Torin wants to know: Can you feel the love, tonight?
Posted 11/22/2011
This past spring my wife, Leslie, and I went to Las Vegas on a little get-away trip and left our kiddos home with Grandma and Grandpa. At that time we were coming out of a long winter in North Dakota and just needed some sunshine and warmth. We spent a LOT of time at the pool soaking up the sun and relaxing. We had been there before so didn’t feel the need to walk the strip too much and it was very relaxing. The highlight of our trip, however, was getting a chance to see ‘The Lion King’ musical before it left Vegas. Yes I know, we took a vacation to Vegas, without kids, and ended up seeing The Lion King. It might sound a little pathetic but it was great. If you have never seen the musical I highly recommend it. The sets were amazing, the costumes…amazing, the singing… amazing. Of course the song we all remember from the movie was Elton John’s “Can you feel the love, tonight?” I know you all can hear it in your heads now… sorry about that.
Can you feel it? If you have come to therapy here or with a PRI trained therapist this is one question that I am sure your therapist has asked many, many times. Probably to the point that you hear your therapist ask it every time you do your exercises at home. When we are doing an activity with our patients we are trying to turn specific muscles on and turn other specific muscles off to improve the way in which we move. If you cannot feel the specific muscles we want you to feel when doing your activities, or are feeling other muscles too much, you are not going to have the success with the activities that we would like you to have. So we ask: Can you feel this?… Can you feel that?… Are you feeling this?… Can you feel the love, tonight? (Just kidding). To underscore this importance of “can you feel it,“ over the next few blogs I want to highlight a few of the major muscles we want you to feel, and probably more importantly if you are not feeling them what we may need to work on to be able to feel the correct muscle work.
Usually one of the first muscles we want our patients to feel is the left inner thigh muscle, or adductor. In our normal pattern of asymmetry our body has a tendency to center our weight, or base of support, over our right leg. This weight shift is usually accomplished with activity of the right inner thigh muscle to pull the body to the right. In order to do this our brain, primarily with reflex activity, turns off the left inner thigh muscle to make this shift easier. This in and of itself is not a bad thing as long as we have the ability to turn on our left inner thigh, turn off our right inner thigh and shift our weight to the left side as easily as we can to the right. Think about slow dancing (I’m thinking of a certain Elton John song…) and you can picture how the inner thigh muscles can pull or sway you from side to side. In order to get this side to side (frontal plane) activity to occur equally we want our patients to feel their left inner thigh work more than their right inner thigh to overcome our normal asymmetrical tendencies.
So, can you feel it? If you can, Great! Keep feeling it because we want you to use that muscle to stabilize your pelvis and not let it sneak back to the right. If you can’t then we need to address some other issues so that you can feel it. The things that might keep someone from feeling their left inner thigh work are primarily things that prevent them from being able to get in a proper position that allows them to fully shift their center of gravity to their left side and shift their pelvis over the top of their left hip bone (known as AFIR to PRI trained PTs). There may be some restrictions in the hip joint itself (posterior capsule) that need to be stretched out to allow the normal joint mechanics to occur, and allow the pelvis to shift over the thigh bone. If someone cannot fully get their hip socket into that position it will be challenging at best to feel that inner thigh muscle work. This will probably be the first thing we will address with some stretching activities for your left hip. If the right inner thigh muscle is too strong, hyper active, or tight, it may be preventing the pelvis from shifting correctly to the left or the left inner thigh muscle from turning on. If this is the case we may need to do some activities to inhibit or shut off that hyperactive right inner thigh (right adductor inhibition). Sometimes our patients can feel their inner thigh great lying down, but then when we transition to standing activity all of a sudden it is impossible to feel it. We then usually cue those people to find and feel their right shoe arch. This is done for a few reasons. If the center of gravity is too far to the right (which is part of our normal asymmetrical pattern) the tendency is to roll onto the outer aspect of the right foot which will cause you to use your right inner thigh (as opposed to the left leg) more for stability. Again if the right inner thigh is working too much it will be difficult to find and feel the left inner thigh. If we cue a push into that right arch that will allow the center of gravity to shift back to the left, shut off the right inner thigh muscle and allow better feel of the left inner thigh. Sometimes we may need even to look into footwear or orthotics to assist this to happen. One last thing that may be affecting someone’s ability to shift their weight to the left appropriately is the inability to fill up the right lateral chest wall with air. Once again our normal asymmetrical bodies and patterns create difficulties for our left diaphragm to work efficiently and for our right lateral chest wall to open up or expand the way it should (right apical expansion). If this is significantly restricted it can limit the ability to shift to the left and to feel the left inner thigh. So we may need to even look into activities that stretch the right lateral (and sometimes posterior) chest wall to get the body in a position to allow the left inner thigh to work as well as we need it.
I guess the bottom line is that if you cannot feel your left inner thigh and we keep asking and asking “Can you feel the love tonight?” let us know so we can address all of the issues that may be holding you back from progressing the way we want you to. Oh, and if you get the chance to see The Lion King I highly recommend it, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll hear your therapist’s voice saying “Can you feel it?”
Questions or comments for Torin? to send him an email.
Posted November 22, 2011 at 10:23am by Torin Berge.
Tagged With: AFIR, biomechanics, Breathing, Diaphragm, frontal plane, Hip Shift, left inner thigh muscle - adductor, posterior capsule (hip joint), PRI Concepts, right adductor inhibition, right arch, right lateral chest wall • 0 Comments
