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Ways to Succeed in Biomechanics

Discussion in 'Biomechanics, Sports and Foot orthoses' started by Robertisaacs, Dec 12, 2009.


  1. Members do not see these Ads. Sign Up.
    So, you've been doing biomechanics for a while, but you're unhappy with your career!

    Stuck in a rut?

    Can't see a direction?

    Too greedy to just take a steady income but but can't be arsed to actually do proper work?

    Lack the imagination to make a breakthrough?

    Well have no fear, because after literally 20 minutes of hard study I can now offer my

    PERSONNAL IMPROVEMENT STARTER SCHEME

    Its simple. Choose the career path which suits you best and send me £20,000 and I will send you the Sequential Career Advancement Manual. In no time at all you'll be raking in money had over fist and have Cameron Diaz as a personal assistant!

    The Loreal approach.


    Because you're worth it! If you have sufficient self belief, simply charge upwards of £1500 for your orthotics. Remember there is one born every minute so take out a buncha high price adverts, get yourself a spangly clinic, Slag off everyone else who is providing the same devices for a quarter the price and off you go!

    And for added benefits, just spend all the money, and put the company into liquidation thus distancing yourself from all those pesky patients who want their money back. You could always start up again just up the road after a nice long holiday!

    But if that one does not carry enough prestige then try....

    The "retro" approach

    Inventing new ideas and techniques is such a bore. Lots of clever people have invented stuff which now never gets used. These inventions have been superceeded and thus most podiatrists (especially the new ones) will not recognise them! Drag them out the dustbin, paint over the scabby bits, give it an exciting new name, and launch it on the market. In no time at all you'll have a following of gullible podiatrists who have not kept up with current events! Make a mint on the lecture circuit and bask in the admiration of your peers! And if you can patent your "new" method then so much the better!!

    But this requires a bit of sales ability. If you lack the charisma why not try...

    The "alchemy" approach

    Yes it really works. Come up with an idea. It does not need to be good, or even plausible. Design an insole which makes no rational sense whatsoever. Then you turn it to gold by claiming it cures EVERYTHING!!! Seriously, don't let yourself be limited by the bounds of knowledge or logic! And especially don't shy from claiming cures for really serious problems, after all desperate people will part with money for ANYTHING right?

    What's that you say? Not enough money for you?

    The ADVANCED alchemy approach

    So you've made your fortune claiming to cure every disease in the dictionary. Why not push it to the next level! Mediocre podiatrists are as desperate to find treatments which work as their patients are to find cures! Come up with an appropriately long winded and expensive course and start a franchise! You'll have it all, fame, fortune and a following of desparate podiatrists who think they can't understand what you say because its SO clever (as opposed to because you just make up phrases which sound plausible together in random order).

    Don't think you've got the minerals to pull that one off? Try...

    The "simplification" approach

    Lets face it, biomechanics is a bore. All that training, all that physics, who wants it? Podiatrists face a constant battle between their desire to be good podiatrists and the natural laziness which has plagued you your whole life. So give them an out! Work out a nicely simplified system based on one or two measurements and make out its all anyone needs to learn! Patent it and take it to market!

    Aha, I hear you cry, surely people will see that this is a retrograde step and that it involved unlearning all they've learned. Well never fear, my Sequential Career Advancement Manual has the answer. Find a theory which was great in its day but has been superseded, and rip it to shreds! In spite of the fact that it is completely irrelevant to YOUR paradigm, you'll look ACE by comparison!

    But if you're less greedy perhaps you'd be better with...

    The Nostradamus approach.


    Yes, you can tell the future. Find a nuggett of science which looks like it might go somewhere. Then PRETEND YOU FULLY UNDERSTAND IT!!! Nobody will argue because most people will have only heard of this stuff in passing. The few people who DO know about it will only be able to splutter about how nobody really knows how it works and that there's no evidence and that just makes you look even cooler for claiming you DO or HAVE. Make a broad sweeping claim about what some insole does. Try to make it as esoteric as possible including lost of words like "neuro", "macro", "Kinesthetic" and of course "proprioception". Not the most lucrative method here but for sure it will will gain you a following.

