Synthesis

Hello again fellow readers! This week our members collectively wrote a piece summarizing what we have been sharing with you all these past 10 weeks. We all hope that you, our readers, have enjoyed reading and learning about the kinesiology field as much as we enjoyed researching and expanding our own knowledge on the field.

What is kinesiology? The study of kinesiology has emerged as a very unique and important field. It is the basis of many fields of study and many lifestyles that shape the way health is looked upon. Because of the behaviors of modern society and the constant need of new and improving medical techniques, kinesiology is becoming very popular because, for many, it is a way to incorporate athletics into the medical field.

In the field of kinesiology, a healthy diet plan and exercising on a regular basis is beneficial to the human body. Exercise helps burn calories, increase the body’s metabolism, and strengthen muscle tissue. Many lose their motivation in the process of dieting and exercising. Learning the basic ground of kinesiology helps aid people in understanding how important being healthy really is. 

Eating healthy has many benefits such as decreasing the risk of cancer, helping blood sugar, and improving brain function. One of our blogs  Benefits of Eating Healthy covers these topics in more depth.

Bad health behaviors have always been an unfortunate trend in America. The increase of fast food chains and unhealthy restaurant choices are huge among our generation. Other than poor diet, bad health behaviors include not getting enough sleep,  skipping breakfast, not drinking enough water, smoking, drinking, and spending too much time indoors or looking at a screen. Many bad behaviors like a lack of sleep can be fixed through some professional help. This post, The Occupational Therapist's Role is Sleep is very helpful if you are more interested in this topic.

There are many health issues we face as a society by choosing to live with certain unhealthy behaviors. These issues include things like hypertension, heart attack, stroke, obesity, and more. All these conditions are things that can lead to a person’s death. A couple of good posts to read for more information on a couple of those diseases/issues are Hypertension and Why is America Obese? Most people think health conditions like these are unavoidable. They do not put in the time to understand how they could’ve avoided these issues, or they did know how to fix the issue but did not want to put in the effort because they thought it would be too hard. The reason people die from living with poor health behaviors is due to either a lack of knowledge or a lack of effort. You can read up more on motivation in our post MOTIVATION.

Kinesiology is the study of human and non-human body movement. This field of study is driven by nutrition and physical activity. Kinesiology has many applications to health these include sport, exercise, rehabilitation, diet, What is Kinesiology?.
biomechanics, and much more. Used as a complementary treatment option, kinesiology uses medical testing to find imbalances within the body. Those imbalances include chemical, structural, and emotional to determine healing needs. More on what kinesiology is can be found in the post

The field of kinesiology has proven to be a great help. It teaches people how to eat, exercise and to be overall healthy. Nutrition wise it helps you know what’s in your food. The exercise aspect of kinesiology teaches you how to workout and why it helps. An example of exercise technique can be found in the post ProperPush-Up.This is important because working out improperly can cause injury and inhibit you from activities further down the road. Also, what kind of exercise is best for you. Our post on Strength or Endurance can give you more information on types of exercise.  Everyone has a different body type and a different end goal for themselves.  

With the information shared within the field of kinesiology, we can learn to avoid unhealthy behaviors. As we said above, things like balancing diet and physical activity can be learned and will help your health tremendously. It can be very difficult to break bad habits but with the right tools and information, it becomes easier. For example, maybe instead of potato chips, you eat a bowl of grapes or that hour you were going to spend watching TV could be spent outside exercising. These are just a couple of examples of small adjustments people can make to improve their health.

Overall, kinesiology is a very widespread important field of study. It is up and coming, always improving and that is what makes it one of the most important medical fields. It has become very prevalent due to the behavior of modern society in terms of physical activity and diets. With the always increasing behaviors in our modern society, kinesiology has become increasingly more important, as well.

The Difference Between Activities, Games and Sports

By JT Lenga


Hello readers.  This week, I will be discussing the differences between activities, games, and sports. This is a topic I learned in my Foundations of Kinesiology class, with Dr. Pontifax. This was a topic our class went over and very few knew the differences between them. It was something that I personally didn't know either, so I thought it was something interesting to share with all of you.

Activities are any form of play that someone may participate in. These types of play would be something someone would participate in just for fun. They allow the participants the opportunity to express themselves, dream and even pretend. Activities often lack rules and can take place anywhere. A few examples of an activity would be pretending to be pirates, hide and seek, Marco Polo, and etc.

