In our last post, Jamie demonstrated some basic pull-up techniques to get you started with doing pull-ups. This video goes into some advanced pull-up techniques for those of you that have the basics cold.
As always, if you have any questions feel free to drop us an e-mail at info@biokineticsllc.com or give us a call at (732) 741-5085.
This installment of our video instruction series focuses on basic pull-ups. Pull-ups are a great exercise and as Jamie states in the video, "If you can't find a place to do pull-ups, you aren't looking". Doorways, railings, playgrounds, attachments on fire trucks, etc. The possibilities are endless. This video has a little more background noise than our other videos, but it reinforces the point that places to do pull-ups can be done anywhere - these are done in the corner of a small park.
In the next post, Jamie demonstrates some advanced pull-up techniques for those of you that have the basic pull-up mastered.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop us an e-mail at info@biokineticsllc.com or give us a call at (732)741-5085.
I've heard about this rule elsewhere over the years, but came across it again while doing some research for a current ergonomics project that we are doing. Often the 20-20-20 rule is applied to office ergonomics for computer users, and suggests that every 20 minutes, you should look at a point 20 feet away for 20 seconds to give your eyes a break from the focus on the computer monitor.
However, this rule comes in handy for many different occupations, such as cake decorators (this project has a little bit of a sweet tooth to it!) and people who assemble parts. As I've come to learn, cake decorating is a very detail oriented task (which luckily, I had an idea of thanks to watching all of those episodes of Ace of Cakes on the Food Network.) Cake decorators in larger commercial bakeries spend significant amounts of time on detail work, which can be related to neck strain as well as upper extremity complaints (hand, wrist, forearm, and shoulder). Taking advantage of the 20-20-20 rule provides cake decorators a chance to look up and look away from the cake, giving time to stretch their neck and shoulder girdle musculature as well as relax and stretch out their arms to relieve the muscle tension related to detailed work on the cakes.
For cake decorators and parts assemblers, using a simple timer or stop watch set to go off at 20 minute intervals can provide an easy reminder to stop and take a break. For those of us who are chair bound dealing with a keyboard and computer monitor, there are some freeware choices that allow us to remember to take a break such as EyeDefender and Workrave.
If you are interested in more information about how and why your employees should put the 20-20-20 rule into practice or you have other ergonomic questions, drop me an e-mail at quin@biokineticsllc.com or give us a call at (732) 741-5085.
Watching the last couple of nights of Olympic Swimming, one of the key phrases that Rowdy Gaines keeps coming back to is that each US swimmer needs to make sure they do each of “the little things” absolutely correct to ensure their chances of medaling. This was really reinforced during the Men’s 200 Freestyle finals in which Ryan Lochte took 4th. Gaines said that Lochte did all of the little things, with the exception of the final "little thing" - swimming through his last stroke at the finish, which probably lost him a visit to the medal podium.
It got me thinking of two recent onsite visits to facilities to observe and measure job tasks for the purpose of creating customized job descriptions. At each site, there was a good lesson to be learned about doing “the little things”.
At the first site, “the little things” lesson came from a discussion in the site supervisor’s office before we even went out into the railyard. At this facility, the employees are responsible for moving the cargo containers that travel by train and truck to deliver consumer goods around the country. It’s a fairly straightforward job for most of the employees who either move trailers around the yard to be loaded/unloaded from the train cars or to be picked up by the truck drivers who will drive them to their next destination or by lift equipment operators who handle the cranes used to move the cargo containers between the rail cars and the trailers. While it’s fairly straightforward, when this facility hires new employees, the site manager sits with each of them while they watch all of the required safety videos, sits with them while they take the appropriate quizzes, and then works hand in hand with them until they are cleared for use of the equipment. Keep in mind that while he does this, the mountain of routine paperwork continues to grow on his desk. Why does he sit with them as they watch the videos? Because it helps to reinforce the fact that safety is his primary concern when it comes to his employees getting their job completed, everyday – no matter the job load or weather conditions. And he has been extremely successful with this. The number of man hours and cargo containers moved between injuries is amazing – it makes the megamillions prize look small. But, that’s because they put a priority on those little things from "day one, minute one" of each employee’s time with them.
