Mike Reinold

Patellar tendon straps, or infrapatellar straps, have been long used to decrease pain and patellar tendon strain in individuals with patellar tendonitis. Studies show anywhere between 70-80% of people wearing patella straps reported improvement in both acute and chronic cases of patellar tendonitis. It also now appears that patellar tendon straps are effective in reducing patellar tendon strain in the majority of subjects, which may be the mechanism behind the pain reduction.

We should probably consider that many of our “injuries” that seem to be not responsive to treatments may actually be coming from elsewhere in the body. Here are 3 of my top “injuries” that may actually be “symptoms.”

By performing even simple exercises, you can have a dramatic reduction in the incidence of patellofemoral pain.

I remember when the YTWL shoulder exercises started to become popular.  Using the “YTWL” letters was is a pretty good description and easy way for people to remember the shoulder exercises.  I even joined the bandwagon and started training everyone bilaterally, even injured people rehabilitating from a shoulder injury.  Because the YTWL shoulder exercises are [...]

The correlation between hip range of motion and low back pain is commonly discussed, though most people tend to agree that limitations or asymmetries in hip motion is a contributing factor to low back pain.  You can read a summary of some research on the correlation between low back pain and hip range of motion [...]

A few weeks ago I published an article on what I thought were two essential exercises that we should include in every program, which included the shoulder W exercise and the hip external rotation clamshell exercise.  After that post I received a lot of emails asking for a video of the shoulder W exercise, so [...]

If there is one thing that I would say is the most important concept to understand regarding the shoulder, it is simply that you can not work the rotator cuff to failure as rotator cuff fatigue causes superior humeral head migration and subacromial impingement.  That is it, I just summarized the role of the rotator [...]

Last week I wrote an article on what I considered essential exercises to add to every program, which included the shoulder W exercise for external rotation.  I received a lot of feedback from that article and many requests to post a video describing the technique.  Although, this is a pretty simple exercise, there are some [...]