Intent and Technology

"Everybody has a plan until they get hit for the first time.” Mike Tyson once said this in a famous interview, and I feel like it relates to the rehabilitation process and physical therapy rather well. Your injury is the proverbial punch in the face that derails any plan you had related to your prior level of function. Your physical therapist is the one who simply gives you a plan to return to or exceed that level of function. The problem with this is that the individual must ultimately adhere to and perform the plan. Your physical therapist or anybody else cannot perform these tasks for you. It takes intent from the injured individual. Some individuals may have more of an internal locus of control, and other individuals may have more of an external locus of control. Regardless, the individual must ultimately perform the tasks and do difficult things to achieve whatever their goal/goals may be.

There are a number of models and theories that have been created to increase intent and elicit a stronger internal locus of control for individuals, which I won’t delve into for there are far too many.. I will however discuss the influence that technology has on driving intent in relation to objective tests and measures.. If you’ve ever been to Bridge Physical Therapy and Performance you’ve likely noticed the numerous pieces of equipment that spit out numbers and metrics. It may seem overwhelming, and speaking from personal experience as a student at bridge, I definitely thought it was. However, I soon started to realize that all of this technology gives you metrics and data points to assist in the creation of a plan to get an individual back to what they want to be doing. It seemed to align with the age-old adage “what gets measured, gets managed."

The Voltra units, Kinvent Force Plates, Kinvent K-Pull, the OVR Jump, and many other pieces of equipment all allow the team at Bridge to give you objective data instead of simply guessing about what is going on as opposed to utilizing traditional subjective tests such as MMT scores. It may appear more complicated at first, but in all reality these pieces of equipment allow the team to create formulas and utilize metrics to truly determine what you are lacking, instead of guessing. The other great thing about these pieces of equipment is the fact that they help drive intent. You could have your PT just say that you’re jumping higher or that you need to jump higher, but wouldn’t it be better if you had a device that tells you how you are performing?

These devices allow you to receive objective real time feedback. An example of this in the rehabilitation setting is someone returning from an ACL reconstruction. In theory, you could utilize a unilateral leg extension and a bulgarian split squat to determine what one’s quad strength is, but there are flaws with that approach. In a compound movement such as a bulgarian split squat an individual is able to compensate with other muscle groups to utilize the same weight between sides. With a unilateral leg extension you don’t get the true force output and rate of force development. If one were to utilize a K-pull isometric on a leg extension you could track the true metrics of max force production, rate of force development, and a torque to bodyweight ratio, which takes away any guesswork in relation to how you are progressing. In addition to this, force plates could be utilized to determine differences in impulse, jump height, and how one produces force in a single leg counter movement jump to determine how one is progressing and where they are deficient.

The point of all of this equipment is to streamline the rehabilitation process with

the use of objective tests and measures to better determine where someone is

deficient while also driving intent in each session.