3 things you can do NOW for patello femoral pain...

Recalcitrant PFP? In addition to your treatment regiment AND getting to THE CAUSE of the patello femoral pain (often but not always gluteus medius function), have you tried?

• forefoot-strike running

• increasing step rate by 10% (ie cadence)

• "running softer"

according to this article:

"all modifications were associated with reduced patellofemoral joint force during running, compared with the participants’ normal running gait. But the modifications were also associated with immediate symptom improvement of at least one point out of 10; 62.5% of runners in the study experienced a positive symptomatic response to at least one of the gait modifications."

Easy to do, easy to implement

 

Esculier J-F, Bouyer LJ, Roy J-S. Immediate effects of gait retraining on symptoms and running mechanics of runners with patellofemoral pain. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2017;47(suppl 1):A9.

Forefoot varus and patellofemoral cartilage damage.

So you just give everyone a FOOT TRIPOD and ANKLE ROCKER exercise and think the world will all be sunshine and rainbows huh ? Beware all you movement wizards, there is far more to it !

"Knowing enough to think you're doing it right, but not enough to know you're doing it wrong." - Neil deGrasse Tyson

So your client has knee pain huh ? Look far and wide, this is a global game amigos.
"Of the 51% of limbs with forefoot varus, 91.3% had medial and 78.3% had lateral PFJ cartilage damage. . . . . this study suggest a relationship between forefoot varus and medial PFJ cartilage damage in older adults"- Lufler et al. (study link below)

*If you do not know your client has a rigid forefoot varus, and they have hip or low back pain and cannot keep their glutes activated and participating in movements, how long are you going to fail your client ? The forefoot varus may need addressed because of the excessive, abrupt degree of internal spin on the limb.

If you are truly going to treat people, people who move (yes, that means everyone !), you have to know feet and gait, BOTH. Your knowledge must go far past rudimentary knowledge of:
- high / low arch
- flat feet
- prontation and supination
- orthotics and footbeds

You will have to know your foot types, you will have to understand shoe anatomy, foot anatomy, flexible semi-flexible and rigid foot types, compensated and uncompensated foot types, and of course know how each of these responds under various loading responses. Forefoot varus will load differently in cutting sports than in sagittal locomotion such as walking and running (both of which are different even in themselves despite both being sagittal). A foot that looks like it has a flat collapsed arch has far more to it than that, and thus remedy and intervention MUST go far beyond rudimentary interventions like a "stability shoe" or orthotic. Are you practicing, coaching, training and being part of your client's solution, or are you part of the problem ? If you want to get better at this stuff, we cover it all in our several hour (very difficult for some) National Shoe Fit program (the link is on our website if you wish to become a foot/gait/shoe jediwww.thegaitguys.com). Do not be mistaken, this is far more than "shoe Fit". To know how to properly shoe fit someone, you have to know the foot types and how they compensate, load, and respond. Without this knowledge, you are just another bump in the "road of problems" without ample solutions.

- Dr. Shawn Allen, one of the gait guys

The Association of Forefoot Varus Deformity with Patellofemoral Cartilage Damage in Older Adult Cadavers. Lufler, Stefanik, Niu, Sawyer, Hoagland, Gross http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.23524/full

images courtesy of aaronswansonpt.com and studyblue.com

“Is your client feeling better because they are truly fixed, or have your prescribed corrective exercises merely raised the capacity and durability of their compensation ?  Welcome to a global industry problem.”  -Dr. Allen

Which hip will have troubles extending ?

Remember this quiz question from 2 weeks ago ? I talked about how the body will compensate to level the pelvis (and eyes and vestibular apparatus).

Lets go further down the rabbit hole.  Here is your question of the week (you may have to go back and review the prior blog post if you are unsure of how the body will cope with the slope.  Here is that first blog post.

Question: Which hip will have troubles getting into hip extension and thus terminal glute-hip-pelvis stabilization ?

Answer:  scroll down (at least think about it for a second)

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Answer:

