscale carrying equal weighing (20 %) on final score.

4. CASE:
Ivo: broken toe, prioprioception
this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2245598
and this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19955289

5. CASE: anterior meniscofemoral impingment syndrome
http://tmblr.co/ZrRYjx1d8503W

http://thegaitguys.tumblr.com/post/17713779565/anterior-knee-pain-in-a-young-marathon-hopeful

6. Pincer Toe nails:

http://thegaitguys.tumblr.com/post/127638788139/pincher-nails-who-knew-note-there-are-two–