The human body is a perfect machine that produces movement and can move from one point to another by transforming energy. It moves in a certain space and time that allows it to carry out endless movements and activities that are part of the daily life of each individual. These activities are aimed at personal well-being and comfort, without going beyond movement as an isolated term. Therefore we know that the body can move, but many times we do not know how it moves.
Human biomechanics
The movements we make are not stereotyped nor are they the same for all human beings. For example, all individuals can flex the knee to allow for the swing phase of gait, but each individual will do it differently, i.e. degrees of knee flexion, stride length, muscle activation to allow for movement, and the individual's own morphology (age, height, sex, among others) are factors that influence so that the “same movement” is completely different in each individual.
That is why as therapists we must rely on related disciplines that study the human body that can provide us with more detailed information about it, as well as physics, chemistry, medicine and BIOMECHANICS, among other disciplines.
Biomechanics of the human body is defined as the interdiscipline that describes, analyzes and advises the mechanical structures that exist in the human body. It is an area of knowledge that relies on various basic and biomedical sciences such as mechanics, engineering, anatomy, physiology and others, to study the behavior of the human body and solve the problems derived from the various conditions to which it is subjected.
Biomechanics is divided into two components that are a very narrow part of its study:
Kinematics: which properly describes the movements, places bodies in space and details their movements based on displacements, speeds and accelerations. In this component, the forces that cause it are not taken into account. The variables used are displacement, velocity, and acceleration.
Kinetics: Contrary to kinematics, kinetics studies the forces that cause movement. The variables used are mass, force, and energy.
Integrating the above, Biomechanics allows us to analyze all the possible movements of the body and thereby deepen on the muscular actions, determine forces, directions of movements as well as their ranges of movement, this in order to study an individual as a whole during and / or after having suffered an injury, in order to return it to normal or when there are morphological changes that are producing compensation.
It is a tool that provides us with information with greater precision, which together with an adequate and complete medical history can provide us with important data on why and how a movement is being carried out.
A field in which it is widely used is in sport, since in this it is required to study stereotyped movements according to each sport and that to improve the technique of sporting gesture requires the deep study of a certain movement to allow the improvement of performance of the individual and especially the prevention of injuries.
To carry out my practice, I rely on biomechanics dedicated to the study of human movement, which provide us with exact data about any disease, injury and even the approach that will have to be given to therapy so that the patient improve properly.
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