Part 3 of Why You Winking So Early is here! Today we're talking about stability motor control dysfunctions.
Now, you can absolutely have both mobility restrictions and motor control dysfunctions present at the same time. We're just gonna focus on the latter in this segment.
Motor control speaks to a person's ability to both voluntarily and reflexively sequence muscle contractions and movements. For the purposes of our early butt wink discussion, we're going to assume that the winker in question has full ankle and hip mobility (as assessed in part 1 and 2) but is still continuing to wink early in the squat. What could be causing this? An inability to properly sequence the movement, aka a stability/motor control dysfunction.
We can use quadruped rocking to both assess and treat this. The quadruped position is simply the squat rotated 90°. This reduces the postural demands as we no longer have to work against gravity in the same capacity. Aka, this makes performing the movement pattern easier. From here we have the person rock back towards their heels. This mimics the squat pattern. A neutral spine is maintained and we go into hip flexion. An ability to perform this movement, but an inability to perform a squat to the same hip flexion depth confirms the presence of a stability motor control dysfunction.
In the presence of no mobility restrictions, the person should be able to rock all the way backwards while maintaining a neutral spine. This is an excellent drill to use to help improve the squat pattern.
Now, it should be noted that it might take a few trials and some cueing for the person to be able to perform this initially, as people have a tendency to resort to faulty patterns. Additionally, knee mobility restrictions may limit how far backwards the person can rock.
And yes, I do have a ponytail ?
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