I'm fascinated with the British TV show, Top Gear. I gave the American version a shot but it just fails in comparison. The BBC hosts and all of the British idiosyncrasies and slang are what makes the show for me. It's got all sorts of unique and bizarre little segments. Today, I saw some more video about racing in Britain, but this one results in something far more interesting.
Take a look...
Big thanks to Jim Rome for showing a brief clip of this on The Final Burn today. I love a good rant about how much he hates soccer or NASCAR or arrogant, overpaid athletes as much as anyone, but today we got to see a cyclist take a shard of wood through his calf.
My friends and I have been looking for all kinds of injury videos throughout the years. There are a few good ones, but the majority are some dumb rednecks doing professional wrestling moves off of their roof or cell phone videos of stunts gone wrong.
If anyone knows of some other than the usual Willis McGahee and Kickboxing Tib/Fib Fracture video, I'd like to check them out and will share them here.
It's honestly a good way to practice some evaluation. We often times have the advantage of seeing the injury occur. Observing a mechanism of injury is invaluable in evaluating an injured person. I have a lot of examples but one sticks out in my memory the most. At one of baseball games I covered at Memphis, one of our players made a great diving play but injured his shoulder. As I ran out in the freezing rain that was falling I realized that he did brace his dive with an outstretched hand (FOOSH!) and then fell in a manner that put his shoulder into flexion. With this info, I quickly made sure that it wasn't dislocated and he didn't report any of the standard signs of a subluxation. I was able to then move on to my next thought which was a posterior labrum, capsular sprain or rotator cuff injury. At the time, he was in considerable pain so he was removed from the game. For days, I continually evaluated this shoulder convinced that I would find a positive test for a labral tear. Even our other ATC's and Physicians and an MRI couldn't find it. We moved on with the treatment but a full recovery just didn't happen right away. Later, an arthroscopy revealed a Kim Lesion, which I had never heard of. However, it turned out that my initial suspicion of a labral pathology was correct. It goes to show that seeing the MOI is invaluable and to trust your instincts!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
It's Opening Day! and almost Athletic Training Month!
If you're a baseball fan, don't wait until March 31 for the Cardinals' Opening Day for your baseball fix. Get interested in one of the most overlooked sports in the country, College Baseball. It seems that you really have to go looking for information on NCAA Baseball until the postseason, when the Road to Omaha does get some national attention. That's a shame though, because many of "tomorrow's stars" are playing at programs in literally every corner of the country. With my time at Memphis and this summer in the Cape Cod League, I've been lucky enough to go to many of these schools and have gotten to know several of the coaches, players and athletic trainers that make the sport great.
I am happy to report that my friends in Memphis are off to a good start. They beat the Evansville Aces 13-9.
It's interesting in this line of work how many places and people you end up with a connection to. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying today more than the average baseball fan. Evansville was a place I strongly considered for undergrad. They always presented their program as top notch and I was very impressed. You remember good people like that and wish them well. Other teams I'm watching include Mississippi State, Arizona State, Oklahoma, Georgia Southern, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Troy, Houston and my D3 alma mater the Wilmington Quakers!
Being connected to sports on such a personal level is just another one of the countless things I love about my job. Just another reason to promote the profession again and that's good because it's almost Athletic Training month!
Load up on National Athletic Training Month materials including brochures, logos and an e-card!
http://www.nata.org/national-athletic-training-month
There's a to do list, and how to make the most of Athletic Training month with the community, the workplace and the media. I'm going to be busy with some organization and some traveling but I will do my best to write about how I'm following through with the to do list. Please pick a few of the activities and write in with your experiences!
I am happy to report that my friends in Memphis are off to a good start. They beat the Evansville Aces 13-9.
It's interesting in this line of work how many places and people you end up with a connection to. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying today more than the average baseball fan. Evansville was a place I strongly considered for undergrad. They always presented their program as top notch and I was very impressed. You remember good people like that and wish them well. Other teams I'm watching include Mississippi State, Arizona State, Oklahoma, Georgia Southern, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Troy, Houston and my D3 alma mater the Wilmington Quakers!
