A powerful golf swing starts with the core. But so does a powerful golf injury.

“People don’t look at [golf] as something that’s very physically demanding,” Andrew Turpin, a physical therapist at the Missouri Orthopaedic Institute, says. But when Turpin works with Mizzou golfers, he focuses on an intense core routine. “Anything you do over and over repetitively is going to cause stress and strain on your body if your body isn’t set up properly.”

Although important on their own, the core muscles are even more integral in supporting a golfer’s spine. Discs between each vertebrae help the spine absorb compression forces or disperse them, Turpin says. A golf swing presents a complex problem for those discs.

“They’re not so great at resisting rotational forces,” Turpin says.

A proper golf swing maintains a stable spine that’s supported with those all-important core muscles. “You see a lot of times with people doing crunches and sit ups, they say ‘I’ve got to strengthen my core.’ Those are your big show-off beach muscles. That’s not what we’re talking about with core muscles,” Turpin says.

Bridges and plank exercises require the trunk remains stable, and advanced positions emulate sport-specific movement patterns. That sought-after six-pack isn’t doing the work related to stability and rotational torque resistance. That credit belongs to smaller core muscles that attach directly to the spine. The lack of strength in these areas means a higher chance of the most common complaint on the links: lower back pain. According to a 2013 paper published in the journal Sports Health, lower back pain accounts for more than one-third of reported golf injuries.

For golfers beginning their season on the course, Turpin suggests evaluating the quality of pain should something happen during a round of play. Ice and rest often solve general soreness and aching. However, shooting pain or burning pain in the back or down into the legs can indicate something more.

“In the morning, the first few steps out of bed, how are they?,” Turpin asks. “Someone that has something like a disc injury, usually they’re going to feel an instant pain in the lower back. Straightening up is difficult. Lying down is difficult. Things like that would be immediate red flags.”

Turpin says the best way to avoid this type of injury, aside from adding a regular core strength routine, is not hunching over to swing that 6-iron. In other words, that favorite truism about good posture makes yet another appearance.

Photos: MU Health Care

The post Want to Avoid a Golf Injury? appeared first on ZOUNation Magazine.

An innocuous board, four feet square, is the next-generation tool helping Mizzou athletes react — react quicker, react smarter and potentially prevent injuries such as concussions. Brett Hayes, Director of Therapy Services at the MU Human Performance Institute, uses the Dynavision D2 to train athletes’ eyesight and improve their peripheral vision.

“That really is the key to true athleticism,” Hayes says. Peripheral vision “captures your attention for things soon to come into view.”

The normal range of vision is 190 degrees, but the peripheral vision adds that little bit beyond and behind your sight. For an athlete, anticipation in these marginal areas can mean the difference between a spectacular catch and a ball falling harmlessly to the ground. Or, more so, the difference in a win and a loss.

The D2 board has a black background with a starburst of 64 small, lighted targets. The center screen flashes numbers or letters to ensure an athlete doesn’t cheat. According to Hayes, the athletes must yell whatever number they see and hit the corresponding light. “That forces them to focus their central vision and use their peripheral to react.”

Hayes might tell an athlete to hit lights on the right side with their left hand. That confusion challenges the hand-eye coordination and builds proficiency in what is called choice-reaction time — the moment between when a person catches that glimpse of movement and the time he or she begins reaching a hand toward the light.

“We’ll make a game out of it: who’s getting a better score? You can time it as you would a 40-yard dash,” he says.

But this digital Whac-A-Mole also trains athletes to become more aware of their surroundings. On the field, that might mean anticipating other moving bodies that could cause an injury.

“We’re finding this helpful for concussion management,” Hayes says. “So many companies are working toward making better helmets, better equipment, things we’ve been doing over the years, yet concussions haven’t really improved that much. We think when an athlete can see their peripheral vision quicker and react to it quicker, they can avoid a lot of the collisions.”

