Exercise devices – User manipulated force resisting apparatus – component... – Utilizing weight resistance
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-31
2003-05-27
Donnelly, Jerome W. (Department: 3764)
Exercise devices
User manipulated force resisting apparatus, component...
Utilizing weight resistance
C482S106000, C482S108000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06569066
ABSTRACT:
CLAIM OF PRIORITY
This application claims priority from a U.S. Provisional Patent Application to Patterson, et. al, filed May 5, 2000, entitled “Upper Extremity Rehabilitation and Training Device and Method”.
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to training and rehabilitation of the upper extremities using inertial resistance.
BACKGROUND
Most functional activities, such as competitive sports, require coordinated movement of and function at multiple muscles and joints. An example of such an activity is the act of throwing a baseball, which requires coordinated use of, inter alia, the muscles serving the hand/wrist, elbow, shoulder, and scapular muscle-joint complexes. Each of these muscle-joint complexes includes major and minor mover muscles, which flex-extend, adduct-abduct, supinate-pronate, stabilize and rotate. These four muscle-joint complexes are collectively referred to as the upper extremity kinetic chain.
To effectively throw a baseball optimally and avoid injury, a player must be able to coordinate both the major and minor movers as well as the stabilizer and rotator muscles of the entire upper extremity kinetic chain. If this coordination is less than optimal, injury and/or diminished performance often result. As a consequence, in order to optimally train and/or rehabilitate the upper extremities for real life and/or real sport expression of maximal upper body performance potential, coordinated, neuro-muscularly efficient, four-muscle-joint-complex training of the entire upper extremities' kinetic chains is necessary.
The use of various devices, such as barbells, dumbbells, and exercise machines, for rehabilitation, fitness, and performance enhancement of athletes and other individuals is well known. These devices use some type of inertial resistance against which one or more of an exerciser's muscle groups exert.
Dumbbells are often used for training the upper extremities and typically consist of a handle connecting a pair of weighted discs. A dumbbell is typically balanced so that its center of gravity is located at the middle of its handle, so that an exerciser can grasp the handle with one hand and perform inertial-resistance exercises.
Barbells are also primarily used for training the upper extremities. They typically consist of a relatively elongated cylindrical bar used as a handle that connects a pair of weighted discs, the bar most often being gripped by an exerciser with both hands while performing inertial-resistance exercises. The center of gravity of a barbell is normally positioned in the center of the bar between the weighted discs, which position allows an exerciser to balance the barbell in both hands while performing inertial-resistance exercises. Barbells are normally either made so that weighted discs can be slid on and off the bar or with fixed weighted discs permanently attached. Dumbbells and barbells are collectively termed free weights.
Numerous exercise machines have been devised to train and/or rehabilitate the upper extremities. Exercise machines most often consist of an inertial resistance such as a weight, elastic member or flexible member, hydraulic piston, or the like, which is connected to a part of an exerciser's body by a handle, pad, stirrup, strap, or other means for transferring force applied by muscular effort by the exerciser via a cable, lever, or other connective means to the inertial resistance.
One drawback to prior art free weights and exercise machines is their inability to exercise the stabilizer and rotator muscles of the upper extremity kinetic chain. This is due to the fact that free weights and machines involve two-dimensional exercise movement paths while stability and rotational strength stimuli require three dimensional exercise movement paths. During prior art upper extremity free weight and exercise machine exercises, one or both hands are typically used to grasp an exercise machine handle, barbell or dumbbell. An exerciser's hand/wrist is normally fixed in either a fully supinated or in a partially pronated position. A prior art barbell biceps curl, for example, is typically performed with the hand/wrist in a fully supinated position and in a static isometric contraction. Other than a limited static hand/wrist muscle-joint resistance to extension/flexion that occurs as the wrist is statically held in a neutral position between full wrist flexion and full wrist extension, there is no further hand/wrist muscle-joint complex flexion/extension, supination-pronation, or ulnar-radial deviation training stimulus. Moreover, there is no hand/wrist muscle-joint complex range of motion stimulus and little or no stability strength stimulus since the center of gravity of the bar or handle is located in the center of the exerciser's fist.
In a prior art barbell biceps curl, the exerciser's hand/wrist muscle-joint complex does not have to stabilize with respect to radial/ulnar deviation, nor does the elbow muscle-joint complex have to resist supination/pronation. Thus, an upper extremity exercise such as the barbell biceps curl is designated a dead hand exercise, because it stresses the elbow flexor muscles (i.e., the major movers for a barbell biceps curl) almost exclusively, and, at best, only minimally stimulates the stabilizer muscles of the upper extremity kinetic chain, including the hand/wrist, the limited isometric flexion/extension of the hand/wrist muscle-joint complex discussed above being the minimal stabilizer stimulus. The term dead hand refers to an essentially fixed isometrically contracted hand-wrist position which predominates during the use of a traditional barbell in particular, dumbbell use to a lesser degree, and most exercise machines. The isometric dead hand position is neutral between wrist flexion and extension, and wrist ulnar and radial deviation. Once the start position of a dead hand exercise is assumed, the hand-wrist remains isometrically fixed for the duration of the exercise.
Another of the drawbacks of prior art free weights and exercise machines is their inability to provide moment arm variations in the exercises they are designed to allow a exerciser to perform. The term moment arm variations refers to the ability to change not only the amount of inertial resistance applied during the exercise, but also its point of application, so that the torque, linear resistance, and/or stabilizing resistance applied to the upper extremity kinetic chain can be varied and customized to train strength and flexibility across all movement potentials of all four muscle-joint complexes of the upper extremity kinetic chain.
By variation of the moment arms applied to the upper extremity kinetic chain during an exercise, changes in the resistance curve of the exercise and the stress placed on the major and minor movers as well as the rotator and stabilizer muscles of the upper extremity kinetic chain during the exercise could be varied so that the rehabilitation and training goals of the exercise could be more readily and optimally achieved. Optimal training and rehabilitation requires full anatomic range of motion movement capability across the hand/wrist, elbow, shoulder, and scapular muscle-joint complexes with four-dimensional strength-stimulus (i.e., forward/backward, side-to-side, up-down, and rotational) to provide optimal training of the upper extremity kinetic chain. Such optimal training enables maximal speed and power expression in all movement potentials. In addition, the ability to vary the moment arm permits an exerciser to more precisely tailor the exercise to a real-world and/or real sport activity for which he wants to train and/or rehabilitate. Unfortunately, prior art exercises and devices do not permit such optimal training or rehabilitation.
It is well known that a prior art dumbbell can be used with a single slightly varying moment arm along the axis of the handle, which extends between the two weighted discs. In particular, an exerciser sometimes will grip the handle of the dumbbell with one side of their fist abutting against o
Patterson Paul
Poliquin Charles
Pyne Kieth E.
Conley & Rose, P.C.
Donnelly Jerome W.
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