Being connected to sports on such a personal level is just another one of the countless things I love about my job. Just another reason to promote the profession again and that's good because it's almost Athletic Training month!
Load up on National Athletic Training Month materials including brochures, logos and an e-card!
http://www.nata.org/national-athletic-training-month
There's a to do list, and how to make the most of Athletic Training month with the community, the workplace and the media. I'm going to be busy with some organization and some traveling but I will do my best to write about how I'm following through with the to do list. Please pick a few of the activities and write in with your experiences!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Motivation, etc.
Going a little bit off topic today. No rants or stories here.
One of my friends was looking for something to train for today. He'd run a marathon before but doesn't really have the time for something like that anymore. What I suggested is way more awesome than any marathon. The Warrior Dash.
It's a race of varying lengths that has several events across the country. The one in Ohio is self described as 2.91 hellish miles. The top 3 finishers receive a custom engraved steel warrior helmet. Everyone get's a fuzzy one.
This is like a 5k. If the 5k was combined with a Hollywood stunt stage, the WWE, Brian Wilson's beard and then set on fire. Seriously, you have to run and jump over flames at one point. Then when you're done, they throw a party with huge mugs of beer and a concert. Boom.
I definitely wanted to do this but the one in Ohio is in June. I got excited when I saw that they were hiring. They could definitely use an Athletic Trainer or two and I've been looking for things to do in the Winter. Not what they're looking for though. Oh well...
Check out some of the photos, different obstacles and other awesome info here. www.warriordash.com
I do bring this up for a point. Especially when it's cold outside with ice covered sidewalks, it's hard to get motivated to go workout. However, knowing that this is what you're training for could make it a little easier. It's a pretty bad ass light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe the Warrior Dash isn't your cup of tea, but it is a pretty cool way of getting people to engage in some physical activity.
One of my friends was looking for something to train for today. He'd run a marathon before but doesn't really have the time for something like that anymore. What I suggested is way more awesome than any marathon. The Warrior Dash.
It's a race of varying lengths that has several events across the country. The one in Ohio is self described as 2.91 hellish miles. The top 3 finishers receive a custom engraved steel warrior helmet. Everyone get's a fuzzy one.
This is like a 5k. If the 5k was combined with a Hollywood stunt stage, the WWE, Brian Wilson's beard and then set on fire. Seriously, you have to run and jump over flames at one point. Then when you're done, they throw a party with huge mugs of beer and a concert. Boom.
I definitely wanted to do this but the one in Ohio is in June. I got excited when I saw that they were hiring. They could definitely use an Athletic Trainer or two and I've been looking for things to do in the Winter. Not what they're looking for though. Oh well...
Check out some of the photos, different obstacles and other awesome info here. www.warriordash.com
I do bring this up for a point. Especially when it's cold outside with ice covered sidewalks, it's hard to get motivated to go workout. However, knowing that this is what you're training for could make it a little easier. It's a pretty bad ass light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe the Warrior Dash isn't your cup of tea, but it is a pretty cool way of getting people to engage in some physical activity.
Friday, February 11, 2011
This is REAL Core Stability
"Core Stability" was all the rage not too long ago and to some extent, it still is. Unfortunately, so many people thought that doing thousands of crunches meant that you'd have a strong core. In my experience, this has gotten somewhat better lately, especially in organized athletics. There are a lot of good Strength and Conditioning Specialists (CSCS) that are taking a broad scoped and all incorporating approach to "core strength". Even the heavily marketed, but actually useful, P90X takes a pretty good shot. If you follow Tony Horton's 90 day program, you will definitely be stronger, leaner and more fit. However, I'm not sold on how actually stable the core is in so many of our athletes. Up until a few months ago, I likely would have said differently.
