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Wonder what the great foot Biomechancial minds of yester-year would think of our discussions today ?

Discussion in 'Biomechanics, Sports and Foot orthoses' started by mike weber, Dec 22, 2010.


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    Robert wrote this on another thread.


    Got me thinking I wonder what Hicks , Root et al, Whitman etc etc. Would think about some of our discussions we have today.

    These peoples research still gets quoted today. Some of the research was written 50 years or more ago.

    Would They think of how far we have come or how far we gone backwards in our thinking re foot mechanics.

    What would Hicks think of sagittal plane mechanics ?

    What would Root etc think of say Nesters work re midtarsal joint?

    what would they all think about Mass devices or Functional foot typing or tissue stress theory or well you get the idea ?

    etc etc.
     
  2. I wouldn't want to be anywhere close to Dr. Mert Root when he heard some of the things that are being marketed to podiatrists as "science" by those that claim to have superior ideas just because they own an orthosis lab and think their product is superior because they make more orthoses than anyone else. Mert had absolutely no tolerance for people out to make a buck on the profession, at the expense of the patient. Mert would even get angry with me sometimes when he disagreed with me or I asked him difficult questions.

    Would love to hear from Jeff Root as to what his father would think of MASS devices and the marketing stuff that is being said about these devices by the Sole Support people. Don't think it would be very pretty.:eek:
     
  3. :eek:

    No. Surely not. Say it ain't so! ;):rolleyes:
     
  4. Actually, there's a rare historic film of one of the great founders chastising Ed and his disciples over their belief that Dr Kirby is actually God.... or was it Brian.....

     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 22, 2016
  5. RobinP

    RobinP Well-Known Member

    That is one of my favourite movie scenes of all time.

    BRIAN: "you don't need to follow me, you don't need to follow anybody. You're all different"
    DISCIPLE: "I'm not!"
     
  6. RobinP

    RobinP Well-Known Member

    On a more serious note, I would have thought that they would be equally disappointed and happy at the same time.

    Disappointed because commercialism seems to have gotten in the way of science

    Happy because their hard work and dedication to their profession is still being appreciated and used as the basis for futher development several years down the line.

    Kevin, when you say that Mert Root used to get annoyed when asked a difficult question, was it because he felt there was much that he didn't know or couldn't explain(in the same way that the more I learn, the more questions i have) or was it that he felt that his work was beyond questioning?

    Thanks

    Robin
     
  7. I'd love to ask Merton root about "normal".

    Did he mean it as normal in the average sense? Or did he mean normal is the sense of most effective?

    Or even, did he simply try to illustrate a position which would produce an effective orthotic? We know he did not believe the foot would be held in neutral, was this simply a guide for a "just enough, not too much" level of prescription.

    I never had the honor but I would imagine the most frustrating thing would be the way so many people use his work as a straw man... Without ever having read it!
     
  8. efuller

    efuller MVP

    In Mert Root's and John Weed's writings there are two definitions of normal. If I recall correctly, John Weed gave the "It shouldn't hurt" definition of normal in his first lecture. I don't recall the exact definition, but it went something like. Normal is the condition where a person does not experience undue discomfort doing the activities of everyday living. Thinking about this definition, it fits quite well with tissue stress.

    Then there was the biophysical criteria of normalcy. I don't recall ever seeing these two definitions of normal written about at the same time. A question I would have liked to ask is how do you reconcile the two definitions of normal.

    Eric
     
  9. In approximately 1985, when I was a 28 year old Biomechanics Fellow at CCPM and Mert Root was a 63 year old "Father of Podiatric Biomechanics", I attended one of his Root Lab lectures where he was talking on the importance of accurately bisecting the calcaneus and accurately determining the forefoot to rearfoot relationship so that a proper custom foot orthosis could be made for the patient since as much as a 2 degree error in measurement could cause orthosis failure for the patient.

    I was sitting toward the back of the lecture hall and was the youngest podiatrist there, since most of the podiatrists had already been in practice for at least five years. I raised my hand and made (to the best of my memory) the following question/statement to Dr. Root:

    "How can you be so certain that a 2 degree measurement error that you are talking about here is important when even the biomechanics professors at CCPM have a +/- 5 degree measurement error just in the way they draw their heel bisections on the same foot? I commonly see clinicians that teach me and the students that draw heel bisections about 5 degrees apart from each other. Therefore, if these biomechanics professors at CCPM who are teaching all of our students can't seem to agree on what a proper heel bisection is and are 5 degrees off from each other, then that 2 degree error you are speaking about seems, to me, to be basically useless for us clinically since podiatry students and podiatrists will be much less accurate than the professors that teach the subject on a daily basis."

    Nearly all the older podiatrists sitting in front of me had turned around to see who this young upstart podiatrist was who was asking such a question to the Father of Podiatric Biomechanics, Dr. Root. About half of them had a little smile on their faces when I finished making the question/statement, about half of them had little scowls on their faces.