    Or if you'd be too worried about being busted later perhaps you need the last of my Sequential Career Advancement Manuals,

    The Equipment Junkie.

    Get a piece of techno kit. For preference it should have pretty sciency pictures and knobs and whistles and stuff. Get to know it, then CLAIM EVERYONE NEEDS ONE. Don't worry that everyone has got on fine for years without one, they need one NOW. And the punters will be SO impressed with it, they'll form queues to have a £12,000 machine tell them what a decent clinician could tell them just by looking at them. Get a contract with the people who make the machines for the REALLY big money.


    So send your money NOW for your Sequential Career Advancement Manual! And look out for the new one coming out in the new year wherin I charge you that price just to teach YOU how to charge OTHER people that price!!!!

    Please send Cheques to

    Robert Isaacs
    Banko de Swiss
    Switzerland

    Terms and conditions apply. Results may vary. Cameron Diaz may NOT come to be your PA. The author explicitly denies all liability for any damage to reputation occasioned by this Sequential Career Advancement Manual. Whilst these may have worked in the past they are all based on previous success this may NOT be predictive of future performance.
     
  2. Robert:

    Way too much time on your hands......:drinks
     
  3. Admin2

    Admin2 Administrator Staff Member

  4. DaVinci

    DaVinci Well-Known Member

    Sorry Robert, I not interested unless you offering a set of steak knives as a bonus (did they not teach you about marketing at Uni?)
     
  5. Did I not mention the steak knives?! Of COURSE you also get a free gift, the choice of steak knives, a clock radio or a DVD player!

    Lots of podiatrists already take the Personal Improvement Starter Scheme! Why not join them?
     
  6. Deborah Ferguson

    Deborah Ferguson Active Member

    Yes possibly too much time on your hands (it IS Christmas the week after next) but brilliant nevertheless.
    Thanks- a good laugh before I face all those Xmas shoppers.
    Regards
    Deborah.
     
  7. Thread start of the year.

    What about the personal touch present to show that you really care.

    Robert Isaccs sings your favourate Christmas Carols.
     
  8. Wendy

    Wendy Active Member

    Thanks Robert for the pressies, saves me going to battle through the multitude for family.
    :santa::santa::santa:
     
  9. DTT

    DTT Well-Known Member

    Nice one Rob , LMAO :D I'm already signed up by the look of it !!
    cheers
    D;)
     
  10. Took me about 20 minutes. ;)

    Ah, of course you were not an arena junkie last year when I wrote this

    Cheers
    Robert
     
  11. Grover

    Grover Member

    I am very interested and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
     
  12. Sarah-Jane

    Sarah-Jane Member

    Hilarious Podiatrists carol....!!
     
  13. Mart

    Mart Well-Known Member

    cheque in the mail :drinks

    cheers

    Martin

    The St. James Foot Clinic
    1749 Portage Ave.
    Winnipeg
    Manitoba
    R3J 0E6
    phone [204] 837 FOOT (3668)
    fax [204] 774 9918
    www.winnipegfootclinic.com
     
  14. Tkemp

    Tkemp Active Member

    Along with the steak knives, do we also get a laminated A4 colour printed sign saying we are sponsored by a "Master of Podiatry"?!!? :D
     
  15. Peter1234

    Peter1234 Active Member

    Best laugh so far in 2010 !!
     
  16. Dido

    Dido Active Member

    I'll sign up tomorrow if I can have George Clooney as my personal assistant :D
     
  17. zsuzsanna

    zsuzsanna Active Member

    Thanks for a very good laugh!! Very enjoyable.
     
  18. Had a run on George, sorry. Got Brad Pitt though if you're still interested... ;)
     
  19. MR NAKE

    MR NAKE Active Member

    finally something different, not too serious and definately a breath of fresh air, poetic pods wow!!! woooopwoooooop
     
  20. admin

    admin Administrator Staff Member

  21. A few of them have done all right :D:D

    I think Mr Butterworth deserves a separate theory to our Brian. I mean they are both based on the idea that if you change the sensation of the plantar foot something magical happens but that is where the resemblance ends.