As I've mentioned before, I was fortunate enough to attend the PBATS Sports Medicine conference in January. One of many great presentations was given by PJ Mainville, Assistant Athletic Trainer with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He spoke on an integrated approach to rehabilitating shoulder injuries. A main topic of this integrated approach centered around Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS). Of all of the presentations during the three-day conference, DNS stood out to me as the most interesting. It is logical, applicable to a broad population and cutting-edge. A 20 minute lecture that briefly touched on DNS was enough to pique my interest. I've researched it a good bit and thought about its concepts even more. I'm excited to learn more about this approach because of its growing use in professional baseball and because it makes much more sense as "core stability".
I can do no justice to thoroughly explaining DNS here. I honestly don't have a strong enough grasp of the concepts and have never actually practiced it yet. Hopefully that will change soon though. In the meantime I'll do my best to give a brief summary and provide links to the information I've found.
DNS has been developed by Associate Professor Pavel Kolar, P.T., Paed. Dr., Ph.D. from the Prague School in Prague, Czech Republic. "DNS is designed to stimulate movement control centers in the brain in order to activate the body's "stabilizing system". This allows for improved body awareness, posture and respiration, improving the quality of specific and general exercises. DNS techniques stimulate the brain, which controls all muscles, and the muscles in turn move and protect all joints. DNS stabilizes the body by re-establishing the precise postures the child utilizes as it matures to crawl and upright itself in order to stand and walk. The method helps to restore the structural and postural alignment of the body's neuromuscular skeletal system by invoking a full body "global" motor pattern."
Basically, by placing patients in the postures of an infant learning to crawl, reach and walk, and initiating resisted movements from there, DNS stimulates the central nervous system to retrain the spinal stabilizing muscles. Every movement made by the head or an extremity is preceded by a group of muscles activating to provide a stable base. These muscles are the multifidi, deep neck flexors, diaphragm, muscles of the abdominal wall and muscles of the pelvic floor. The activation of these muscles is automatic and they act as a functional unit. Over time, the CNS takes over and the spine is stabilized subconsciously.
At PBATS, Mainville described it in a practical way that made a lot of sense. I'll try to do it justice here.
Imagine a basic, empty bottle of water. If you squeeze it on the sides, it's pretty easy to bend the bottle in half in any direction. Now, squeeze it by the top and bottom. The bottle is now much harder to bend. When the diaphragm and other muscles contract, your spine becomes like the water bottle squeezed by the top and bottom and is much more stable.
As we know, a lot of injuries are caused by disfunction or compensation. DNS is being used to not just rehabilitate but also in injury prevention.
There is so much more to this amazing concept. I hope you will take a look at the links and read some of the articles or watch the videos.
Here is the site for the Prague School: http://www.rehabps.com/REHABILITATION/Home.html From here you can follow the links to research articles, videos and power point presentations detailing the development and practice of DNS.
This is another site with some descriptions of DNS and testimonials from top professionals including Athletic Trainers. http://www.rehabfai.com/index.html
Steve Smith, of Athlete's Performance in Florida, wrote a guest post on mikereinold.com about it too. He has some good practical application of what he learned at one of Kolar's seminars. http://www.mikereinold.com/2009/05/dynamic-neuromuscular-stabilization.html
As I've mentioned before, I was fortunate enough to attend the PBATS Sports Medicine conference in January. One of many great presentations was given by PJ Mainville, Assistant Athletic Trainer with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He spoke on an integrated approach to rehabilitating shoulder injuries. A main topic of this integrated approach centered around Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS). Of all of the presentations during the three-day conference, DNS stood out to me as the most interesting. It is logical, applicable to a broad population and cutting-edge. A 20 minute lecture that briefly touched on DNS was enough to pique my interest. I've researched it a good bit and thought about its concepts even more. I'm excited to learn more about this approach because of its growing use in professional baseball and because it makes much more sense as "core stability".
I can do no justice to thoroughly explaining DNS here. I honestly don't have a strong enough grasp of the concepts and have never actually practiced it yet. Hopefully that will change soon though. In the meantime I'll do my best to give a brief summary and provide links to the information I've found.