Games are a type of play that involves competition with others. They will always have rules that govern the competing of individuals. Games are play types that do not always require movement either. Some examples of games include, board games, cheerleading, video games, trivia games, etc.

Sports are games that require gross motor movement, skill/ability, and psycho-motor skill. They almost always require a special facility and equipment of some sort. Sports typically have outcomes that are not only important to the individuals, but to the observers too.

It is important to keep in mind that not all games are considered sports. However, all sports are considered games that people can play. It's the differences I have listed above that make up this boundary.

This was a very interesting topic when It was discussed in class. Dr. Pontifax asked a lot of questions about what activities did we consider to be sports. My question for all of you is: from the information given above, would you consider the activities or things that you participate in outside of school an activity, game or a sport? Keep in mind, that I am not writing this post to say that someone's activity they participate in is not a sport. I am just simply sharing information that I found interesting. 

Prompt 3

by Emily Goltz

Hello! Recently, I interviewed one of the TA's in my taping and bracing class. I interviewed a junior in the Athletic Training Program here at MSU. I wanted to get an insight on the field and what the next steps I have to look forward to and what his plans for the future are and what he wants to do in this field.

First off, I interviewed Jonah Taykowski. He is a junior from Macomb Michigan and it is his first year in the program. When you are in the program, you are assigned to different sports teams on campus and the surrounding areas. In the fall, he was with football and this spring he is working with Dewitt High School. When I asked him why he chose to become an athletic trainer, I found out he had very similar reasons to me. He told me that he initially wanted to be a sports medicine doctor but wasn't into the idea of going to school for another 10 years. Sports has always been something he has participated in. In high school, he was a three-sport student athlete, like I was, and was frequently hurt and in the athletic training room, also like I was. He decided on athletic training as he got to know his athletic trainer at his high school. Jonah shadowed his athletic trainer and really got to see the insides to the field and what a typical day was like. He wanted to still be around medicine and sports so this worked out to be a good compromise of the two. 

After graduating from Michigan State, Jonah wants to go to graduate school and get his masters in athletic training. His end goal is to be a certified athletic trainer at the collegiate or professional setting. 

I asked him if there was any advice or tips he could give someone who wants to go into athletic training. His number one piece of advice was to ask questions. With athletic training being a hands-on field, you learn through practicing and learning through practice and first-hand experiences. If you don't understand or can't quite get one step to a tape job, then the whole tape job is messed up. When you go into your first clinical setting, you will be nervous. Your preceptors know this and are there to help you. Asking questions will help you and show them that you are there to learn and do a good job. Another huge piece of advice is you get out what you put into it. Athletic training is a large time commitment especially when going through these clinical observations. If you go into the day dreading being there than it is going to be a bad experience where as if you go into the with an open mind and looking forward to every learning opportunity, than it is going to be a great experience and you'll benefit from it in the future. More times than not, you will be thrown into something that you've never seen or experienced before so being able to ask questions and be alert and ready to learn and apply those skills that you have been practicing will be a major component to your success. 

At the end of our interview, I asked him what the hardest part of being in the program has been so far. He responded with applying the skills int he clinical setting and being able to detect what should happen at the right time. With athletic training having such a wide spectrum of skills and principles, you are continuously learning and finding new ways to do the same things so being open to change and being able to adapt to new ways is hard but so rewarding. Again, Jonah reiterated that in 5 years he hopes to be out of graduate school with his masters and hopefully has a job with a  college or professional team.

I hope my interview with Jonah has brought some insight into the field as it did for me. I know other fields like kinesiology can be very different while some could be just the same. The basics are the same though. For each field you go into, you can memorize all the terms, anatomy, basic outline, any detail really but applying it to the real world will be the most challenging thing you will do. Thank you!

MOTIVATION

By: Nick Izzo

Hello fellow bloggers hope all is well! Today we’re going to talk about a little thing called motivation in sport. Believe it or not there are a couple different types of motivation when dealing with sport.