An initial research study of the football team at the University of Cincinnati indicated a significant link between visual training and a reduced number of concussions. In other words, the future of sports safety might just be right in front of our eyes.

Photos Courtesy of MU Health Care

The post How Athletes are Training Their Brains appeared first on ZOUNation Magazine.

Bodies in Motion

Using motion-capture technology, the Missouri Orthopedic Institute visualizes and quantifies human motion.

Avatar actors in black suits, covered head-to-toe in Ping-Pong ball shaped diodes might come to mind when you hear the words “motion capture.” But they’re not making computer-animated films in Columbia. Using the Dynamic Athletics Research Institute (DARI) markerless motion capture system, the Missouri Orthopedic Institute has been using motion-capture technology to help athletes and patients stay at the top of their game.

DARI, a Kansas-based company, has been working with MOI for the past four years to test the various applications of “The DARI system,” as they call it, as it has evolved. The current iteration of the system consists of eight small cameras positioned at multiple angles that are able to discern where a person’s joints are without the need for diode-covered suits, while collecting bio-mechanical data based on the subject’s movements. According to Ryan Comeau, DARI managing partner and owner, the system wasn’t always this paired down. “We are like night and day when it comes to the capability of the technology at this point,” Comeau says. “We’ve lowered the technology footprint from 18 cameras to eight cameras, and the technology is now fully mobile.”

Brett Hayes, director of therapy services for MOI, sees the DARI system’s accuracy in collecting data as one of its key components. “You could have 10 people look at the same patient and all 10 would come up with slightly differently results,” Hayes says. “This quantifies down to the most minute degree. It is always telling you the most specific amount of data in someone’s movement.”

Created with the goal of making precise bio-mechanical data more accessible to clinicians, the DARI system measures quantifiable data associated with movement — the kinematic analysis, the angles, the speeds, velocity and rotations, the ground forces and the joint stress caused by the feet.
 

Though Hayes notes that the DARI system was originally created with measuring athletic performance in mind, they have found significant medical applications for the technology, specifically with total hip or knee replacement patients. According to Hayes, they can get a baseline of a patient’s mobility before they undergo surgery. Then, repeat the tests at various intervals following the surgery to compare data and understand mobility improvements over time.

As the first clinical application of the DARI motion capture system, MOI has remained ahead of the curve using this technology to its fullest potential, while DARI has continued to expand.

“They’ve grown very quick and they’re setting up systems all over the NFL and collegiate athletics.” Hayes says. “We’re not alone anymore.” Even so, DARI’s relationship with MOI remains strong as they continue to roll out their latest innovations. “We are really looking forward to all the new things this second phase of our relationship is going to take on,” Comeau says.

The post Bodies in Motion appeared first on ZOUNation Magazine.

Why Unconventional Training Works

For These Mizzou All-Americans

When Carjay Lyles, the Missouri Track and Field coach, determines whether or not an athlete can do the triple jump, he poses one simple question:

“Can you dance?”

Lyles is all about the rhythm, and rightfully so — the triple jump, along with the 400-meter run, are highly technical events that require a combination of power, speed, coordination and relaxation.

And Lyles has two of the best athletes in the nation for each.

Triple jumper John Warren is a Missouri junior who qualified for his first NCAA final in June. Then there’s Sophomore Kahmari Montgomery, a 400-meter runner who won back-to-back SEC championships as a true freshman — he beat a Rio Olympian both times. Montgomery ran the 400-meter in 45.1 seconds last year. That’s world-class territory. But for Montgomery to break the collegiate record of 43.9 set by Quincy Watts (University of Southern California) in 1992, Lyles is deconstructing his stride and rebuilding it to the music.

400-Meter Runner, Kahmari Montgomery

“Everything with [Montgomery] is scientifically based on his individual leg length — run outs, block starts, weight room, track stuff,” Lyles says. “Once you get comfortable manipulating that rhythm, you can get your body to respond very fast or very slow.”