DNS has been developed by Associate Professor Pavel Kolar, P.T., Paed. Dr., Ph.D. from the Prague School in Prague, Czech Republic. "DNS is designed to stimulate movement control centers in the brain in order to activate the body's "stabilizing system". This allows for improved body awareness, posture and respiration, improving the quality of specific and general exercises. DNS techniques stimulate the brain, which controls all muscles, and the muscles in turn move and protect all joints. DNS stabilizes the body by re-establishing the precise postures the child utilizes as it matures to crawl and upright itself in order to stand and walk. The method helps to restore the structural and postural alignment of the body's neuromuscular skeletal system by invoking a full body "global" motor pattern."
Basically, by placing patients in the postures of an infant learning to crawl, reach and walk, and initiating resisted movements from there, DNS stimulates the central nervous system to retrain the spinal stabilizing muscles. Every movement made by the head or an extremity is preceded by a group of muscles activating to provide a stable base. These muscles are the multifidi, deep neck flexors, diaphragm, muscles of the abdominal wall and muscles of the pelvic floor. The activation of these muscles is automatic and they act as a functional unit. Over time, the CNS takes over and the spine is stabilized subconsciously.
At PBATS, Mainville described it in a practical way that made a lot of sense. I'll try to do it justice here.
Imagine a basic, empty bottle of water. If you squeeze it on the sides, it's pretty easy to bend the bottle in half in any direction. Now, squeeze it by the top and bottom. The bottle is now much harder to bend. When the diaphragm and other muscles contract, your spine becomes like the water bottle squeezed by the top and bottom and is much more stable.
As we know, a lot of injuries are caused by disfunction or compensation. DNS is being used to not just rehabilitate but also in injury prevention.
There is so much more to this amazing concept. I hope you will take a look at the links and read some of the articles or watch the videos.
Here is the site for the Prague School: http://www.rehabps.com/REHABILITATION/Home.html From here you can follow the links to research articles, videos and power point presentations detailing the development and practice of DNS.
This is another site with some descriptions of DNS and testimonials from top professionals including Athletic Trainers. http://www.rehabfai.com/index.html
Steve Smith, of Athlete's Performance in Florida, wrote a guest post on mikereinold.com about it too. He has some good practical application of what he learned at one of Kolar's seminars. http://www.mikereinold.com/2009/05/dynamic-neuromuscular-stabilization.html
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Carpenter Responds...
"Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." -Abraham Lincoln
Evidently, Paul Carpenter has never heard this before. We have been blessed to receive his response a day earlier than promised. If you want to read it here is the link; But I warn you, it is a tongue-in-cheek, absurd, erroneous and irritating few paragraphs. http://www.mcall.com/news/local/carpenter/mc-paul-carpenter-trainers-20110208,0,7678136.column
I'm not exactly happy about his thoughts but I'm not going to waste my time writing him a nasty e-mail or calling him up tomorrow. I don't even want to point out and comment on his errors. You all can see those for yourselves.
All of the negative response he got should be an indicator that he is wrong or at the very least, uninformed. However, I'm taking a different angle to this. Yes, I am irritated. However, I am more inspired. I know (and chances are if you're reading this, you know) what Athletic Trainers are qualified to do and what not to do. I want more people to know. I would rather all of the people responding to Carpenter get together and come up with campaigns to promote Athletic Training and to educate the public about what we do.
We're not doing "heart surgery" and never will. Not that it makes any difference to people like Mr. Carpenter, but Athletic Trainers are doing some amazing things and are on the forefront of research to better care for our athletes. I'm going to spend some time this week highlighting some of these things.
Evidently, Paul Carpenter has never heard this before. We have been blessed to receive his response a day earlier than promised. If you want to read it here is the link; But I warn you, it is a tongue-in-cheek, absurd, erroneous and irritating few paragraphs. http://www.mcall.com/news/local/carpenter/mc-paul-carpenter-trainers-20110208,0,7678136.column
I'm not exactly happy about his thoughts but I'm not going to waste my time writing him a nasty e-mail or calling him up tomorrow. I don't even want to point out and comment on his errors. You all can see those for yourselves.