At the second site, we had been watching warehouse employees start a long shift of loading pallets with different cases of beer to be sent out to liquor stores as well as some superstore warehouses that have liquor licenses. I watched one of the employees ask for his co-worker to use one of the forklifts to lift one of the pallets from which they were picking. Using the forklift brought the task from floor height to waist height – smart from an ergonomic perspective and from a musculoskeletal injury prevention perspective (and something that we try to reinforce when we do back safety and material handling lectures). During a few minutes of downtime, I asked him about using the forklift to lift the pallet. He responded that he does that because he’s had previous surgery to a knee and a previous rotator cuff repair in one of his shoulders and if he doesn’t do that, he’ll feel it by the end of each shift. His goal is not to just survive each work shift, but to be able to enjoy his everyday life. He said that he’s learned the little things that allow him to be as efficient in the last hour of a shift as he is during his first.
Our jobs, whether as an Olympic athlete or as an “industrial athlete” are made up of those “little things” that determine whether we make the medal stand or make it from shift to shift without injury. Make sure that those “little things” become a daily attention item. Give us a call at (732) 741-5085 and we can help you to identify those "little things" that can help you and your employees perform better.
Here is the second in our series of functional strength and conditioning videos to help improve firefighter fitness. As Jamie mentions in the video, used fire hoses can be a cheap, accessible tool for improving both strength and cardiovascular fitness. They can be used for a large variety of exercises from pulling and carrying exercises to "whip" exercises. With more than 1 hose, team events can be done as well.
If you have any fitness related questions, please e-mail them to us at info@biokineticsllc.com and we will address them in a future blog post.
We spend a lot of time through the year working with state, county, and municipal employees who are involved with public safety, specifically firefighters and police officers. These are the people that do a very important job in helping to ensure the safety of the public should something go wrong. We take our work with these individuals seriously, because their job comes with risks that they willingly take on our behalf.
A lot of the feedback that we come across from firefighters, as well as police officers, is that they are unsure of what exercises they should do to make the time that they spend exercising as beneficial as possible. In order to try and help, we will be posting videos as well as other information to help fill some of these information gaps. Feel free to drop us a line at info@biokineticsllc.com if you have any fitness questions that you'd like to see answered. We'll do our best to get you questions answered.
Here is our first video on carrying sandbags to help improve functional strength and cardiovascular fitness.
Thanks for taking a look at the video and please drop us a line to let us know what you think.
During a discussion last week, a co-worker and I were talking about fitness and perceptions of how much they exercise. When asked, people will always overestimate the amount that they exercise. Believe it or not, good many has been spent on research studies to prove that people will overestimate the exercise they do. For the most part, I don't think that there is a malicious intent to this overestimation. Nobody wants to admit that they don't get enough exercise - or worse yet, don't exercise at all. But the best way to let people know how much they exercise is to track it - after all, the numbers don't lie. There are a lot of great tools that allow for the tracking of a person's activity (regardless of modality of exercise). We've listed some of these tools below:
Heart Rate Monitor
Heart rate monitoring can be as simple as using your watch while you take your pulse to determine your heart rate, but in the middle of a workout, this can be a time consuming and distracting way to measure how hard you are working. Luckily, there are a variety of heart rate monitor systems from companies like Polar, Nike, and Timex to simplify keeping track of your heart rate while you exercise. Most of these systems are comprised of a chest strap with built in electrodes that measure your heart rate for transmission to the watch which displays your heart rate. Many of the watches allow you to set lower and upper heart rate zones to help make sure that you are working out too hard (upper zone) or taking it too easy (lower zone). A large number of manufacturers of cardio equipment for gyms and health clubs make their equipment compatible with Polar branded heart rate monitors. When you use equipment such as a treadmill or Jacob’s Ladder that is Polar compatible while wearing your Polar strap, your heart rate will be displayed along with your distance, speed, and time.
GPS Devices
GPS devices take the heart rate monitor to the next level, by incorporating a GPS tracking system with your heart rate monitor to record how fast you are running and cycling while recording your heart rate. This can be downloaded to your computer or popular websites such as www.strava.com or www.trainingpeaks.com where you can keep track of your results as well as compare workouts to see how your fitness level improves.
Nike +
Nike+ is a device that works with the Apple iPhone as well as a Nike watch. It consists of a foot pod that you put in/on your shoe, which measures each step that you take for transmission to your iPhone/Nike watch. Your running distance and pace are then calculated and can be uploaded to a Nike website so that you can monitor your progress.