Montgomery says Lyles has a “weird way of training,” in that the coach emphasizes the minute details of each stride. “For leg cycles, he’ll hold you against a wall and put his hand on the top of your leg,” he says. “You would think this is just painful, but from what I used to run like and how I run now, man those things really work.”

Lyles has had a triple jumper at the NCAA championships for each of the past eight years — he’s a former professional triple jumper himself and says Warren is one of the greatest talents of his coaching career. The the only thing separating him from an NCAA championship? An inability to simultaneously consider all the details of his jump while on the runway — multitasking on the track, in other words.

“The triple jump is a juxtaposition,” Warren says. “You want to be strong and relaxed at the same time.”

Lyles recognizes there might be a deeper issue within Warren’s multitasking struggles. “But I don’t have to fix it on the track if I can fix it in the classroom,” he says. “I’ll assign him intentional responsibilities on top of stuff, just because he has to learn. When he learns how to multitask and compartmentalize between everything he does at the last minute, the track stuff becomes easy.”

Traditional track coaches might call it all unorthodox, but Warren and Montgomery receive trial by fire, and Lyles wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We go reckless abandonment, and they’re going to get strong enough to handle it,” Lyles says. “We’re going to grow from that strength.”

Photos: Travis Smith | ContentAllStars.com

The post Why Unconventional Training Works for These Mizzou All-Americans appeared first on ZOUNation Magazine.

Parkinson’s Patients Find A Fighting Chance In The Ring

Rock Steady Boxing is helping patients regain their strength, balance and personalities once more.

Boxing is all about discipline and balance — finding the right way to move, duck or weave in any situation. But for people living with Parkinson’s disease, it’s not the right or left hook, but the everyday movements that can be a challenge. The Columbia branch of the Rock Steady Boxing program, organized through University of Missouri Health Care’s Human Performance Institute, offers a way for people living with Parkinson’s to fight back against its troublesome symptoms using boxing and the exercises associated with it.

Scott Newman, a former Indiana-based prosecutor who was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease at the age of 40, founded Rock Steady Boxing in 2006. Working with a boxer one on one, Newman found an exercise regiment that helped improve his symptoms. With that as a foundation, he worked to spread programs to patients across the nation.

The program has been operating in Columbia for a year, and since, Rock Steady coach Courtney Meyers has used exercise to help participants regain balance and gait. It’s one of the main focuses of the program. “[Patients] lose their arm swings, and their steps become extremely small,” Meyers says. To help recover arm mobility, Meyers has participants per-form “pole walks,” during which they focus on walking and balancing between PVC pipes. In addition, push-ups and planks are paired with 30 minutes of cardiovascular activity in the form of boxing — this is where patients find their footing. In the ring, they’re able to test their strength and agility hitting punching bags as fast or as hard as they can, some-times in friendly competition with other boxers. For Meyers, this is a great way to get par-ticipants moving, testing their balance, strength and agility.

Since the program began in Columbia, Meyers says participant improvement has been seen not only physically, but also mentally. “I think this is the strongest I have ever been,” says Susan Vittone. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in late 2015, Vittone has attended Rock Steady classes since they began this past February. She’s a firsthand example of the twofold suc-cess. Vittone says she has more balance and strength, and beyond physical results, her Par-kinson’s symptoms have not progressed any further in 11 months. “The great thing is that the people who have chosen to participate in this class are experiencing the same kinds of results,” she says.

Meyers also works to keep participants sharp mentally with games that work the mind and test hand-eye coordination. Since there is no cure for the disease, it’s these little mental and physical improvements that create the most impactful changes in her boxers. “The way they look at life has improved, and their personalities start to come back,” she says. “They lose a lot of that when they’re diagnosed with Parkinson’s, so that stuff is more important.”

Photos: Courtesy of MU Health Care

The post Parkinson’s Patients Find A Fighting Chance In The Ring appeared first on ZOUNation Magazine.