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Traditional Approaches
Dispelling the myths
Muscle therapy practitioners you consult, with a sore knee for example, will tell you 'rest' is the first treatment. They will explain that the cause of your problem is a quadriceps muscle imbalance, weak medial and strong lateral quads and/or tight illiotibial band. You will be prescribed an exercise and stretching program. Then when that fails to solve it they may tape the patella or tell you to use a strap to try and alter it's function. They talk of muscles as if they can be trained and actually have an intelligence of their own to know when and how hard to pull in balance to hold our faulty posture straight, or to correct our faulty movement. In fact muscle imbalance is not the cause of knee function problems. We have been told this tiresome nonsense for a long time. The first principle of conditioning is that muscles build according to the way they are worked so the imbalance is another symptom, an indicator of incorrect leg function. The problem is not even a mistracking patella but the entire knee joint turns sideways behind the knee cap because of leg rotation. A tight or injured muscle, e.g. hamstring or calf just walking or running is also caused by incorrect function, a result of misalignment (usually inherited) in foot and lower leg skeletal structure. Stretching has been promoted as a solution to muscle tightness problems, especially for runners. It doesn't solve the problem. You may feel more comfortable for a short time but as soon as you walk or run again, your incorrect movement causes the same damage to muscle fibres and they are tight, yet again.
This early theory that all movement is dictated by muscle balance and strength was put together before the terms Biomechanics or Human Movement even existed and large groups of entrenched people are still stuck there. There seems a determination to continue this enormous myth that came from initial guess work rather than scientific investigation. It is entrenched and being protected by those who want to maintain their theories and position. The Universities can be blamed for much of the lack of progress as instead of teaching the pure science they often promote the popular interpretation. There is much talk of innovation while they continue doing the same safe inconclusive studies. I was one of a group of twenty who graduated but I came out of the course with distinctly different ideas than the others. While I believe the others were accepting the interpretations they were given, as a mature age student with some cynicism because my own problems had not been solved by mainstream, I was delving into the texts and looking for scientific understanding.
Many practitioners use the jargon and claim to understand biomechanics. It is not enough to have studied anatomy and be able to impress us with the names of the structures and muscles. Understanding human posture and locomotion involves applying the rules of Physics to the skeletal structure of a human being. It is present in the science texts but the mainstream disciplines learn traditional interpretations.
Muscle alignment and function is secondary to and set by the skeletal structure it is attached to and any skeletal variations affect function and may cause either micro tears or significant injury to muscles. The rule in looking at the human skeleton is that 'Structure dictates function.'
Muscle strength is protective, they switch on to support you when you change course or stumble and switch on to momentarily stabilize such as in leaping sideways on the tennis court.
The muscles cannot sustain the effort and do not resist gravity. The force of gravity or the 'weight' of our body is borne by the skeletal structure and we stack up from the ground according to the inherited structure of our skeleton.
Next page -> Understanding gait