All of the negative response he got should be an indicator that he is wrong or at the very least, uninformed. However, I'm taking a different angle to this. Yes, I am irritated. However, I am more inspired. I know (and chances are if you're reading this, you know) what Athletic Trainers are qualified to do and what not to do. I want more people to know. I would rather all of the people responding to Carpenter get together and come up with campaigns to promote Athletic Training and to educate the public about what we do.
We're not doing "heart surgery" and never will. Not that it makes any difference to people like Mr. Carpenter, but Athletic Trainers are doing some amazing things and are on the forefront of research to better care for our athletes. I'm going to spend some time this week highlighting some of these things.
Another Ignorant Person... Except This One Has a Newspaper Column
I saw a link on the NATA's twitter feed today about the president of the Pennsylvania Athletic Trainer's Association responding to an opinion column in a newspaper. Mr. Greg Janik wrote a pretty basic response detailing the education and certifications of Athletic Trainers and their competence in evaluating and treating concussions. A response was certainly justified in setting the record straight and correcting the original columnist, Paul Carpenter.
You can read Carpenter's column here: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/carpenter/mc-paul-carpenter-concussions-20110201,0,5280899.column
You can read Janik's response here: http://articles.mcall.com/2011-02-07/opinion/mc-concussions-janik-20110207_1_concussions-pennsylvania-athletic-trainers-society-interscholastic-athletes
This Carpenter guy clearly has no clue. It drives me crazy that ignorant fools like this get paid to share their "opinions" and spread false information. If you don't want to read the whole thing just know that Mr. Carpenter feels that "trainers" are not qualified to evaluate a concussion and decide if a student-athlete is fit to return to play because they are "nothing but flunkies for coaches, some of whom are willing to do anything to win." Read that again. "FLUNKIES FOR COACHES." Apparently we all work for Bud Kilmer. Go Coyotes...
The newspaper, the Morning Call, claims that Carpenter will be responding to his apparently numerous critics tomorrow. I'll be waiting to see what he writes and will post what I find. Hopefully the critics have corrected him and a full apology is issued.
If being called a "flunkie" doesn't inspire you to do your part to promote this profession, I don't know what will. Please share those links to other Athletic Trainers.
You can read Carpenter's column here: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/carpenter/mc-paul-carpenter-concussions-20110201,0,5280899.column
You can read Janik's response here: http://articles.mcall.com/2011-02-07/opinion/mc-concussions-janik-20110207_1_concussions-pennsylvania-athletic-trainers-society-interscholastic-athletes
This Carpenter guy clearly has no clue. It drives me crazy that ignorant fools like this get paid to share their "opinions" and spread false information. If you don't want to read the whole thing just know that Mr. Carpenter feels that "trainers" are not qualified to evaluate a concussion and decide if a student-athlete is fit to return to play because they are "nothing but flunkies for coaches, some of whom are willing to do anything to win." Read that again. "FLUNKIES FOR COACHES." Apparently we all work for Bud Kilmer. Go Coyotes...
The newspaper, the Morning Call, claims that Carpenter will be responding to his apparently numerous critics tomorrow. I'll be waiting to see what he writes and will post what I find. Hopefully the critics have corrected him and a full apology is issued.
If being called a "flunkie" doesn't inspire you to do your part to promote this profession, I don't know what will. Please share those links to other Athletic Trainers.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Maybe someday...
I've had some computer issues lately, so I haven't had the chance to write. Honestly, I wasn't sure what would be the next topic anyway, but last night I got some inspiration. This inspiration came in the form of a rather ignorant and naiive girl.
Before I go any further, here's just a few disclaimers. I'm not trying to belittle any profession, especially those in healthcare. Also, it bothers me when people use the internet as an outlet for their complaints so please don't confuse this for a complaint. I'm simply trying to promote this great (but misunderstood and underappreciated) profession.
