Video Gait Analysis

I spent today learning all about how to use the Dartfish video gait analysis system.  Fascinating stuff and will be of great value to my patients.  In the process I did of course have my gait analysed, as well as my single leg squat assessed.  Confirmation of my weak left leg!  But it was really interesting to see how the weakness affected my running and how this would translate into pain and injury because of repetitive excessive or uncontrolled movement at my ankle and knee.

It isn't possible to stress the importance of strength and conditioning work for anyone who wants to undertake physical activity.  Unfortunately, the ability to run, cycle, jump, swim doesn't just come naturally....possibly we detrain at some stage of our lives (maybe some lazy teenage years), possibly we get injured and lose strength and control or possibly we have always been lazy and never developed the strength in the first place.  We don't live in an active world anymore.  We don't have to chase our food, we sit on chairs, we drive cars...so much time spent not moving, so much time to gradually become less well adapted to moving fast, to carrying loads etc... 

So it isn't bizarre that the human body becomes overloaded when we decide we do want to start/increase training.  It takes time to build up the right muscle strength, body awareness, neural connections, bone density, tendon strength as well as cardiovascular fitness.  And this is the time for overload injury when we get too enthusiastic!

So strength and conditioning is critical.  This should encompass upper and lower body work as well as core strength.  And movements must be correct.  Wrong technique perpetuates undesirable movement patterns.  It's easy to bash out a set of exercises - but do them wrong and you are just maintaining the status quo - e.g. using hip flexors/ITB/paraspinals instead of the glutes when performing clams - where you are trying to activate and strengthen glute med.

So I'm now officially an 'accredited Dartfish video gait analyst'.  Not just another stick to beat the patients with who don't do their exercises....hopefully a means to help the patients see how they move and how they can change to move better and in the process resolve their pain and injuries.

To have a look at an example go of what Dartfish looks like go to:
http://www.dartfish.com/data/mediabooks/108/PerformanceAnalysis.html