This is a slide from a recent teleseminar we delivered on www.onlineCE.com.  You can take any of our dozens of courses/lectures there for a nominal fee.

 

This was an interesting study.  Here the authors seemed to discover that habitually driven sensory-motor patterns (as compared to optimally controlled patterns) are quite resistant to changes in biomechanics. In the study, when the tested model was compromised, the subject merely increased the recruitment of all of the surrounding muscles to stabilize and direct movement. Basically, there was no great and calculated logical strategy, it was an all out, habitually automated response … . a “just get the job done right now kind of response”.  Perhaps a “living in the moment” response?  

We have often said that the paramount task via the central nervous system is an orchestration at the the joint, it must be stabilized and movement controlled at the moment of the joint challenge. But, the problem lies in that the consequences of a suboptimal strategy cannot be determined in the moment, they come in time. And this is likely what builds these aberrant compensation patterns, they happen slowly, subtly over time little by little. 

Just as in life, the cost of our decisions are not often immediately realized.

Shawn and Ivo

The gait guys