How Well Do You Know Your Body?

1. Your rotator cuff is a group of muscles surrounding the shoulder joint, how many rotator cuff muscles are there? Bonus if you can name them without googling it??

(Four: Supraspinatus, Infraspinatus, Teres Minor, and Subscapularis)

2. True or false: Your sciatic nerve is the longest nerve in the human body?

(True, the sciatic nerve runs from the low back, down the back of your leg and into the bottom of your foot).

3. The psoas is incriminated for a lot of low back pain … but the psoas is a hip flexor, why can it be a cause of low back pain?

(The psoas major attaches to the most distal thoracic vertebra and all five lumbar vertebrae and their intervertebral discs. It can become tight, compress and contribute to low back pain).

4. Hip rotation is a huge component of being able to squat to full depth, which rotation is more important with squatting to full depth: internal or external?

(Hip internal rotation is more important to be able to squat past neutral and into full depth).

5. Being able to reach overhead is a very functional movement, it is involved in getting dishes in and out of cupboards, changing light bulbs, etc. Not being able to reach fully overhead is limited by muscular tightness in which muscle: quadriceps femoris, latissimus dorsi, or biceps brachii?

(Your latissimus dorsi, commonly known as your lats attach onto your humerus (upper arm bone) and into the fascia on your low back and when tight can limit your ability to reach overhead).

6. You’ve noticed that your knees are caving in when you squat. You’ve also been told that this isn’t good. Why isn’t this good and what can you do to fix it?

(Your knees caving in or knee valgus puts your knee at increased risk of injury to both the medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments of the knee joint (MCL and ACL respectively). Some of my favorite exercises to improve the muscles that keep this from happening are Sumo and Monster walks, and Clamshells; all with bands.

7. Your low back hurts and your physical therapist has you stretch your hamstrings. This improves your low back pain, why?

(Your hamstrings attach to your pelvis and contribute to movement disorder between your pelvis and low back equaling compression and pain at your low back). Stretch, it’s good for you.

8. Is squatting bad for your knees?

(Simple answer, no. More complicated answer, no, but if it is painful, there are characteristics of the squat that can be modified, like form, depth, load, and volume that can be changed to improve said pain).

9. Your quadriceps is a group of muscles in the front of your thigh, how many muscles do the quadriceps consist of? Bonus points if you can name them.

(Your quad is made of four muscles: rectus femoris, vastus medialis, vastus intermedius, and vastus lateralis).

10. Humans move in how many planes of motion? Bonus if you can name them!

(Humans move in 3D, just like Avatar! They are the: sagittal, (forward and back), Frontal, (side to side), and Transverse, (rotation)).

How many did you answer???

As always, I hope this helps! If you have any questions or would like to read about certain topics, send us an email at TeamSP@SportsPerformancePT.com.