    Here is how Dr. Root responded to me (to the best of my memory), getting increasingly more red in the face, getting increasingly louder as he continued to talk and, myself sinking progressively lower in my chair as Dr. Root continued:

    "I don't know what these professors are teaching you currently at CCPM in biomechanics since I haven't been teaching there for some years. It is not at all difficult to draw an accurate heel bisection on a foot. In fact, I could train a monkey to draw an accurate heel bisection! The school (CCPM) needs to start teaching biomechanics better to their students since without better professors that can teach how to draw accurate heel bisections and do accurate biomechanical examinations, many other important measurements will not be made accurately, a proper diagnosis will not be made and the patient may not get better with foot orthoses."

    In another seminar I attended once I had already started practice (approximately 1986) and Mert had invited about 25 people to help him try to edit his latest book (that was never published) at a three day seminar, I was sitting next to Don Green at a table (he liked sitting next to me, he said, since I was one of the few people who would question Dr. Root and his ideas) when Mert began to state, as he had on other occasions, that the foot can't pronate without the knee also flexing due to the internal rotation that occurred at the knee during the first few degrees of flexion range of motion from an extended knee.

    I raised my hand and we had the followng discussion (to the best of my memory):

    Kirby: "This can't be true since the foot may pronate independent of knee flexion or knee extension."

    Root: "No, the foot can't pronate without knee flexion."

    Kirby: Gets up from his seat, walked to the head of the table and took off his shoes, climbed up and stood up on the table directly in front of Dr. Root. Then Kirby lifted up his pants legs and, while keeping his knees straight, pronated and supinated his foot in closed kinetic chain saying, "See, Mert, I can pronate my foot without my knee flexing!"

    Some of the audience chuckled, but some of the audience was scowling at me again. Dr. Root had an irritated look on his face but said nothing as I got down and went back to my chair.

    These are the two most memorable instances where I thoroughly annoyed Dr. Root. You must understand that almost no one knew me at that time (I had only published one paper, had just started writing my Precision Intricast newsletters and had only lectured a few times) and since Dr. Root was considered by most of the podiatrists attending these seminars to be beyond question in his knowledge of foot and lower extremity biomechanics, to have someone like me, who was fresh out of school, still in his 20's and was questioning his authority on subjects he had lectured on for years, I didn't make me many friends, at the time, other than Don Green (who loved it).

    Hopefully this description of events that happened about a quarter century ago better explains a little bit about my relationship with Mert Root. I loved the man, respected him greatly and learned a great deal from him. However, at the same time, I was confident and cocky and thought that without some lively discussion, that scientific progress would never be made in our meetings. Very fond memories....just wish Mert was still around to tell his version of the story.
     
  10. Have some research in the planning stage at the moment, that should (in a round-about sort of way) examine why this might or might not be so...
     
  11. So Normal maybe Zones of Optimal Stress type thing.
     
  12. A thought. What is the definition of optimal in this context?
     
  13. Sorry mate been doing the family and friends rounds.

    I guess it will be different from person to person activity to activity.

    pain free ?
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2011
  14. CamWhite

    CamWhite Active Member

    Interesting. In an article published in Podiatry Today, entitled "Are Root Biomechanics Dying?" (2009) Kevin Kirby wrote:

    "During his lectures, Dr. Root would say he did not want podiatrists to take his word as gospel and that he had more respect for those individuals who challenged his ideas than those who agreed with everything he said. Dr. Root encouraged scientific research that he hoped would lead to better treatments of the painful maladies that podiatrists saw on a daily basis in their busy practices. Dr. Root often stated during his lectures that he fully expected that the information in his textbooks would become outdated within a decade of their publication due to the influx of new scientific data that would lead to a different and more complete understanding of foot function."

    Dr. Jim Clough, who studied with Kevin also recalls that Root challenged his students to challenge his theories. Here's a link to Kevin's article:
    http://www.podiatrytoday.com/are-root-biomechanics-dying
     
  15. So if optimal is pain free then zoos becomes levels of stress which don't hurt.

    Bit tautological that. Why does the foot hurt? It's outside of zoos. How do we know it's outside of zoos? Because it hurts...

    Must be a better definition than that!

    Happy new year mike!
     
  16. And you Robert, Happy New year that is.

    I did think it was pretty poor the pain free thing, and it is at this stage the best we have But in the future we may have more.

    Leg stiffness ( kleg)
    Muscle rhythms such as piper
    undertstanding of the effect of surface stiffness, shoe-foot interface stiffness

    once we have a better grip on these type of things them we may/will be able to better determine the ZOOS for a single person.

    but at the moment we are still not there.

    we have increase leg stiffness more likely to develope bone related issues such as tibial stress fractures

    decrease leg stiffness more likely to develop soft tissue injury.

    But it's a numbers game and we still are getting the numbers together.
     
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