Gait Video case: Foot drop, a closer look.
/I hope my final thoughts in today's important gait video will be profound to you as a clinician. It is the soft subtle presentations that are the tough ones, but the same messages are there, if you spend the time to assess for them.
* Remember, what you see in your client's gait is not their problem (as is obvious in today's video), instead you see how they are moving around their deficits. This is a key point we hammer home all the time. If you are making recommendations for your clients on how to move differently through corrective exercises that you THINK they need, merely because you see something in their movement that you do not like, you are very likely going to be fooled. You are not doing your client great service if that is your methodology. For example, telling this guy to engage his left tibialis anterior and lift his toes is the obvious visual correction, but the fact of the matter is, he cannot. So, what you see is how he has figured out how to move through the world, his compensation.
And for those who wish to argue, yes, hard neurologic deficits like you see here are not fixable. In this case, yes, you need to help them gain more skill endurance and strength in a better armored pattern for protective durability. But in many people, those without hardwired neuro or orthopedic deficits, you should be looking to fix their deficits, not merely fix aberrant movements that you just do not think LOOK good.