    Hmmm. I feel another thread coming on...
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 24, 2010
  22. DrPod

    DrPod Active Member

    This is just too funny. I have to sign up for a course as I want to be famous too.

    Having said that, there is a serious side to this and I hope some of those above and those aspiring to these heights realise that the approach that they are taking is likely to be viewed. I wish more of my DPM colleagues were aware of this.
     
  23. DaVinci

    DaVinci Well-Known Member

    You must feel very proud of your graduates :pigs:
     
  24. feet

    feet Welcome New Poster

    Brilliant!
    I hope I am not too late to take advantage of this offer. Please would you be good enough to accept £40,000 and allow me to sign up twice so I can be twice as good at the biomechanics?
    I believe this entitles me to Ant AND Dec as PA's. I appreciate they may be very popular in the North East and would be happy to accept 2 Nolans or Beyonce and Jay-Z.
    Many thanks for your kindness and sharing your knowledge.

    I'll have the DVD player please.
    And the laminate sign.
     
  25. kayron

    kayron Member

    Nice one Robert, you made me laugh on pretty horrible day :)
     
  26. Zuse

    Zuse Active Member

    this thred is very funny! i did enjoy reeding it!
    thanks
     
  27. I am delighted to say that the throughput of my school remains high with dozens of personal improvement starter scheme artists being created every week!

    Not being one to stand still I am proud to announce that I will soon be releasing a NEW SERIES OF Sequential Career Advancement Manuals! Yes thats right, exciting new SCAMs are being invented all the time. We never sleep!

    The abstract terror approach.

    This one is actually a development of the "alchemy" approach. In Alchemy you learned to promise big by offering to cure any and all ills. This opens a huge market for you.

    HOWEVER the Abstract terror approach opens up the entire population as a potential cash cow, ripe for the milking.

    The simple elegance of the plan is this. You cure people... of problems they don't have yet. Its perfect. you warn people that because of their gait/ foot type / hair colour / fact they have a head, they are GOING to get something nasty. They are DOOMED. They are probably heading for a wheelchair in a few years. Cut a hole in your trouser pocket, take a pair of tweezers and pluck a few hairs while delivering the news and a sympathetic (looking) tear will come to your eye (optional but it makes you look like you really care)

    There is only one hope for them. You, and you alone (thats important) can promise them good health IN THE FUTURE.

    Call it wellness, or optimal function, or good health or anything suitable vague that cannot be tested or proved either way! Fit them up and hey presto. You don't even have the risk of them coming back and complaining because (and this is the really clever part) by being vague about the problems you prevent, you can always say its worked. Got shin splints in spite of the insoles? Yes but you never suffered a stroke did you? $600 please.

    AND by promising vague "good function" instead of threatening specifics or actually offering to cure a rear problem you even get to sound positive and pro active while you're doing it.



    Watch this space folks. New Sequential Career Advancement manuals are appearing all the time. Stay on the cutting edge! Send £10,000 to my offshore account today to receive updates and remain on the cutting edge!
     
  28. DTT

    DTT Well-Known Member

    BEHAVE !!!!!:D:D:D
     
  29. Been a while since I expanded on my Sequential Career Advancement Manual. So Its high time I offered up anothe dose of my Personal Improvement Starter Scheme. Anyone wishing to take the Personal Improvement Starter Scheme need look no further!

    The Godfather Approach

    "you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather..."

    So you want respect? You want to leave a legacy? You want to be a legend? You want ownship? Well then I'll make you an offer you can't refuse. Have a baby. Become the "father of" something.

    It does'nt have to be something original. It doesn't have to be yours. It can be as vague or as specific as you like. It helps if you can find someone else to call you it, even if its your spouse, so you can report on your website "he's been called the father of *******" rather than announce it yourself. Its hard to be humble when you are the father of something but its important to try, lest you look like a self promoting cynic applying home made laurels to your own head.