I was at a Super Bowl party at some friends' apartment. One of them is a Personal Trainer who does a lot of great work helping people achieve their weight loss, strength training and personal health goals. He used to be an Athletic Training student so he has a good appreciation and knowledge of what it is an ATC does. We were having a pretty uneventful party but one of the neighbors stopped by and changed that. In casual, standard conversation we were talking about what we do. Despite explaining my job multiple times, it was evident that it wasn't sinking in. Having a Personal Trainer in the room didn't help because apparently the word "trainer" being in two different professions was too complicated for her. I really hope that the general public has a better idea of what the difference is between an ATC and a Personal Trainer. I have a pretty good feeling that they do because she claimed that to be a good "trainer" you had to have a six pack. She also claimed that because their couch and chair didn't match, my friends weren't good people. Really, she made Snooki look like a genius.
Here's what the NATA has on their website concerning the topic: http://www.nata.org/sites/default/files/ATs_vs_PTs.pdf
I don't put much stock in what ignorant people say, think or do but this particular case just annoyed me. However, I am all fired up again about promoting the profession, getting the general public to better understand it and maybe get more people interested in becoming an ATC.
I'm not the only one out there with these goals. These students had a great idea: http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x294821789/Hopes-athletic-training-project-wins-state-award
I really like what they did because it combined Athletic Training with something that is fresh, new and interesting to a lot of people. Think about it. A table at a basketball game with some students by a high school science project display board with some brochures about athletic training is not going to get much attention. You put a Wii in there and now everyone wants to come have a turn. As the good folks at Guiness would say... "Brilliant!"
I've got a few ideas of my own, but other than this blog there's not much I can do about them yet. I'm interested in hearing some idea of my readers. Please share in the comments. Maybe together we can come up with some realistic good ideas.
Before I go any further, here's just a few disclaimers. I'm not trying to belittle any profession, especially those in healthcare. Also, it bothers me when people use the internet as an outlet for their complaints so please don't confuse this for a complaint. I'm simply trying to promote this great (but misunderstood and underappreciated) profession.
I was at a Super Bowl party at some friends' apartment. One of them is a Personal Trainer who does a lot of great work helping people achieve their weight loss, strength training and personal health goals. He used to be an Athletic Training student so he has a good appreciation and knowledge of what it is an ATC does. We were having a pretty uneventful party but one of the neighbors stopped by and changed that. In casual, standard conversation we were talking about what we do. Despite explaining my job multiple times, it was evident that it wasn't sinking in. Having a Personal Trainer in the room didn't help because apparently the word "trainer" being in two different professions was too complicated for her. I really hope that the general public has a better idea of what the difference is between an ATC and a Personal Trainer. I have a pretty good feeling that they do because she claimed that to be a good "trainer" you had to have a six pack. She also claimed that because their couch and chair didn't match, my friends weren't good people. Really, she made Snooki look like a genius.
Here's what the NATA has on their website concerning the topic: http://www.nata.org/sites/default/files/ATs_vs_PTs.pdf
I don't put much stock in what ignorant people say, think or do but this particular case just annoyed me. However, I am all fired up again about promoting the profession, getting the general public to better understand it and maybe get more people interested in becoming an ATC.
I'm not the only one out there with these goals. These students had a great idea: http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x294821789/Hopes-athletic-training-project-wins-state-award
I really like what they did because it combined Athletic Training with something that is fresh, new and interesting to a lot of people. Think about it. A table at a basketball game with some students by a high school science project display board with some brochures about athletic training is not going to get much attention. You put a Wii in there and now everyone wants to come have a turn. As the good folks at Guiness would say... "Brilliant!"
I've got a few ideas of my own, but other than this blog there's not much I can do about them yet. I'm interested in hearing some idea of my readers. Please share in the comments. Maybe together we can come up with some realistic good ideas.
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