Smartphone Apps
There are a variety of smartphone apps for both iPhone and Android phones that can take advantage of the internal GPS of the phone as well as the accelerometers (these measure position and movement of the phone – they allow the screen to rotate as you rotate the phone and to control phone based action games). Apps such as CardioTrainer use the GPS to track running and cycling workouts similar to the GPS watches. For strength workouts, apps such as SquatFu and PushupFu help to count your squats and push-ups and help to keep you accountable by making sure that you go the full range for each repetition to count. (Of note, I have purchased and tried each of these apps and definitely recommend them. - QB)
Undercover Boss on CBS is a reality show that has some great applications for everyone who works from entry level employees all the way up to CEOs. For entry level employees, they need to realize that every individual that they come in contact with during a work day is important and can have profound impact on your future. For CEOs and upper level management, it becomes a great chance to get a better handle on the everyday workings of your company.
One of the issues that we see when we go out to perform ergonomic reviews of job tasks for the purpose of creating customized job descriptions is that management and supervisors don't truly have a good handle on the actual physical demands of the position. Often, this is not due to a misunderstanding of the task being performed - many of the supervisors worked their way up the ranks. It becomes more an issue of "well, I think that object only weighs about 20 pounds". The most recent episode involved Dina Dwyer-Owns, CEO of The Dwyer Group, going undercover at several of the company's service related franchises. One of the tasks involved working with a technician from Mr. Rooter who was installing a new water heater. Ms. Dwyer-Owens was amazed to find out that the hot water heater weighs approximately 185 pounds. The weight of this water heater places the task into the very heavy category (100+ pounds). For Mr. Rooter, two options might be appropriate:
One of the smart things noticed in this segment was the water cooler on the landscaping trailer. The landscaper was working in 100 plus degree temperatures and noted that it was company policy to stay as hydrated as possible.
Two weeks ago, Undercover Boss aired an episode about Diamond Resorts International which owns timeshare resorts. During a segment with a painter at one of the properties, CEO Stephen Cloobeck learns firsthand that the facemasks provided for his employees aren't very functional and that sanding drywall patches by hand is very timeconsuming. During the reveal, he tells the employee:
Each of these fixes are very important from several aspects.
The take home questions for managers is "When was the lsat time that you went out and took a solid look at how your employees perform their job tasks and is their anything that can be done better to improve safety,reduce preventable injuries, and make task performance more effective?"
Several years ago, my barber injured his right rotator cuff. You may wonder how a rotator cuff injury to my barber has to do with an ergonomics blog. It’s everything to do with the title of this post – “Necessity is the mother of invention”.
At the time, my barber who was in his late 60s owned his barbershop which was truly a one man operation – think small town, old school barbershop. Woodworking, in particular making furniture and bookcases, was his away from work hobby. When he tried to catch himself during a trip and fall, he injured his right rotator cuff. While going through conservative treatment, he found that each day he could perform less haircuts than the previous day before the pain in his shoulder would stop him for the day. Being that he owned the shop, even bringing somebody in to work while he underwent rehabilitation would cause a significant decrease in his income. Thus, finding a way to keep working while dealing with his injury was the necessity.
Now comes for the invention. He put the knowledge gained from his hobby in woodworking to good use. He realized from both a practical and a biomechanical standpoint that his shoulder didn’t hurt if the person who’s hair was being cut was at a low enough height that their head was approximately at the height of his elbows. He spent a couple of days playing with seating positions of his customers to keep them at this optimal height, but realized that moving the customers around wasn’t necessarily the best solution.
My barber then realized that if there was an ideal height for the customer’s head, but moving the customer wasn’t the best choice the next best thing would be to move himself. He experimented with a small stool to stand on but found it cumbersome to move the stool as he worked around the customer’s head. While the stool was cumbersome, it was easier than moving the customer around. So, the barber decided to build a platform around the chair. This gave him room to move around the customer while keeping the customer’s head at a comfortable level – and still allowed access to the chair controls to elevate shorter customers to a comfortable height. And most importantly, solved his necessity – it allowed him to be able to maintain his income and keep his business running.
The reason why I bring this example up is a recent visit to a new client. While observing a work task that has generated some level of upper extremity complaints, we quickly noticed that the work surfaces were at a height that required the workers to elevate their shoulder in order to generate enough “space” to perform the task. A lowering of the table heights would allow the workers to perform their tasks while reducing strain on their upper extremities.
Do you have worksite tasks that are causing complaints? Not sure how to modify the tasks to alleviate the problem? Give Biokinetics a call at (732) 741-5085 and we'll give you a hand in finding the optimal solution.
