We're devoted to individualized training and rehabilitation, offering a detailed & measured approach to athletic performance. We've honed our expertise with elite competitors and Olympians in triathlon, bobsleigh, and track, and now bring the same methods to the everyday athlete eager to improve their health and minimize injuries. Access evidence-supported tips delivered through true tales, jaw-dropping examples, and clear exercise videos that make them easy to grasp and apply.
Movement assessment on steroids
|
Technology is seeping into every corner of every gym these days, from 24/7 heart rate variability tracking bands, to force plate testing, to air displacement plethysmography pods for body composition analysis, and apps to track and analyze our workouts. At Vital, we think merging the hard numbers and quantitative analysis, with the more qualitative movement approach is where the magic happens. Knowing that your right quad is 10% stronger than the left can be helpful to some, but pairing that with information about how to change your movement patterns more acutely, can help people in more ways than one:
Here's an example of a movement assessment summary we sent out this week that combines both the quantitative AND qualitative analysis: 1) Strength testing showed:
Slightly favouring the right leg while jumping (12% on the eccentric braking phase and 8% on the up)
Countermovement jump power was 55.5 W/kg - fairly good number for a middle distance speed skater (best sprinters were typically high 60s - low 70s)
Single leg jumps were at 72nd and 80th percentile for the VALD norms.
Reactive jumps (double and single leg drop jumps) were at the lower end of norms at 16th and 27th percentiles respectively.
Isolated muscle testing on the force frame was fairly even overall with the only more notable asymmetries hip adduction and knee extension favouring the right by 11 and 10% and hip internal rotation favouring the left by 9%
Generally asymmetries (side to side differences) approaching or exceeding 15% are flagged and warrant addressing.
2) Movement assessment showed:
Right hip drop while at mid stance on the left leg during running; This tends to be one of the factors more consistently related to running injuries but would be very relevant to the hip and body control in skating as well - typically caused by issues at the foot, glute med, and/or obliques.
There was also an interesting asymmetry with your arm swing and leg swing during single leg jumps (see highlights). The motion was much tighter and linear when jumping off the left and with the arms and swing leg going wide when jumping off the right.
Let us know if we can help individualize or add some work for you this summer. If you have any questions or comments - I reply 100% of the time! Yours in physiology, Carla |
Physiology Toolkit
We're devoted to individualized training and rehabilitation, offering a detailed & measured approach to athletic performance. We've honed our expertise with elite competitors and Olympians in triathlon, bobsleigh, and track, and now bring the same methods to the everyday athlete eager to improve their health and minimize injuries. Access evidence-supported tips delivered through true tales, jaw-dropping examples, and clear exercise videos that make them easy to grasp and apply.
Ever gotten out of breath when you're lifting heavy weights? If you have, you're not alone, and that response is totally normal in your physiological effort to recover from that stress. I used to train a National Team Bobsleigh athlete who wore a shirt to training that read: Lifting is my cardio ..and she would exclaim during training that if she had >5 rep exercises in her program that the program was a "cardio day", ha! Well why then, might you ask, does it seem like your out-of-breathness...
We're kicking off Thursday with a little functional anatomy for you this week. I've heard "I know I should keep my shoulders down and back" a few times in the last week, so I thought I would clarify! The TLDR* is highlighted below (*too long didn't read). The rhomboid muscle is highlighted in blue below. It is often the centre of attention from therapists and desk workers who claim they "know they need to keep their shoulders down and back more" to help with their posture and neck pain. It...
Elite and everyday athletes hire us to help them get faster. Sometimes they want a faster 5k, marathon or triathlon race time. Other times they want a faster 30m sprint time to be competitive in the sport of bobsleigh. Yet other times, they want to cover just a little more ground in their weekly 30 minute run to feel some sense of progress in their fitness and improvement in their health. For our Conditioning Workshop that we taught twice in the last year (this weekend is the 1 year...