The leg on the up slope of the beach, the non-water side leg will have to be in a modest degree of knee flexion to shorten and accommodate to the slope. A Flexed knee is not an extended one and it will be far more difficult to extend the hip and get into the glutes. Propulsion will also be compromised.  For you indoor small track runners this will happen to you on the inside leg on the curves of the track. This is why we see so many hamstring injuries during indoor track.  Think about it ! It is not just bad luck.  Go ahead, tally up  your teams history of hamstring injuries, you should find more on the left leg for track runners. It is simple applied biomechanics.   Also, imagine the altered demand on the quadriceps on that flexed knee (the right knee in the picture above, and the left knee in circle track runners). Furthermore, what is the likelihood that the right pelvis will deviate into an anterior tilted posture ? You bet ya, a greater tendency, and thus a possibly shortened quadriceps/hip flexor mechanism.  Do you think this could inhibit hip extension and gluteal function ? You bet ya.  Oh, and one more thing, if you are true gait nerd, you should have asked yourself one more question, what about ankle rocker ?  Yes, you will need more ankle rocker on the beach side foot (flexed knee side). When the knee flexes, there must be more ankle rocker for this to occur, if not, you may implode into some unwelcome arch collapse, because arch collapse offers more false ankle rocker. What a mess huh !   Now, do not be shocked EVER again when your client’s come back from a sunny beach vacation from walking the beaches for hours every day, and find themselves a stark raving mad mess.  It is not the salty ocean air or the tequila, it is the slope. One could make a case that walking up and down the beach should balance things out, but that is only if we are balanced and symmetrical when we start out. Gravity always wins.

One final rant. If you are offering “corrective exercises” to your clients, you had better know at least the basics of movement and biomechanics. And further more, you had better know how to examine for them, and that means hands on assessment of the body, not just looking at how your client moves through a battery of tests. If the prior blog post (here) and today’s blog post principles are not remedial principles of knowledge for you, offering corrective exercises without this knowledge and a physical exam to confirm your assumptions is fraught with disaster, or at least helping your client to build deeper compensations on their prior compensations. Is your client feeling better because they are truly fixed, or have your prescribed corrective exercises merely raised the capacity and durability of their compensation ?  This is the kind of stuff that keeps my new patient scheduling booked at 4-8 weeks out … . .  frustrated clients.

This is why we do not offer online consultations like some do. Because, we have not figured out how to obtain the third dimension needed in our gait and movement observation (thank you Oculus Rift, the future is near) but more so, we cannot take that information and put it together with our own physical examination to determine whether if what we are seeing is the actual problem, or a compensation. Here in lies the pot of gold.

Another clinical pearl from Dr. Allen

Video case: The King’s Preference: Short and Sweet. A quick and easy case demonstrating the patellar tracking struggles with external tibial torsion.

Our favorite functional evaluation piece of equipment as well as our favorite piece of therapy equipment is the Total Gym.  Here we clearly demonstrate, to us and the client, in partial weight bearing load, the effects of external tibial torsion.  

Remember, the knee is sort of the King of all joints when it comes to the lower extremity.  The knee is a sagittal plane hinge, and so all it wants to do is hinge forward, freely without binding from deficits at the hip or knee. But we cannot ignore the simple fact that pre-pubescent kids the long bone derotation process is still undergoing, and in adults the process may have been corrupted or insufficient.  

In this case it should be obvious that the knee is sagittal and free to hinge when the foot is at a large foot progression angle.  This allows the knee to hinge cleanly. But when the foot is corrected to the sagittal plane, as you see in the second half of the video, the knee tracks inward and this can cause patellofemoral pain syndromes, swelling, challenges to the menisci (and possible eventual tears) and challenges to the ACL and other accessory restraints.  Additionally, this medial drift is a longer and more difficult challenge to the eccentric phase external rotators such as the gluteus maximius not to mention many of the other muscles and their optimal function.  

So, the next time you see a large foot progression angle in a client or in their walk (duck footed if you will) try to resist the natural urge to tell them to corrrect the foot angle. They are likely doing it to keep the King happy.  And furthermore, be careful on your coaching recommendations during squats, olympic lifts, lunges and running.  Just because you do not like the way the foot looks doesn’t mean you should antagonize the King of joints.  

External tibial torsion, its not something you want to see, but when you do see it, you have to know its degree, its effects at the knee, hip and foot as well as how it might impact hip extension, pelvic neutrality, foot strike, foot type, toe off and so many other aspects.

Whoever said gait analysis was easy was a liar. And if all they use is a video camera and fancy analysis software they have show up with only part of the team. And if they said they were an expert  in gait only a few years into practice, you had better also look for a jester’s hat somewhere hiding in the corner. After all, the King would want to know !

Shawn and Ivo, your court jesters for the last 3+ years.  Maybe we will get a promotion from the King someday soon !

Do you kick or scrape the inside of your ankle with the other foot ?

We are moving into the final throws of cross country season now and we are seeing the pathologies creep in and the miles go up. Some of you who have been with us for 3 years  have seen this picture but we realized we did not have a blog post on the problem represented by this photo.  This young runner had these scuff marks on the inside of the right lower leg and ankle after a cross country meet.  So what is going on here and what does it tell you ?

