Home of Sports Medicine and Exercise Physiology

“I’ve started running, but my knees are killing me. I used to run for miles, but now I can’t. Any advice?”

It’s great to strengthen your heart, but why derail nature’s transportation system in the process? With each step, you pound your joints with about four times your weight. Ease into it: Start by walking 30 minutes a day and doing strength training a few days a week. Build up the muscles around your knees with exercises such as lunges or squats. Plus, weight training can help you lose weight, so you put less strain on your knees. After a month, try running again, but don’t increase your mileage by more than 25% a week.
Crucial: Go to a specialty sneaker store to have your gait analyzed so you can find shoes with proper support. Add calcium, magnesium and vitamins C and D to your diet to help prevent osteoarthritis. And keep in mind that running on a treadmill or track can be easier on aching knees.

Among movement scientists and clinicians, there is often disagreement over the use of the terms kinesiology and biomnechanics. The word kinesiology is a combination of the Greek kinein meaning ((to move” and logos meaning “discourse.” Kinesiologists—those who discourse on movement—combine anatomy (the science of body stmcture) with physiology (the science of body function) to produce kinesiology, the science of movement of the body.
Kinesiology has long been used an umbrella term to describe any form of anatomic, physiologic, psychological, or mechanical human movement evaluation. Therefore, kinesiology has been used by several disciplines to describe many different content areas. A class in kinesiology may consist primarily of functional anatomy at one university and strictly biomechanics at another. Typically, a kinesiology course has been part of college curricula in physical education, exercise science, athletic training, and physical therapy programs. These courses usually focus on the musculoskeletal system, movement efficiency from an anatomic standpoint, and joint and muscular actions during simple and complex movements. A successful student in a kinesiology course could identify discrete phases in an activity, describe the segmental movements occurring in each phase, and then identify the major muscular contributors to each joint movement. Thus a kinesiologic analysis of the movement of a vertical jump would be as follows: The movements would be hip extension via the gluteus maximus and hamstrings, knee extension via the quadriceps femoris, and plantarflexion via the gastrocnemius-soleus complex. Such an analysis is considered qualitative because it involves the observation of movement and identification of the muscular contributions to that movement.

In the last 30 to 40 years, biomechanics has been developed as an area of study within undergraduate and graduate curricula throughout the world. The contents of biomechanics include a marriage of the areas of applied physics or mechanics and biology. Mechanics, the study of the effect of forces on an object and the resulting motions, is used by engineers to design and build structures or machines because it provides the tools for analyzing the strength of structures and methods for predicting and measuring the movement of a machine. Since it is natural to apply mechanics to the movements and structures of living organisms, the term biomechanics was created.
A biomechanical analysis evaluates the motion of a living organim and also may examine the forces responsible for the observed motion. Biomechanical analyses can be qualitative or quantitative, whereas a kinesiologic analysis would be strictly qualitative. Thus a biomechanical analysis of the vertical jump might include a qualitative description of the movement (similar to the kinesiologic analysis) in addition to the following: measurement of the forces between the person’s feet and the floor: quantification of the joint angles at the hip, knee, and ankle; calculation of the joint forces acting at each joint; and the amount of muscle activity in specific muscles.
Each of the posts in this series includes biomechanical analyses of a specific activity, since each describes certain movement characteristics and muscle actIvity both quantitatively and qualitatively, as available in the literature. More research is necessary before the biomechanics of even sport are fully understood. Clinicians today typically have several measurement tools—isokinetic/isovelocity dynamometers, electromyography (EMG) units, goniometers, and video systems—that enable them to conduct biomechanical analyses daily within the rehabilitation environment. A thorough understanding of the biomechanics of injury mechanisms, aspects of individual sports, and treatment interventions is crucial to providing the standard of care expected in today’s sports medicine environment.

