Why would you do a Y Balance Test Upper Quarter on someone with a lower body injury?
While it seems that upper body closed kinetic chain testing might not be relevant to ankle and knee injuries, its importance and the connection may surprise you.
All right. So the question is, "Why or when do we incorporate upper court quarter Y Balance Test in maybe a lower body injury or why is that maybe in our lower body checklist?" And so a couple things we want to think about with that is: a) number one, there's tons of research, or example, in patellofemoral pain, that core function and hip function is really important. There's research in ankle sprains, that core and hip function is decreased. And one of the things I think we forget about are the kind of that fascial alignment that we see with the entire body. It is not, you know, it's. Yeah, the quad contracts and fills It's fascial volume there, but it's the reason that it's tensioning that fascia there is so that it can tension the fascia also into the glutes and the glutes can tension into the thoracic lumbar fascia which tensions into the lats. And you know, and so when we think of those anatomy trains, if you will, that all goes together. And so, for example, I think one of the best tests for quad function, as a surrogate of quad function is trunk stability push up. Like trunk stability push up your tensioning the whole system from fingertips to toes through the core. Well, the quads are on the way in the lower extremity, and if you can't tension the quads symmetrically and well, your trunk stability push up is not going to be good. So similarly with the upper quarter Y Balance Test, now we're taking that symmetrical trunk stability push up pattern, making it asymmetrical, unilateral and going to the limit of stability, which again requires that nice integrated timing of the quads and things like that.
Now is there direct research or, you know, a direct connection that you're going to say, okay, upper quarter Y Balance Test relates to ACL tear or that type of thing? Not a lot of direct research. We have research in the military that the upper quarter Y Balance Test, in the military population, is one of the risk factors for injury . . . not doing well on the superior lateral reach, is a risk factor for injury . . . not just upper extremity injury, but a whole body injury. And so I think, you know, there's some some there, and it's more about, too, making sure the entire system is functioning well from head to toe, not just looking at an isolated quad or an isolated gastroc or just lower extremity power testing. So that's kind of the rationale behind it.