As a physiotherapist working out of the Glen Sather Sports Medicine Clinic in Edmonton, AB I work with a large population of people (we’ll call them athletes here as most play sports anywhere from a national to recreational level) with knee injuries and have been lucky enough to spend a majority of my time on knee assessments and knee rehab.

Earlier this year Sean Ross-Ross, Plantiga’s CTO, posted about his recovery from a right ankle fracture and syndesmotic injury he suffered in November 2019 after slipping on a wet dock. In this post, I review Sean’s Plantiga data and discuss his rehabilitation progress, 7 months later.

Have you ever heard of the Hawthorne Effect? You should Google this term. It refers to the effects of taking a measurement on what we actually want to measure. Imagine you are a sociologist interested in the sexual behaviours of middle-aged men. How effective would it be to park your lab equipment in the bedroom of your study participants to understand what really happens? That’s the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect also impacts neuromuscular testing.

I struggled early in my career to marry science with coaching. I lived in a dichotomy. I was a graduate student completing a Master of Science in muscle physiology, doing all kinds of neuromuscular testing. I would then leave the lab, head down to the weight room to coach athletes. I found it hard to bring science into the weight room in a meaningful way. The testing methods I was using were either (a) noisy (b) impractical or (c) not sensitive to performance or reducing the impact of injuries.