Motivation, will to win, enthusiasm are a big part of sport. Motivation defined by Sage in 1977 is the direction and intensity of behavior. Broken down this refers to does the individual search for or are they enthralled by certain situations and how much effort does the individual put into the task at hand. One type of motivation is the motive to achieve success. This deals with the joy an individual gets out of the sport, the self confidence the sport induces, and self ability. A person with motivation like this would enjoy a task of moderate difficulty. There’s also motive to avoid failure. These people are ego protectors and prefer a task of either very high difficulty or very low. An example would be your average guy playing basketball against LeBron James. They know they are going to lose but they do it anyway because they can walk away from it knowing they played against arguably the greatest to ever play so they should lose. Another type of motivation is affiliation motivation. This is more of a social aspect motivation. One example is approval-oriented which refers to an individual playing a sport to get approval from a certain social group. Another type of affiliation motivation is rejection-threatened motivation. These people don’t want to let their fellow teammates down so they are more of an individualistic athlete. For example they would be more suitable to swimming in their own race and not a relay.

It can come as a surprise to learn that whatever type of motivation defines you also seems to define what sport you enjoy. Are you more of a individual player and are rejection-threatened motivated? Or are you more of a team player that experiences approval-oriented motivation that works better with a group of people?

References:

“MSU- KIN 173 – Foundations of Kinesiology – Spring 2017”. Education.msu.edu. N.p., 2017. Web. 15 Feb. 2017.

Prompt 6

By: Nick Izzo

Hello bloggers! Today I’m going to shortly summarize the findings in an article I read about kinesiology tape. I know Emily wrote a blog about kinesiology tape but this study looks at things a little differently.

As explained in the previous kinesiology tape blog, it is supposed to alleviate pain and decrease the amount of inflammation. The question becomes though, does this actually work? There hasn’t really seemed to be a definitive answer on this but some studies have been done. In this study done by the department of exercise and sports science at the University of Wisconsin we find some uneasy results. The study looked at the effect the tape had immediately on the patient and the effect it had after two days of treatment. The patients rated their shoulder pain before and after throwing. There was a baseline test, an immediate test and then the two day test. Turns out, there was little to no significant data changes once the tape was used.

I chose this article because it is making a claim against something that seems to be a prevalent use in kinesiology these days. Many athletes use this tape and claim it helps. I like their argument because it is supported by facts. I took ISB 202 first semester which was Applications Environment and organismal Biology and one very important thing drove into our heads in this class was always support your claims. So this study claimed the tape has no significant assistance to someone with shoulder pain and then they proved it with a supporting study. A claim is much more credible when there are facts there and this article did a very good job at that.

References:

Athletic Training & Sports Health Care: The Journal for the Practicing Clinician Jan2017, Vol. 9 Issue 1, p24 9p

Impact of Sport Injuries

By: Regan Tarrow

   I will be touching on the subject of contact sports and the injuries involved with them. A breif explanation of the types of injuries, treatment, and how to prevent them.

   Types of Injuries: When you are in contact with an object or a person common injuries include cuts and bruises. It is common that these types of injuries involve head and spine. Also, dislocation and muscle pain can occur.

Treatment: R.I.C.E is always the answer. It is best to rest the injury in order to prevent further irritation. Ice for 15-20 minutes at a time by relieving pain and reduce swelling. Compress with an elastic bandage to reduce swelling and the build up of fluid. Lastly, elevate the injury to heart level so that fluid flows away from the area in order to reduce swelling. It is always best to activate an EMS while doing this so that they can get help faster for their injury if it is serious enough. 

Preventing:  There are certain steps that can be taken in order to prevent these injuries in sports. 1st: Wear protective gear such as helmets and pads. 2nd: Warm up and cool down. 3rd:Keep a close eye of your surroundings and take precaution. 4th: Don't continue to play if you are injured.

Sources:

"Impact and contact - Causes of Sports Injuries." Impact and contact - Causes of Sports Injuries | Sports Medicine Information. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2017.
Medically Reviewed by William Morrison, MD on August 2, 2016 — Written by Tori Fry. "Sports Injury Treatment." Healthline. N.p., 02 Aug. 2016. Web. 02 Apr. 2017.

Concussions

by Emily Goltz

Hello! Today I am going to be talking about concussions. I want to discuss the importance of treating concussions, possible signs and symptoms, and the lasting impact of concussions. I also what to talk about how the increase in concussions has brought awareness to extra precautions in sports.

