MET is the abbreviation for muscle energy technique.  What that means is that you use the contraction of the muscles(the muscle energy) to pull bones certain ways and put joints in better alignment.  The best example of this is at the hips.  This is how I used to check for hip alignment…….Ok the patient is lying down on his back with the knees bent and I would ask him to lift the hips up and down 3 times.  This turns on the muscles and would let me know how and what they’re pulling on naturally.  Then I would place my thumbs on the hip bones, the ASIS.  My left thumb on the patient’s right hip bone and my right thumb on the patient’s left hip bone.  ASIS stands for anterior superior iliac spine.  Everything in the body has an abbreviation for it.  Ok then I would look at my thumbs and see if they were in line or if one thumb was higher/lower than the other.  This is a completely subjective way to determine this.  So say that I thought my right thumb was higher.  This would be called posterior rotation of the left innominate bone.  The way I would treat this is, with the patient still lying down with bent legs, I would place my right hand on the left thigh and my left hand on the right shin.  I would have the patient lift up their feet a little bit and say “please push into my hands.”  Opposite muscle groups are contracting on the left and right leg.  The quads would contract on the left leg in order to pull the left hip bone down and the hamstrings are contracting on the right leg to pull the right hip bone up.  Then I would do the thing with my thumbs again and hopefully they would be in line.  I hope I said all that correctly.  There are lots of muscle energy techniques that are used all over the body.  That PDF is long and boring but thoroughly describes muscle energy techniques and it talks about breathing, which is cool.

Categories: Health, Rehab

Tags: ASIS, Hip bone, innominate bone, MET, Muscle energy technique, Stroke