What do baseball, tennis, and softball have in common?  They are all spring sports that require intense overhead activity.  Whether it be throwing or serving there is a potential for overuse and aggravation to the shoulder joint.  Shoulder injuries are the fifth most common injury in high school athletes and while many of them are collision injuries; as many as 42% of them are non-contact injuries. 

The shoulder is the most mobile joint in the human body, and because of this, there is a fragile equilibrium between stability and mobility.  This is referred to as the “throwers dilemma”.  To understand shoulder injuries in athletes one must first understand what is required to make a throw or hit a serve. First, the shoulder blade must be strong and moving properly around the ribcage.  Without the strong stable platform of the scapula for the arm bone to move on, you will not achieve maximum velocity.  If the arm does not move properly then you can be setting yourself up for injury.  Second, is actual shoulder flexibility and range of motion (ROM).  There is a structure in the shoulder called the capsule that allows just enough motion but prevents joint dislocation.  But when it is repeatedly traumatized with throwing or serving it can become too tight or even too loose.  It is worth noting however, that if you’re someone who participates frequently in an overhead sport your shoulder range of motion will change and not necessarily for the worse. 

The final aspect of the throw to understand is the kinetic chain.  The kinetic chain essentially refers to the transfer of forces from your feet to your wrist and everything in between. The kinetic chain can easily be ignored when athletes are having shoulder pain but many times the problem can be created or at least exacerbated by weakness or loss of flexibility in the legs and trunk. Research has shown that 54% of the force in a throw or serve comes from the leg, hip, and trunk. Training these frequently ignored areas can take stress off of the shoulder joint and simultaneously increase speed.  This is especially important for adolescents who are participating in overhead sports because of the fact that they are still growing.  As children grow they can become less flexible which can lead to less force production out of their bodies. So it is important to try and stay ahead of the growth curve with specific stretching and strengthening exercises. 

            What I am advocating is a preventative plan to decrease the possibility of injury.  This may involve a detailed evaluation by a medical professional or simply an at home plan that focuses on flexibility first and secondly strength.  It has never been more important than it is now, because kids are spending so much time playing one sport.  Many of today’s youth sports are year around which means there is little time for rest or other sports which may help train flexibility and strength that one sport neglects.  Also, Healthcare is more expensive today than ever before.  With a preventative program you can hold on to more of your money, and keep your athlete on the field or court having fun.

John Oxley is a physical therapist at Huntington Physical Therapy.  The focus of his practice is spine care and shoulder rehabilitation.  You can reach him by emailing joxley@hptservices.com

HPT is looking for a full-time PTA.  Please see the employment tab on the home page for additional information and application.

Feeling crabby lately? Or simply worn out? Perhaps the solution is better sleep.

Think about all the factors that can interfere with a good night’s sleep — from pressure at work and family responsibilities to unexpected challenges, such as layoffs, relationship issues or illnesses. It’s no wonder that quality sleep is sometimes elusive. 

Here at seven tips to a better night’s sleep: 

No. 1: Stick to a sleep schedule 

No. 2: Pay attention to what you eat and drink

No. 3: Create a bedtime ritual 

No. 4: Get comfortable 

No. 5: Limit daytime naps 

No. 6: Include physical activity in your daily routine 

No. 7: Manage stress

You’re not doomed to toss and turn every night. Consider these simple tips for better sleep.

Check out the article regarding bicycling and other exercises that may help people curb their Parkinson’s symtpoms.  The article is featured in the Washington Post National.  You can go to the news page on our website and click on the Article. The link will take you to the Washington Post National where the article is featu

Congratulations to Kelly Akers!  She ran the Walt Disney marathon on Sunday, January 8, 2012.   There were 13, 478 runners that finished the race on a route that took the participants through the four parks with entertainment the whole way.  

Again, congratulations to Kelly for running the Walt Disney Marathon.

“Winning does not always mean coming in first… real victory is in arriving at the finish line with no regrets because you know you’ve gone all out.”

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

“Spirituality isn’t static. It’s an evolving optimism that won’t let hardship get the best of you.”

“Beauty is not generic. Quite often, the thing that makes you memorable is the thing that makes you different.”

“Open your heart..Open it wide; someone is standing outside.”

Happy New Year from the staff of HPT. May 2012 bring everyone joy, happiness and peace.

HPT will be closed Monday, December 26th for Christmas and Monday, January 2nd for New Years Day.   Make sure your appointsments for those weeks are scheduled on a Tuesday through Friday.  If you have any questions, please contact our front desk at 304-525-4445.

