Update on Things

Well, it's been quite awhile since my last blog post.  Natalie, our daughter who was born January 5th (6 weeks early), will be 7 months old on Wednesday.  She's still on the small side, but she is doing really well.  She has gone from 2 lbs, 15 oz and 15.5 inches at birth to 11 lbs, 10 oz and 23.5 inches at 6.5 months.  She is a very happy baby (except for car rides) and so far she has met all her motor milestones, which are sometimes delayed in premature babies.  Our son Cameron turned 4 years old in March and will be beginning a pre-K program next week.  We just finished our first season of kickball, which was a lot of fun, and somehow I ended up coaching his team.  Time really does go by quickly.  As far as things go at Mississippi State, we are starting our kinesiology doctoral program this Fall, and we obtained some space in our building and started a neuromechanics lab this past spring (with Dr. Chander).  This new lab space and the presence of doctoral students will allow us to conduct some exciting research in the future.  I was also promoted to associate professor and granted tenure, which would not have been possible without the help and support of so many people, especially my wife Amy.  The future looks bright here.

On another note, I wanted to take a little bit of time to brag about my uncle, Steve Knight.  He has been the head basketball coach at William Carey University for the past 33 years.  I used to be a ball boy for him back when I was younger.  This weekend, he was inducted in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, which is such an incredible honor.  He has won 610 games during his tenure (making him the all time leader in wins among Mississippi college basketball coaches)  and several league and tournament championships.  It was a really special night for him and our family, and it was also cool to see him sitting up on the stage next to Brett Favre, who was my favorite football player growing up.  We are really proud of Steve and the legacy that he has set.  I was never a great basketball player, but he helped me a lot growing up with my game and gave me the chance to be around a college basketball team, and for that I am grateful.

The newest little Knight!

Well, it's the first week of February and this is my first blog post of 2015.  But, there is a good reason for that.

The pictures above are of our daughter, Natalie Elizabeth Knight.  Her due date was on Valentine's Day, but due to some complications, she was born on January 5th via an emergency C section.  She was (and still is) very small.  She only weighed 2 lbs., 15 oz. when she was born, and was 15.5 inches long.  One of the reasons for the emergency C section was because she was not growing much at all in the womb.  Even though she was 6 weeks early and very small, she has not had any complications. She was born here in Starkville at Oktibbeha County Hospital, and she did not have to be transferred to a NICU.  The nursery staff at OCH is just phenomenal and took such wonderful care of us.

When Natalie was born, they told us that she would have to weigh 4 pounds before we could take her home, which could take a month or more.  She has steadily been gaining weight since her birth, and on Tuesday, we got to take her home even though she was just shy of 4 pounds because she has been doing so well.  We went back yesterday for a weight check and she now weighs 4 lbs., 2.4 oz.  She is truly a miracle baby and we are so excited to have her at home so we do not have to keep making trips up to the hospital.  I will post updates every now and then about her progress, and I hope to be able to do some more kinesiology/biomechanics posts here in the near future as things settle down.

Happy Fall!

I realized that we are almost 3/4 of the way through the semester and I haven't blogged since the beginning of the semester.  It's been a very busy semester and I just haven't kept up with it like I should have.  I wanted to post a picture of Cameron in his Captain America costume from Halloween last week.   It's hard to believe that he will be 4 years old in March.  I have to go talk to his preschool class tomorrow about being a kinesiology professor, and while Cameron just loves the skeletal system, his preschool class might be a bigger challenge than teaching 18-22 year olds.  I have a graduate student that conducted her thesis research with a therapeutic horseback riding program held out in French Camp, MS (a very small but nice place with great facilities). She is looking at the influence of horseback riding on motor function among children with Autism.  Cameron just loves horses, so I decided to take him out there one day.  He had a great time and even got to ride a horse for the first time after the regular sessions were completed.  He got to go back out to French Camp again last week and ride a different horse.  I am looking forward to seeing the results of this study once Jennifer analyzes her data.  I'll post another blog soon analyzing some of the injuries that have occurred this football season.

Patellar tendon injury

Last night while attempting to cover first base, Angels pitcher Garrett Richards planted his left leg and then went down in a great deal of pain.  The video of the injury can be seen here, around the 1:20 mark.  If you watch closely, you will notice that when he plants his left leg, his knee is in an extreme amount of flexion (when the knee bends).  The increased amount of range of motion likely led to the significant tear or rupture of his patellar tendon.

