0:02 This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and we're going to talk about VMO, or vastus medialis 0:07 obliquus activation, and knee dysfunction. I'm going to have Vinnie come in and help me 0:12 demonstrate a few movements. 0:13 First things first, we need to discuss on why we need VMO activation, and when we 0:20 should use it. Now generally knee pain comes from an inability to eccentrically 0:25 decelerate femoral 0:28 internal rotation and adduction, as our tibia externally rotates.This most easily 0:33 seen in people who do a squat and their knees cave in. Can you demonstrate that for us? 0:39 I know many of you guys have seen a squat done like this, where the knees start 0:43 caving in. You can see that the femur has internally rotated. This increases 0:47 the stress placed on many of the structures in the knee either medial or 0:51 lateral, and it starts wearing us down, 0:54 more or less. What a lot of individuals will do is they'll start trying to 0:58 activate the VMO, thinking that it's just a patellar tracking problem. 1:03 And while there is a patellar tracking problem, we also have huge problems in 1:07 the hip, and huge problems in the ankle, if this is occurring, or one or the 1:12 other. 1:12 First things first, before we even start VMO activation, 1:16 we need to correct whatever dysfunction we have going 1:19 at the hip and the ankle because these structures, with the large muscles that are 1:24 placed around these structures, have far more impact on what's happening to the 1:29 alignment. Now, once we've gone ahead and done our release, stretching, and activation, 1:35 our corrective exercise routine for the hip, ankle, or both, whatever the 1:40 dysfunction is, we can use VMO activation as kind of the icing on the cake 1:44 for those individuals with knee pain. 1:46 In other words, you'd write a lower leg dysfunction strategy, and then add the 1:50 VMO because the person had knee dysfunction. Now, Vinnie's going to do my 1:55 favorite VMO exercise, 1:57 the only one that really seems to be effective in my book. 2:00 First things first, before we did this exercise, we would release this muscle 2:05 here, which is not a common muscle to be released, but your biceps femoris needs 2:11 to be released and stretched, and there's actually research to show just releasing 2:14 this muscle alone, will increase activity to his VMO, or that inner muscle of your 2:20 quads, that teardrop muscle that's just on the inside of your knee. Once he does 2:24 that, we can then increase VMO activation by focusing on strengthening 2:30 the last 10 degrees of knee extension. In a closed chain, this seems to work really, really 2:35 well. So Vinnie is going to descend down just a little bit so we got 2:39 a little bit of knee flexion here, and then what he's going to do is just lock 2:43 out his knee against this resistance. So Vinnie, go ahead and show that one 2:48 more time. 2:49 So he's just locking his knee, working on strengthening that last 10 degrees of 2:53 knee extension. Now, we can even take this one step further by having him lock his knee 3:00 and then squeeze his glute, which will 3:03 externally rotate his femur. External rotation of the femur is the same thing 3:09 as tibial internal rotation, the same joint action that the vastus medialis 3:13 obliquus will do on its own. So we got femoral external rotation by 3:19 squeezing the glutes, increasing activation of the VMO because it is 3:23 relative tibial internal rotation. Why don't you go ahead and show that one more 3:27 time? 3:28 So we're going to lock out the knee, squeeze the glute, 3:32 hold for two seconds, and back down. You can have somebody do 10 to 20 reps, real 3:38 easy to progress just by strengthening the band. Real easy thing to add into 3:41 our activation, progression or activation circuit. Thank you. 3:53 3:55