Human movement has long fascinated scientists, clinicians, philosophers, and artists. Some of the greatest minds in history have expressed an interest in describing and understanding human motion:’ The famous Greek philosopher Aristotle (384—322 B.C,) the Roman physician Galen (13 1—201 A.D.), the brilliant Leonardo da Vinci (1452—1519), and Italian scientist Giovanni Borelli (11608—1679) all provided detailed and insightful descriptions of human movement and functional anatomy. Although these descriptions were purely qualitative, the astute observations and attention to detail were similar many ways to modem biomechanics.
The similarities lie in the fact that their descriptions were rooted in a desire to better understand the human body as a whole, either from a biologic perspective or from an artist’s need to better represent human movement in paintings and sculpture. In either case, human movement analysis was used as a tool to provide better understanding of the questions at hand.
The dawn of modern biomechanics coincided with the development of measurement tools that allowed the analyses to become quantitative. The advent of the motion picture camera allowed scientists and photographers to investigate details of human motion that go beyond the capacity of the naked eye. In addition, innovative techniques for recording ground reaction forces and displacements, as well as more precise time measurements, facilitated some of the first studies that could be classified as biomechanics or even exercise science. Nobel prize winner A. V. Hill, a physiologist who many consider to be the “father” of modern exercise science, integrated physiologic and mechanical measures to provide valuable insight into the mechanics of muscle contraction, energy expenditure, and the efficiency of distance running and to create the first description of the velocity curve in sprinting. Wallace Fenn, one of Hill’s students in physiology, used similar instrumentation to pioneer calculation of the work done by the body against gravity as well as an estimation of the work done by individual segments. Herbert Elftman, a biologist, conducted the first true “biomechanics study using mechanical principles to estimate the contribution of muscles during the motion sequences recorded by Fenn. The preceding works again demonstrate that biomechanics can best be described as an interdisciplinary tool used by physiologists, engineers, biologists, and artists.
The advancement and widespread use of high-speed film in the 1960s and early 1970s facilitated publication of biomechanical research studies related to sports. Refinement in instrumentation techniques using newly available microelectronics devices resulted in improved measurements of force, acceleration, muscle activity, and physiologic parameters. For the first time, detailed descriptions of the movements, forces, and metabolic characteristics of athletes during different activities were made available to clinicians and researchers. Thus the fields of sports medicine and sport science began to grow and assemble a body of literature and associated professional societies. College curricula for students in physical therapy, coaching, medicine, physiology, and exercise science started to include classes in biomechanics and kinesiology. The study of human movement became an integral part of the preparation of professionals in many areas.
Over the last 25 to 30 years, the proliferation of sports medicine and sport science literature related to human movement has been phenomenal. For the sports medicine professional, modem biomechanics research can be especially helpful in understanding injury mechanisms, prescription of rehabilitation programs, performance enhancement, and improved athletic equipment. However, the level of detail in many biomechanics research studies may be beyond the needs of the clinician. Thus the clinician has the daunting task of sorting through the immense amount of research literature generated each year and deciding what is relevant for improving the level of care given to a patient or athlete following an injury. Hopefully, this text will be helpful in providing both an overview of the detailed biomechanics associated with a broad range of sports and suggested techniques for effective rehabilitation.

Source: Shamus, Eric – Shamus, Jennifer. ” Sports Injury; Prevention and Rehabilitation”. McGrow-Hill Companies. 2001

Many young people can spend hours each day in a activity—using the computer, playing electronic games, engaging in a sport, or practicing a musical instrument. All these activities are likely to involve repetitive motions of the hands and wrists. Therefore it is never too early to learn to protect against repetitive stress injury. Young bodies produce large amounts of growth hormones. These hormones help the body grow new tissue to replace damaged tissue. That means injuries heal quickly. It also means that injuries can occur without one’s realizing it. In adolescence the body makes less of these hormones. Therefore damage to tissue is more likely to cause pain and longer lasting injuries.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between a Sprain, a Strain, and a Tear is? have you injured yourself while engaging in a contact sport like Basketball, Football, Soccer, or even Tennis? Did you therapist explain what your injury was and how it is healed? well, you can make up for all that you didn’t know by reading the following:

A sprain is when you injure one of the ligaments, which are stretchable rope like tissues that hold the bones together. so contrary to common belief, the sprain is not in the bone itself, but in the ligaments connecting the bones together!

The area that is most commonly susceptible to sprains is the outside of the ankle.

While a Strain is more of an injury in the muscles themselves or the tendons that unlike the ligaments, attach a muscle to the bone. what happens is that ligament, muscle, or tendon are overstretched by a sudden move leading to an acute sever, immediate pain that would paralyze your movement, it could also lead to Tendinitis, an inflammation in the tendon. This happens more often if an athlete doesn’t stretch properly and engages in overwhelming exercises.

However, it should be noted that sprains and strains could happen to anyone whether athletes or not, running on the treadmill or shopping in the mall. It is also frequent with pregnant woman who carry the extra weight and tend to lose balance especially if its their first carriage.

Moreover, the extreme and severe cases of sprains and strains lead to a torn ligament or tendon, commonly known as a torn ACL. here the ligament itself is complete disrupted and its split into 2 disconnected pieces. Thus case requires surgical treatment and physiotherapy afterward.

Now the good news is, whether it’s a mild sprain or a strain, the treatment is the same. In fact, the common most widely used method nowadays is termed RICE, where R stands for RESTING the injured part ;i.e not applying pressure on it by being involved in minimal required movement. I stands for ICE that should be applied to the side of the ankle or wrist sprained as soon as possible after the injury for 20 minutes, a couple of times a day, to prevent swelling. In addition to ice, Compression which is C in RICE, should be applied using an elastic strap wrapped around the injured part. Attention, careful not to tighten the wrap around he finger so as not to cut off blood flow from the injured limb. Finally, E stands for elevation of the injured limb to prevent swelling and thus pain.

An example of Strains,  is the common “Tennis elbow” that any Tennis player experiences. It medically termed as “Lateral Epicondylitis”  which is an inflammation of the tendons that join the forearm muscles on the outside of the elbow due to overuse of the extensor muscles of the limb in a repetitive motion eventually causing extreme pain. It is also common in heavy weight lifters and even painters.

As for treatment, minor cases need a bit of resting while severe ones require surgery. In both cases bandeges must be worn on the elbow to give it firmness, compression and protection.

Similar cases include golfers elbow, also termed pitchers elbow, which is not lateral but Medial Epicondylitis; i.e affecting the opposite side of the elbow. This case is caused by pulling the flexor muscles in a repetitive motion.

What’s interesting is that these injuries are easily avoided by stretching the muscles and warming up the joints especially at the limbs.

After all, prevention is better than any treatment!