The patellar tendon is located on the anterior (front) side of the knee.  It runs from the patella down to the tibial tuberosity, which is the bump on the anterior side of the tibia.  It's transmits force from the quadriceps to the tibia, causing the knee to extend (straighten).  Most muscle/tendon injuries occur when the structure is placed under a great deal of tension, which occurs when the muscle/tendon is being lengthened and loaded. Imagine taking a rubber band and stretching it.  As you stretch it more and more, it starts to develop small tears, and if you keep stretching it, it will eventually rupture.  Muscles and tendons behave very similarly when loaded under tension (stretching).  As the knee moves further and further into flexion, the patellar tendon continues to lengthen, and it some level of stress (or load), the tendon will start to tear and eventually rupture.  The amount of tension the patellar tendon can sustain is different for every person, but if you watch the video, you can see that his knee goes into an extreme amount of flexion in a very short period of time, which indicates a very high rate of loading.  If the patellar tendon is completely torn, it will have to be repaired surgically, and the recovery/rehab time is close to a year.  It's a devastating injury for one of the best pitcher's for the team that currently has the best record in baseball.

Paul George Injury

Paul George, while playing in an exhibition game for Team USA last Friday, suffered a fracture of both his tibia and fibula.  I'm not going to post a picture of the injury or the video, because it was a horrific injury, but you can find it on the internet.  George has been playing basketball his whole life, landed thousands of times, and never had anything like this happen.  In fact, almost all basketball players jump and land thousands of times throughout their careers and never sustain an injury like this.  Many players do sprain their ankles when landing, and occasionally tear an ACL (see Derrick Rose), but this type of injury is very rare.  Kevin Ware from Louisville suffered a similar injury during last season's NCAA tournament.  So what went wrong this time for George?

As you can see in the picture above, George lands with his right leg at approximately a 45 degree angle in relationship to the ground.  He actually hits the base of the goal with his foot before hitting the ground.  Newton's 3rd law of motion tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Most of the time when basketball players jump, they land with their feet directly under their center of mass, and the force from the ground (ground reaction force) is transmitted straight up the leg without much of a problem. In George's case, because he is landing at this angle and his foot is a large distance from his center of mass, the ground reaction force creates a bending moment around the middle section of both the tibia and fibula, causing them to fracture.  Many times when these fractures occur, it's not because of the magnitude of the force, but more about the angle of force application and its relationship to the person's center of mass. George has a long road ahead but I am sure he was operated on by the best orthopedic surgeons and will receive the best therapy possible.

Catching Up

It's been quite some time since my last blog post.  Things got really busy with the spring semester and I forgot to post.  I'd like to take this time to brag on some of our students in the kinesiology department. Towards the end of the semester, we had students present at two separate research forums.  The first was the honors college undergraduate research forum, and the second was the college of education's research forum.  Whitney Ray and Amari Kimble presented a research poster that examined the effects of chronic ankle instability on landing kinetics and dynamic balance.  Jodi Brown and Wesley Gordon presented a research poster that examined the effects of limb dominance on landing kinetics and dynamic balance.  The students did a great job with their presentations, and Jodi won the award for the best undergraduate research poster for the college of education.  Additionally, Whitney won the college of education's undergraduate student research award for the 2013-2014 academic year.  Whitney did a great job assisting Dr. Holmes and myself with research this past year and she was very deserving of the award.  We were also very busy collecting data for a study examining the biomechanics of selected track and field events out at Starkville High School.  We hope to analyze most of the data this summer and then resume data collection in the fall once school starts again.  Below are some pictures of the presentations from the research forums.

 Jodi and Wesley's presentation at the honors college forum

 Whitney and Amari's presentation at the honors college forum

  Jodi's winning presentation at the college of education research forum

National Athletic Training Month

The month of March is National Athletic Training Month.  It is a good time to recognize athletic trainers for all their hard work.  My undergraduate degree is an athletic training and being a graduate assistant athletic trainer helped pay for my Master's and PhD at Auburn University.  Athletic trainers work many long hours and do a lot of work behind the scenes that most people are not aware of.  It is a difficult but very rewarding profession.  Although I do not practice athletic training as my primary job, I've still maintained my athletic training certification by the NATA Board of Certification and license by the state of Mississippi.  If you get a chance this month, thank an athletic trainer for all his or her hard work.