One of the numerous occupational health mailing lists that I subscribe to has a discussion going on about dealing with the implementation of Safe Patient Handling protocols within facilities. The discussion was started with a search for patient transfer devices to help reduce friction to help make patient transfers easier. The problem becomes that as some people focus on the use of machines, such as lifts, to help reduce the incidence of lower back injuries among medical personnel (don't get me wrong, this is incredibly important, we've lost track of the people performing the jobs.
Number one, as shown by the fact that a representative for a health care facility is seeking sources for devices to decrease friction during transfers, there is still a physical demand to performing patient transfers even when using an assistive device. You still need to be able to get the harness for the lift underneath the patient. Even in the video for the Sandel Z-Slider, there is still a need to be able to manipulate the patient to get the Z-Slider film underneath - but once you have it underneath, it does an amazing job of reducing the required forces.
Number two, the patients still need to be moved around the facility. In health care facilities that we have performed on-site assessments for the purpose of post-offer pre-employment testing and functional capacity evaluations, an initiation force for pulling or pushing of 60 pounds is required to move a hospital bed with a patient. This force can be as great as 80 pounds or more when transitting ramps that connect uneven floors between buildings. One commenter on the above mentioned thread talked about using powered gurneys that can transition among many different uses in order to not require a person to be able to physically push the patient from area to area.
Number three, in the event of unforeseen circumstances that requires large numbers of patients to be moved quickly from one area of a facility to another there may not be enough devices and/or time to permit "Safe Patient Handling" to be performed within the time constraints of the situation. This is not to say that proper biomechanics shouldn't be used in these situations.
So where does that bring us? All attempts should be made to make "Safe Patient Handling" a part of all facilities. But, we need to make sure we still see the forest for the trees. We need to take a look at the individuals that are hired. Are they strong enough to facilitate the placement of harnesses and/or other devices that are used in safe patient handling? Do they have the physical strength to push/pull hospital beds that require 60 pounds of initiation force on a frequent basis? Does the facility provide high quality training in proper lifting techniques to their employees? Are proper lifting techniques emphasized routinely through the year whether through routine assessment or refresher training?
If your facility is not answering yes to these questions, give Biokinetics a call at (732) 741-5085 so that we can help you with this process.
While not quite an ergonomics issue, a recent letter from the EEOC to several employers that advised the employers that their practice of requiring a high school diploma as a job requirement may violate the ADA. David Boyer in the Washington Times has an interesting article on the situation that may be caused by this "letter" which is not an actual decision.
However, it's not necessarily a problem for all employers - provided that they have a good handle on why they have established a particular job demand as essential.
“The EEOC may be inclined to test its view on the high school diploma requirement and its impact on the disabled in a court case,” said Ms. Metzler, who is advising clients to “review their job descriptions to determine if a high school degree is truly necessary, or would aid the employee in performing the essential functions of the particular job."
A lawyer from the EEOC also stated in the article that "issue would come up only when high school graduation standards are not related to a specific job."
As we noted here on the blog earlier this week, it's important to spend time to carefully define the essential demands - in all aspects - that are listed in your customized job descriptions. If you have questions as to the essential physical and postural demands of the employees at your company, give us a call at (732) 741-5085 or drop us an e-mail at info@biokineticsllc.com.
Hopefully everyone had a safe and Happy New Year’s. With a brand new year upon us, it’s a good time for employers to take a look at how they can make 2012 an even better year. One of the areas that deserves a look is your current job descriptions for your employees. A couple of questions to ask yourself are:
Having a good, solid customized job description provides an employer with important information that can be used to establish a post-offer pre-employment testing process, the foundation for a solid stay at work program that can provide detailed information to treating physicians in determining appropriate modified duty, and a solid basis for comparison when a Functional Capacity Evaluation is required to determine whether an injured employee can return to work.
The importance of having detailed information became even more clear several years ago when we were asked to generate a customized job description for the job of mechanics assistant within a public works department for a large municipality. The town had a custom job description for their mechanics and mechanics assistants that rated the position as an occasional 100 pound demand. As this was the only weight load listed, it allowed the injured mechanics assistant’s lawyer to argue that there really wasn’t that much “heavy” work to do and that the work could be performed by an assistant (yes, an assistant to the assistant). An onsite review revealed a significant number of essential tasks that were between 60 and 100 pounds and well in excess of the injured employee’s physical ability as determined by a functional capacity evaluation.
If you have any questions about your current job descriptions or need a customized job description for positions at your company, give Biokinetics a call at (732) 741-5085.
