Foundations Course Continued Education Notes
My notes from the Gray Institute Course
Environment
Gravity and Ground Reaction Forces
Mass and Momentum
Motion
Reaction
Proprioceptors
Used a Y-excursion style workout but used sagittal, frontal plane AND transverse plane. I would teach the Y-excursion as going in straight directions, but they used looping movements in order to target rotation at the ankle and not just DF/PF and INV/EV.
Muscles
Actor (nonfunctional) or Reactor (Functional).
Dr. Gray proposed that EMG activity is misinterpreted and increased EMG activity is not a good sign of muscle activation, but rather unnatural muscle isolation and overuse.
- Asking a patient to manually activate a muscle is defined by the Gray Institute as an actor and is nonfunctional
- Instead we should be recreating the environment and motion which loads the body and muscle and its synergists to co-contract
- Gray suggests that when a muscle is inactive that it is due to lack of motion at the wrong joint and the wrong time.
Gray suggests that muscles always want to activate eccentrically first. Muscles eccentrically decelerate a motion, which builds elastic potential energy and the muscle uses that to make the concentric aspect of the movement more efficient.
“econcentric” is how the gray institute describes a muscle’s motion. “Econcentric” refers to the fact that a muscle uses eccentric movement in a plane or joint while also creating concentric motion at a different joint/motion.
Biceps and Triceps matrices
- Biceps Matrix: Biceps are traditionally known for shoulder and elbow flexion.
- GrayInstitute suggest looking into the frontal and transverse planes
- When doing a bicep flex, move the wrist from pronation to supination and you should see the bicep muscle “pop” or seemingly get larger
- Triceps matrix: Triceps are traditionally known for acting in the sagittal plane to create shoulder and elbow extension
- We can incorporate the transverse plane with shoulder and wrist rotation
- We can incorporate the frontal plane using shoulder abduction/adduction
Hip flexor muscles primarily work in the sagittal plane, but we should also considering lengthening and shortening in the transverse and frontal plane
- Sagittal plane stretch: split squat position
- Frontal plane:
- Trunk sidebend contralaterally and ipsilaterally to impact frontal plane
- Place lead foot more abducted (wider stances)
- place lead foot more adducted (narrower stance)
- Transverse plane:
- Trunk rotation ipsilaterally and contralaterally
- Internally or externally rotate rear foot
Joints
- Nonfunctional: Isolated
- Isolated refers to seeing the joint in a vacuum and not considering the joints distal and proximal
- Functional: Integrated