    And then, you've arrived. A legend in your own mind, you can know that anyone who used or does what you've adopted does so under your paternal stare, (even, in a Dr who styly, those who did it before you came along).


    If you wish to read the whole chapter, please send a bankers draft for £20,000 to Robert Isaacs, the father of Personal Improvement Starter Schemes And Livelyhood Liberation
     
  30. Perthpod

    Perthpod Active Member

    I'd like to try the Godfather Approach in combination with the Brad Pitt assistant please...
     
  31. Gibby

    Gibby Active Member

    My check was returned. Where should I send the payment?
     
  32. W J Liggins

    W J Liggins Well-Known Member

    Thank you for your enquiry

    Please forward it to me in cash. Dollars or pounds are welcome, but please no euros.

    I will immediately send you instructions on how to contact Mr Isaccs (I know where he lives), and if I receive your money within one week, as a bonus, the address of a gentleman who will send you an interesting and explicit DVD of young ladies demonstrating stretching exercises, sent in a discreet unmarked envelope.

    Bill Liggins

    PS. I think that I've just invented my own S.C.A.M.
     
  33. fabio.alberzoni

    fabio.alberzoni Active Member

    I clicked by mistake "Next Thread »"....Robert...I was sure that was a joke until I read the serious answer of Kirby...awesome.
    Anyway I'm starting my nostradamus invention:I'm working on a magnetic compensation of something...with"proprioception violance".I'd need your help for the marketing....
     
  34. Dr. Steven King

    Dr. Steven King Well-Known Member

    Aloha Robert,

    Do we still owe you money if your-our idea really works and makes honest money and saves peoples lives and limbs ??

    Mahalo,
    Steve


    Sturdy boots are not puncture resistant boots unless you are FEMA.

    http://m.fema.gov/after-tornado





    The "simplification" approach

    Lets face it, biomechanics is a bore. All that training, all that physics (high school, college, med school), who wants it? Podiatrists face a constant battle between their desire to be good podiatrists and the natural laziness which has plagued you your whole life. So give them an out! Work out a nicely simplified system (based on simple machines and spring mechanics) based on one or two measurements (and the work of Archimedes) and make out its all anyone needs to learn (to change from the foam based status quo)! (Internationally) Patent it (present it at scientific conferences and test it for the US Department of Defense and Army Medical Research and Materials Command )and take it to (a needful) market!

    Aha, I hear you cry, surely people will see that this is a retrograde step and that it involved unlearning all they've learned (and relearning all that they learned).

    Well never fear, my Sequential Career Advancement Manual has the answer.

    The Equipment Junkie.

    Get a piece of techno kit (like advanced composite carbon fiber springs used in the Olympics). For preference it should have pretty sciency pictures (with great weft and warp) and knobs and whistles and stuff (and look really cool on the hood and dashboard of your Formula One race car and America's Cup Sailboat). Get to know it (the materials and manufacturing processes), then CLAIM EVERYONE NEEDS ONE (kind of like a thnead- something everyone everyone needs). Don't worry that everyone has got on fine for (10,000) years without one (stepping on nails and tiny no see um bacterial infections do not hurt Real Manly Men!). They need one NOW (in case a natural disaster hits their home or their neighbors home). And the punters (and punt returners) will be SO impressed with it, they'll form queues to have a £12,000 machine tell them what a decent clinician could tell them just by looking at them (with their science based biometrically enhanced eyesight). Get a contract with the people who make the machines (like the makers of Kevlar or other advanced safety materials and body armament companies) for the REALLY big money.


    So send your money NOW for your Sequential Career Advancement Manual! And look out for the new one coming out in the new year wherin I charge you that price just to teach YOU how to charge OTHER people that price!!!!

