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2. How to Create Powerful Pitching through Balance... "That ball's exploding on us!"
Hard to believe that baseball season is just around the corner. Major Leaguers start spring training next week, with pitchers and catchers due to report on Sunday, February 19th.
Kent Bond of Impact Physical Therapy has always had a love for the game. He played baseball in college and has been on three National Championship NABA Baseball Teams. When Kent is not working with patients, playing with his kids, or acting like James Bond (his alter-therapy-ego), you'll most likely find him at the ball field.
If you work with baseball players - pitchers in particular - then Kent can provide you with some ideas on how to improve your pitchers' proprioceptive abilities using the Shuttle Balance. And this increase in a pitcher's overall balance skills can translate into faster more explosive pitching.
3. Athletes Saving Athletes
Beth Mallon was photographing her son’s high school lacrosse game and shooting downfield at an injured player when she noticed that a second player had gone down.
It was her son, Tommy.
He had been hit in the back of the head and was lying on the ground. Explaining that he felt fine, he was about to get up when Riki Kirchhoff, the high school's certified athletic trainer, insisted that he remain prone until paramedics arrived.
Tommy had fractured his first cervical vertebra. Doctors said later that if he would have stood up, he most likely would have died or become a paraplegic on the spot. Kirchhoff's quick action and professional expertise had prevented a tragedy.
And that got Beth Mallon's attention....
With only 35% of the high schools in California having a certified athletic trainer (CAT) on staff, Beth was determined to somehow change that. Her answer was to create a non-profit that would have CATs train student athletes on how to recognize signs of head or neck injuries, heat illness, and sudden cardiac arrest. The student athletes then train their fellow athletes on those very same things.
Now, that is helpful. It does get the athletes thinking and understanding some of the important issues surrounding injuries. But that only puts a certified athletic trainer in front of a relatively few student athletes - with the expectation that those same athletes will then go and do the job that really should be done by a CAT.
The concensus around the country is that we need to have a certified athletic trainer in every high school, at every sporting event, because you just never know when an athlete is going to get hurt.
But the question is, how can we make that happen?
The reality is, this world has a lot of needs. There are a lot of worthy causes out there. And having a certified athletic trainer in every school is certainly one of them. But, with budgets and priorities, different causes and conflicts, how are you going to make that dream a reality?
Is Beth Mallon's "Athletes Saving Athletes" a positive move forward, or a step in the wrong direction?
4. LIVING LIKE A PT: How to Pick Up a Child and the Laundry
5. Speeding ROM After ACL Surgery: Dr. Shelbourne and Dr. Sanders
Orthopedic surgeon Donald Shelbourne of the Shelbourne Knee Center in Indiana conducted research looking at The Loss of Normal Knee Motion After ACL Reconstruction. He found that "the odds of having knee OA were 2 times higher among patients with abnormal knee ROM at 5-years post reconstruction even when controlling for meniscus or cartilage pathology."
The study highlighted the importance of working with a patient's ROM long after they had returned to full activity.
Interesting that Dr. Shelbourne would be paying attention to ROM years down the road from an ACL reconstruction. Interesting because he also emphasizes, in his own practice, the importance of ROM when a patient is fresh out of surgery - even the day of surgery.
Dr. Shelbourne uses our Shuttle MiniPress as a means of strengthening the knee in an "accelerated rehabilitation program". He identifies its use in the "ACL Rehabilitation" section on his website (he refers to the MiniPress simply as the "shuttle").
Another orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Mark Sanders of the Sanders Clinic in Houston, also follows Dr. Shelbourne's accelerated approach. Here is a sample video of an ACL patient rehabbing just one day out of reconstruction surgery: