Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

The wild turkey can rotate its neck 360 degrees.  This uncanny ability allows this creature to stay one step ahead of hunters looking for a Thanksgiving dinner.

We could learn a thing or two from the wild turkey and take a look behind us.

Sports Medicine staffs are always so busy just getting through each day that we rarely look back at what we’ve accomplished or how we got to where we are today.

At the end of this semester or school year, will you look around and ask your student-athletes / customers what you did poorly and what services you can improve on?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to celebrate the small victories along the way – a successful rehab, a season with no games missed due to injury or even an exceptionally difficult administrative task done well, but your customer base along with all the constituents in other departments around your athletic department that you do business with everyday possess suggestions and insight that will allow your staff to transition from good to great.

Yes, just like the turkey who can rotate his neck 360 degrees to avoid an unexpected attack, so to should we look around… yes all the way around to all those that we touch each and every day.

You’ll never know you have a disgruntled customer looking to chop your head off unless you look.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

A physician friend of mine challenged me the other day about a recent post regarding omelet’s and rehab.  He thought it was a nice piece but mentioned that it may not apply to all aspects of medicine – “there are just too many variables that have to be considered” he said.

Like what? I asked him

“Take for example the common ACL reconstruction – allograft, autograft, hamstring, patellar tendon, etc.  Each graft is the central part of that surgery and thus an egg, yet each one is different” he explained.

Wrong

“Those are peppers and mushrooms,” I told him.

The key to each and every ACL surgery is the tunnel angle and placement, not the graft choice.

You may choose a bone-tendon-bone graft for example after a previously failed surgery or for those athletes that play a contact sport – but you certainly wouldn’t for someone that performed physical labor like installing carpet where they spent the majority of each day on their knees would you? Graft choice is the pepper in your omelet – mind you a very big piece of this omelet, but a pepper none the less.  Perfect tunnel placement and angle on the other hand, is a must in any successful ACL reconstruction – it’s the egg in the omelet. Get it wrong and you’ll be cleaning up that sticky yellow yolk for years to come.

There are a few things that must take place in every surgery, just like in any rehabilitation and performance programming that make it a successful operation; without that key ingredient your patient will always walk, or well limp, back through your door sometime down the road.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Thanks to everyone who came out to play and pitch in at the first Boston Promise 3-on-3 fundraiser tournament!  Congrats to the winning teams—the Bombers, the Laser Show, and the Never Wases.  Supporters like you make our program possible and we appreciate everyone’s involvement and enthusiasm.  A special thanks to the Charlestown Community Center, all our generous sponsors and the Warren Tavern. Check our Facebook page later this week for photos from the tournament.

Continue to help Boston Promise during this upcoming basketball season by clicking HERE.

BSMPG is announcing a limited time sale of our 2010 Basketball and Hockey Training DVD’s!

You can get all of the presentations delivered to your doorstep just in time for Christmas or give these DVD’s as a stocking stuffer to an aspiring coach looking to take their team training to the next level.  Watch a clip of Matt Nichol, former Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs present “Training Energy Systems for Hockey” by clicking HERE.

From November 23-December 1st, the 5-DVD Basketball set will be on sale for $99.00 and the 4-DVD Hockey set will be on sale for only $75.00!

Basketball - DVD includes presentations from strength coaches from University of Stanford, University of Virginia, University of Pittsburgh and many more!

Hockey - DVD includes presentations from Anaheim Ducks Strength Coach, legendary USA Gold Medal strength coach Jack Blatherwick, corrective exercise specialist Bill Hartman and many more!
Don’t miss this one time sale!

** orders placed after December 10th cannot be guaranteed to arrive prior to Christmas. 

Are you kidding me? I feel great!

When I arrived at Boston University as a Graduate Assistant a very long time ago I was fortunate to work alongside and for Mark Laursen.  For those that don’t know Mark, his ability to instantly put you at ease while placing the biggest smile on your face has become legendary.

Each day I would walk into work and ask Mark how he was doing, and every day he answered the very same way, “are you kidding me? I feel great!”  It was hard not to smile upon hearing how happy he was and how genuinely happy he was to see you.

It didn’t matter if an athlete was recovering from knee surgery or simply passing by the Athletic Training Room, Mark’s infectious and upbeat mood crept into each and everyone’s facial muscles.

Mark knew how very important it was to smile at work.

Your passion, your energy and the way you show you care matters!

You have a choice on how you feel today….

Choose wisely : )

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Watcha gonna do with that duck?

by Seth Godin

We're surrounded by people who are busy getting their ducks in a row, waiting for just the right moment...

Getting your ducks in a row is a fine thing to do. But deciding what you are you going to do with that duck is a far more important issue.

What do omelets have to do with rehab?

Everything.

Every omelets is made with eggs.

You can add your own mushrooms, peppers and even some cheese on top - but it all starts with the eggs. 

Yes, even all white omelets are made with eggs.