Concussions are not a little thing. Its a traumatic brain injury. It is caused by a bump, hit or jolt to the head that causes the brain to bounced or twist in the head and cause chemical changes to the brain and damages brain cells. Even though some concussions can be mild, the affects can be serious. When you get hit in the head, there are certain signs that you need to look out for. These include dizziness, drowsiness, a strong headache, slurred speech, nausea or vomiting, confusion, one pupil larger than the other and of course if the person goes unconscious. If any of these signs appear, you should seek medical attention even if you think there's only a slight chance of a concussion. Some long term affects include problems with thinking, memory, learning, coordination and balance, speech, vision and emotions. Some other affects include problems with relationships.

When recovering from a concussion, rest is the main component. Staying away from bright lights and physical activity is also a key component. If the concussion is severe enough, staying home from school is important and resting. Signs and symptoms tend to disappear within a couple of weeks.

Returning from a concussion in sports is a major concern these days. Any type of physical activity is not allowed when you have a concussion. Usually the athletic trainer or the coach will be on top of your injury depending on the setting. After your symptoms are gone, the first step is light aerobic activity to get your heart rate up and make sure those symptoms don't come back. Next is a moderate aerobic activity followed by non- contact practice. The following steps include full contact practice and then return to competition. These steps are crucial to follow so that you recover properly and don't return to play too quickly. With concussions, the longer it takes you to return is usually better.

Athletics have taken an increase in awareness with concussions. All equipment has to be fitted properly to each player. Helmets must be approved and checked each year. This is critical in sports like lacrosse, hockey and football where the contact is huge. Other sports like baseball also have to have the correctly fitted helmets. Soccer is a sport that has started to raise awareness. In soccer, there is a very good chance that you will get hit in the head by other person, the ball or anything else. There is an option to were a protective helmet like this one.

Even though, these are not required, they do a lot. They aren't very thick but they do take some of the shock out of the hit. When I played soccer, I was required to wear one because of my concussions and this helmet did wonders when I was to get hit. It also gave me confidence after I had been out for a while or for when I was unsure if I wanted to go for the header or not. 

Overall, concussions may not seem like a huge deal to some people but to others they can be very serious and long term. Raising awareness for concussion has increased over the years and will continue to increase while youth sports are so big. I am a big supporter in raising awareness because my concussions are the reason why I am not playing soccer competitively anymore.

References:

https://www.cdc.gov/headsup/basics/concussion_prevention.html

The Proper Push-Up

By: JT Lenga 


Hello readers! Recently while I was working out in IM West, I noticed something a little off- putting. I saw a student in the gym doing push ups. Now I know that this doesn't seem like it's out of the ordinary, however, his form was atrocious. That is why I have decided to write a post on the proper push up form. Below is a video that gives an example of the top 5 ways that people can mess up their push up. 


Push ups are an amazing exercise that works a variety of muscles. The main muscles being worked in this exercise are the chest, tricep, shoulder, and abdominal muscles. 
My trainer always used to give me a hard time in the start of our training. He would always tell me to keep my head straight, have stable shoulders and back, have hips and torso straight, and to have controlled movement. These are all things that you should keep in mind when doing a push up. Below is a visual that shows the above points and more. 

Like all exercises, If your form is not right, then you can have an increased risk of injury. Doing push ups improperly can result in rotator cuff injuries, muscle imbalances, sprained/ strained wrists, and more. Another thing to keep in mind is to be able to have controlled full movement. This means going slow and doing a full repetition like the ones shown in the video above. By doing this, your strength/gains from doing this exercise can increase greatly. 

I often see people in the gym that have very poor form, and it drives me nuts. Those people doing poor form are those who probably have little exercise experience, so I take it upon myself to go and help those people. The last thing I want to witness while exercising is someone hurting themselves because they never took the time to learn the proper form for their exercise. If everyone just took the time to learn proper form, not only for push ups, but for all exercises, They could maximize the amount of gains they could achieve.  

References

"5 Ways People Do Push Ups Wrong". Youtube, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFLo0Gf2S5w.

Perry, Marc. "How To Do A Push-Up With Proper Form (& Technique)". Builtlean, 2011, http://www.builtlean.com/2011/02/23/how-to-proper-push-up-form/.

"The Perfect Push Up - Do It Right!". Youtube, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IODxDxX7oi4.