Sitting is The New Smoking
Murphy M P. May 2017. Arizona State University.
It is said that human beings possess 7 distinct movement patterns. They are stated to be squatting, lunging, twisting, bending, pushing, and pulling. The seventh movement pattern is gait, which gait be further be broken down into walking, jogging, and sprinting patterns.
Although these movement patterns are said to be fundamental, they do need to be learned and/or developed across time.
Motor development, a sub-discipline of the movement sciences, serves to study the changes in motor behavior across an individual’s lifetime.
When children are brought into this world, they are not supplied with a manual that properly instructs them, or their guardians, how to perform locomotion in a safe and efficient manner. Therefore, motor learning and motor control must be experimented with because locomotion is a skill that is developed over time.
The field of biomechanics is frequently utilized in motor development because it is a tool that can be used to track a patient’s progression or regression in response to a specific treatment protocol. In addition, biomechanics serves as a form of movement language that can be used to educate patients on the importance on proper movement mechanics. However, it is equally important to educate patients on the risks they subject their joints to, when movements are performed without optimal joint centration. Let us now know look at a clinical example of the risk factors associated with fault movement mechanic
Figure 1: An Illustration of the force that is applied the skeleton when an individual lands in a stiff or soft knee position.
Robert Griffin (RG) the 3rd was a Heisman Trophy winner (MVP of college football season) and was the 2nd overall pick to the Washington Redskins in the 2012 NFL draft. It was believed that RG III would have an immediate impact to the redskins, but as a result of acute injuries that did not heal properly.
While in Highschool RG III tore his right anterior cruciate ligament. In 2013, three years later RG III sprained his lateral cruciate ligament. However, the injury that had catastrophic repercussions occurred in 2013 in which RG III tore his anterior cruciate ligament, lateral cruciate ligament, and meniscus in his right tibiofemoral joint. The main point I would like to demonstrate is the repeated injury to similar structures within RG III’s right knee. To visually understand this, I have supplied an image of RG III’s biomechanics while attempting to preform a vertical jump.
To further explain this point, let us consider a metaphor that Dr. Kelly Starrett uses, in his New York Times best seller “Becoming a supple Leopard” where he compares human movement patterns to a limited water supply.
The human body is designed to perform millions of movement cycles before joint structures begin to break down. Dr. Starrett supports the notion that if joint centration is not maximized, surrounding structures will be required to pick up the slack, in order to create stability within a biological system. Initially, pain may not present as a symptom, but if these movement faults are continually repeated across time it will accelerate the rate at which these structures are broken down (13).
Subluxation –> Dysfunction –> Discomfort –> Deconditioning –> Disease
I believe this metaphor allows patients to understand the damage that can ensue following years of faulty movement mechanics.
With the development of technology, corporate America, and public education, humans now spend more time in a seated sedentary positions than ever before.
This poses a serious problem because skeletal muscles are a form of elastic tissue which have the ability to creep over time. Physiological creep is defined as the capacity for muscle fibers, fascia, and soft other tissues to lengthen when subjected to a constant tension load. If this stimulus is maintained across time, like every day you go to work or sit in class, deformation will begin to occur and may affect the biomechanical organization of a biological structure.
Once deformation has occurred motor adjustments must be made, which may subject a certain joint or tissue to abnormal stress.
Figure 2: A mechanistic view of the potential risks associated within increased demand. An increased demand can either be excessive exercise or exercises performed in a way they are not biomechanically designed.
In 2000 it was reported that 80,000 anterior cruciate ligaments had occurred in the absence of physical trauma. More shockingly was that most of these injuries occurred between the ages of 15 and 25(14).