When approaching rehab protocols, say for example, treating an athlete with knee pain, every protocol should include hip strengthening exercises. Yes, every single one.  Hip/Glute med strengthening is an egg in your knee pain omelet.  You may choose to add massage or even Russian e-stim to strengthen the vmo if you’d like, but without exercises that target the hips you simply don’t have an omelet.

I’m still amazed at the number of Sports Medicine departments that have staff members that approach common injuries differently.

“That’s just the way I do it” each one will respond, or “there’s more than one way to skin a cat you know.”

True, there is more than one way to skin a cat, but we’re making omelets.

Rehab eggs don’t have individual preferences or bias. Save that for the type of cheese you want. Eggs are evidence based. Eggs are a must in every omelet – and without them you simply have a pan full of veggies and cheese – and well, that’s stir fry – and nobody wants to eat stir fry for breakfast.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

My dad used to say this all the time and is probably the one to blame for why I’m so crazy about the things we can do better.

When it comes to Sports Medicine however, this concept of prevention seems to be somewhat fuzzy.

Most athletic trainers do an unbelievable job at promoting the prevention of dehydration, cramping, heat exhaustion and ultimately death during the hot fall pre-season, yet when it comes to prevention in the winter or spring seasons the concept is almost completely forgotten about.  Sure we continue to do a great job at preventing the spread of skin infections, the flu and blood borne pathogens, but how many hours of your day are spent addressing these concerns after they’ve happened?

How come we are never as passionate about preventing ACL tears, ankle sprains, low back pain or stress fractures as we are dehydration?  Isn’t the majority of our day spent dealing with these musculoskeletal injuries?

Even the BOC website places PREVENTION as the first of the five practice domains of Athletic Training and describes Athletic Training as encompassing the PREVENTION, diagnosis and intervention of emergency, acute and chronic medical conditions involving impairment, functional limitations and disabilities.
Yet how many Sports Medicine programs actually have a system in place to evaluate and address for these injuries and illnesses that take up so much of our time? How many programs place athletes with a previous injury on a “pre-hab” program to address this concern? Doesn’t pain alter mechanics?

Isn’t time that Sports Medicine embrace prevention and intervention of musculoskeletal injuries with the same zealous of other prevention strategies?

My dad also used to tell me to measure twice and cut once.

Sorry dad, but in the case of sports medicine and prevention, I’d rather measure three, four or five times if it means our athletes never have to get cut once.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

BSMPG is proud to announce that Dr. Clare Frank will join Dr. Shirley Sahrmann and Tom Myers as featured speakers in Boston June 3rd and 4th, 2011.

Dr Frank was born and raised in Malaysia where she found her passion in sports. She started competing at the age of 10 and went on to win several state and national competitions in badminton.  Shortly after representing Malaysia in the International Women’s Uber Cup Championships, she left for the United States to pursue her education as a physiotherapist. While at Northern Illinois University, she earned All American honors and the distinguished Broderick Award in Badminton.  Her experience in competitive, elite sports and training has set the backdrop for her keen interest in the neuromuscular system and its relationship with musculoskeletal pain syndromes and dysfunction.

Dr. Frank received her physical therapy degree from Northern Illinois University. She completed the Kaiser Permanente Orthopedic Residency program in 1993 while working on her Master of Science degree in Physical Therapy  & Biokinesiology at University of Southern California. She then went on to receive her post-professional doctorate degree from Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, California in 2003.  She is a board certified specialist in Orthopedic Physical Therapy (OCS) and a fellow in the American Academy of Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy (FAAOMPT).
 
Her clinical career has been greatly influenced by Shirley Sahrmann PT, PhD, and the Prague School of Manual Medicine faculty, namely, the late Vladimir Janda MD, Karel Lewit MD, and Pavel Kolar PT, PhD. Dr. Frank practices at a private clinic in Los Angeles, California. She has been instrumental in setting up the Movement Science Fellowship at Kaiser Permanente, Los Angeles and is one of the primary clinical instructors for the program. She is also a certified instructor for Bands, Balls & Balance, Janda's Approach to Musculoskeletal Pain Syndromes and Kolar's Approach to Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization.  Dr Frank also serves as an adjunct lecturer at Western University of Health Sciences and Azusa Pacific University. She has presented at both state and national conferences and has recently published a book on "Assessment and Treatment of Muscle Imbalancels:  The Janda Approach" .  She currently teaches in the U.S. and internationally.

Laziness has changed.

It used to be about avoiding physical labor. The lazy person could nap or have a cup of tea while others got hot and sweaty and exhausted. Part of the reason society frowns on the lazy is that this behavior means more work for the rest of us.

When it came time to carry the canoe over the portage, I was always hard to find. The effort and the pain gave me two good reasons to be lazy.

But the new laziness has nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with fear. If you're not going to make those sales calls or invent that innovation or push that insight, you're not avoiding it because you need physical rest. You're hiding out because you're afraid of expending emotional labor.

This is great news, because it's much easier to become brave about extending yourself than it is to become strong enough to haul an eighty pound canoe.