HPT will be having a coat drive Thursday, December 1st to Wednesday, December 21st.   All coat donations will be taken to the Huntington City Mission on Thursday, December 22, 2010.   There is a collection box in the HPT lobby to place your coats. 

We are taking coats for children and adults, new and gentle used.  Please make sure all coats are washed before bringing to the office.  

If you have any questions, call 304-525-4445 and speak to Kevin Burton or Angie Slomke.   The drop off address is 2240 5th Avenue.

Sometimes physicians will notice a medical trend well before science confirms its existence. That has been the case with injuries to the anterior cruciate ligament, the main ligament that stabilizes the knee joint, in young athletes. “Doctors who treat kids have all been saying over and over that the numbers of A.C.L. tears are going up dramatically,” says Dr. J. Todd Lawrence, an orthopedic surgeon and pediatric sports medicine specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But surprisingly little firm data has confirmed that hunch.

So, for a study presented this month at the annual conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Boston, Dr. Lawrence and his colleagues parsed emergency room records of pre-adolescent youngsters treated at Children’s Hospital, looking for A.C.L. tears, as well as tears of the meniscus, the small pillows of cartilage that help to cushion the knee bones.

They also checked for fractures of the tibial spine, a fingerling spit of bone that extends from the tibia, or shinbone, to which the A.C.L. attaches. In prepubescent children whose skeletons are still growing, the slender tibial spine can be weaker than the tissues of the A.C.L. and break under the pressures of hard twisting or planting of the knee, even as the A.C.L. remains intact. “There was a time when the tibial spine fracture was the knee injury of childhood,” Dr. Lawrence says. “Twenty years ago, medical textbooks usually included a statement saying that kids did not tear their A.C.L., that they fractured the tibial spine instead.”

But when the researchers examined the pediatric hospital records, from 1999 through early this year, they found only 155 tibial spine fractures, while there were 914 confirmed A.C.L. tears and 996 meniscus tears. More important, while the incidence of tibial spine fractures increased at a rate of about 1 percent per year during that period, the incidence of A.C.L. tears increased by more than 11 percent per year. The difference almost certainly was not a result of better equipment leading to better diagnoses of A.C.L. tears, Dr. Lawrence says. “Even in 1999, M.R.I. technology was quite good,” so it was possible for physicians to differentiate between the injuries.

Which means that increasingly large numbers of young athletes, both boys and girls, are now suffering an injury to which doctors once thought they were almost immune.

Most of the A.C.L. tears that were treated at Children’s Hospital and picked up by this study, Dr. Lawrence points out, also involved a simultaneous meniscus tear, an indication of just how much wrenching and grinding the knee had undergone. Injury patterns have changed, he continues, because childhood sports have changed. “There’s a developmental soccer team here” in Philadelphia, he says, “for U-6 players,” meaning a competitive, select team for 4- and 5-year-olds. “When I heard that, I said, are you kidding me?”

The long-term effects of sports-related A.C.L. and meniscus tears in youngsters remain largely unknown, in part because such injuries were so rare decades ago. But there are indications that the consequences could be calamitous.

Recent studies of adult Swedish soccer players who tore an A.C.L. found that, within 12 to 14 years after the injury, 51 percent of the female players and 41 percent of the men had developed severe arthritis in the injured knee. The same time frame could have an injured 10-year-old dealing with a severely arthritic knee before he or she is 25. Meanwhile, many athletes who return to sports after an A.C.L. tear report that they don’t play as well, according to a new study of 500 Australian athletes, and a third of the athletes in that study did not return to any activity afterward.

“It’s definitely not a minor injury,” Dr. Lawrence says, “and it’s not something you want to see in a child.”

Whether anything can be done to lessen the toll on young knees, though, is uncertain, he and other researchers say. Knee injury prevention programs, including those that teach balance and proper landing techniques, have shown some utility in reducing the incidence of A.C.L. tears, especially in girls. But the programs are relatively new and have not been universally successful, in part, perhaps, because they can make some young athletes overly self-conscious, as an interesting review article published earlier this year suggests. In teaching children to think overtly about how to plant a leg or bend a knee while maintaining balance, some youngsters may become less fluid in their movement, more ungainly — and potentially ripe for injury, the review’s authors speculate.

A better solution would probably be to stop assuming that children can train like miniature Ronaldos or Kobe Bryants. “A lot of what we see in our injury data is almost certainly due to a statistical measure called exposure hours,” Dr. Lawrence says. “The more you do a risky activity at a high level, the more likely you are to get hurt.” His advice? “Encourage kids to play multiple sports and not to do any one sport year-round, and especially not when they’re 5 or 6, or even 9 or 10. They’re kids. Let them play and have fun, like kids.”