Some runners notice that they repeatedly will scuff in the inside ankle or inner calf with the opposite shoe when running. This can happen on both sides but it is more often present unilaterally than bilaterally. 

This problem, typically, but not always represents one of two things:

1- cross over gait (if you are new to our blog in the SEARCH box type in “cross over” and “cross over gait” and be sure to see our 3 part video on the cross over on our youtube channel found here).

2- negative foot progression angle which may or may not be combined with a degree of internal tibial torsion.  Said easier, the runner is “in-toed” or “pigeon toed” but if you have been here with us awhile on The Gait Guys we expect a diagnosis of a higher order so use the former terms, please.

Lets discuss both.

1- Cross over.  When the runner is standing on the right leg, right stance phase of gait, the frontal plane is not properly engaged and the pelvis can drift further over the right foot. This drift to the right will drop the pelvis on the left side. This will alter the pendulum movement of the left leg. Since the global pelvis is moving to the right the left swing leg pendulum moves to the right as well and as it swings past the stance leg it strikes a glancing blow to the inside of the right ankle or calf. This is simple biomechanics and physics. To fix this problem, which is clearly inefficient, one has to determine what is causing the right pelvis drift (there are many causes, the most often thought of cause is a weak gluteus medius on the right but if you have been here with us awhile you will know there are other causes) and then fix the drift. Do not assume it is the gluteus medius all the time, for if it is not, and you employ more glute medius exercises you could be ignoring the source and building a deeper compensation pattern.  Fix the problem, not what you see.

2- Negative foot progression angle and/or internal tibial torsion.  In order to fix this you have to know first if you are dealing with a fixed/rigid anatomic tibial or femoral torsion issue which cannot be fixed or if you are dealing with a flexible progression angle issue. Often, “in-toeing” is accompanied with internal tibial torsion, this is because the knee has to progress forward to keep its tracking mechanics clean, if you correct someone’s foot progression back to neutral and they have internal tibial torsion then you have dragged the patellar tracking outside the normal sagittal progression angle, knee pain will ensue. In fact, the foot progression on the ankle is normal, but the tibia or femur are merely torsioned in a manner that drags the foot inwards with the long bone orientation, again, this is driven by a higher order/demand, to normally track the patella sagittally (forward).  However, if this is a pre-puberty individual you have time because the long bone derotation process is still occuring. Give homework to encourage a good foot tripod and work to strengthen the external hip rotators and encourage sagittal knee tracking mechanics. This is a delicate balancing act, but it can be done, but it is a monster of a project for a blog post because each case is different, variable and always changing depending on the client progress. Remember, you can only encourage more appropriate mechanics and hope that the body will embrace some of the change and encourage some of the de-rotation process to occur from the long bone growth plates. 

The “inside scuff”, to identify its solution you have to know the cause. After all, if it was as easy a fix as “stop doing that” no one would be doing it and we would be out of a job.

Shawn and Ivo …… The Gait Guys 

What have we here?

Take a look at the tibial tuberosity and then where you think the 2nd metatarsal head would be. What do you see? The 2nd metatarsal is lateral to the tibial tuberosity. You are looking at external tibial torsion.

Lets see how this external tibail torsion behaves during a knee bend on a total gym. Observe the medial drift of the knee during weight bearing knee flexion. 

In external tibial torsion there is an external torsion or a “twist” along the length of the tibia (diaphysis or long section) (need a review? click here). This occurs in this example to the degree that the ankle joint (mortise joint) can no longer cooperate with sagittal knee joint.  When taking a client with external tibial torsion and pre-postioning their foot in a relatively acceptable/normal foot progression angle as seen here, there is a conflict at the knee, meaning that the knee cannot hinge forward in its usual sagittal plane. In this case with the foot progression angle smaller than what this client would posture the foot, you an see that as they bend the knee the knee is forced to drift medially and as soon as the heel is unloaded a pure “adductory twist” is noted (you can see the heel jump medially in an attempt to find a more tolerable sagittal knee bend).

Are you looking for torsions of the lower limb in your clients ?

Are you forcing them into foot postures that look better to  you but that which are conflicting to your clients given body mechanics ?  Remember, telling someone to turn their foot in or out because it doesn’t appear correct to your eyes can significantly impair either local or global joints , and often both. Torsions can occur in the talus, the tibia and the femur.

Furthermore, torsions can have an impact on foot posturing at foot strike and affect the limbs loading response, from foot to core and even arm swing can be altered.  Letting your foot fall naturally beneath your body does not mean that you have the clean anatomy to do so without a short term or long term cost. 

Want more on torsion and versions ?  Type the words into the search box on our blog. We have plenty of good info for you.

Shawn and Ivo, The Gait Guys