    Please send Cheques to

    Robert Isaacs
    Banko de Swiss
    Switzerland
     
  35. Hey Stephen.

    No, I'm afraid that all the methods I've described are clearly identifiable as part of a Sequential Career Advancement Manual. Anybody doing any of these is obviously taking the Personal Improvement Starter Scheme.;)
     
  36. Dr. Steven King

    Dr. Steven King Well-Known Member

    Mahalo Robert,

    I will remember that next time I step on a rusty nail.

    Thanks for the great insight and care for your fellow man.

    A Hui Hou,
    Steve
     
  37. Robert, we have missed you. Keep up the work!!:drinks
     
  38. It's been a few years now since my Personal Improvement Starter Scheme was released on the world. Since then, the first few people to take the PISS have done exceedingly well for themselves, and I'm gratified to see new acolytes joining up every day. Sequential Career Advancement Manuals can be found in clinics all across the globe.

    It almost seems redundant to add to the catalogue. There is so much of my Personal Improvement Starter Scheme about, people have told me they are flooded, swamped by it. However since I remain committed to process of empowering people to succeed, and by popular request of almost 2 people, I'm happy to announce an all new Sequential Career Advancement Manual. Available exclusively from me for a rock bottom price of ?14, 000.

    THE REVERSE TRAILBLAZER

    In a previous Sequential Career Advancement Manual, (the Godfather) we discussed how to get yourself named as the father of something. But what if your ego is not quite big enough to pull that off? Well, there is another way. You can lead from the back.

    Sound too good to be true? Not at all. Pick a common condition. It helps if it's something ambiguous, but if you have the balls, you can choose something well understood. Now consider your position. You are several thousand places back in the queue of podiatrists who have been treating it for years. How can you get to the front? How can you become the leader in the field?

    Impossible you say? By no means. All you need do is perform a smart about face, and start walking back in the direction that everyone came*.

    Now, you will notice, you are at the front, and everyone else is behind you. And best of all, it's a well trodden path!


    But your work is not done yet. Next you must try to get some people to follow you backwards. This is hard, but not impossible. There will always be some in the line who did not really want to move on, who quite liked the comfortably simplicity of the old ways. You only need a few to follow you, remember this Sequential Career Advancement Manual is all about making you feel good. Hell if you keep your head down and plow forward you can convince yourself that you constitute a movement all by yourself!

    Now, look ahead of you. You see anyone walking? Indeed not. This is proof that you're the only one treating this condition . That makes you a trailblazer, the hero of those in need and the first person to do this therapy (if you don't count the point in time when everyone else crossed that point and believed what you're now selling as a break though.)

    And don't forget, you're the first. People who think differently are ALWAYS right. New is always better than old (even if the new happens to be old new) and movement is always progress.

    *there is a varient where instead of going backwards you strike out sideways. You still get to feel like a lone maverick, bucking the consensus, but you actually have to come up with a new idea instead of retreading an old one. Either way works though.
     
  39. drhunt1

    drhunt1 Well-Known Member

    Old thread...and Isaacs still hasn't figured it out.
     
  40. Dr. Steven King

    Dr. Steven King Well-Known Member

    Aloha Robert,

    Let's give this Reverse Trailblazer about-face retro thing a try.

    All walking robots walk either flat footed or with pegged legged that limits the efficiency, stability and safety of our mechanical little friends.

    Next propose an advanced composite based spring levered gait system that relies on that nifty retro work of Archimedes of Syracuse. Utilizing equation F1D1=F2D2 F=Force D=Distance.

    Next submit your rearward faced idea to a large room of mechanical and materials engineers working with the newest and strongest space age sciency stuff.
    http://www.thecamx.org/wp-content/uploads/2015-ACE-Awards-Book.pdf

    Remember moving backwards can also be enhanced by also moving downhill by rubbing elbows and brain waves with those who work on lowly non-human gait. Propose your quirky shaboomy simple machine device to the makers and developers of robots and exoskeletons, since robots require good passive dynamics for efficient stable walking as humans do for a lower cost of transport.
    http://www.wearablerobotics.com/view-submissions/

    If you are successful then figure out how to pay Robert Isaacs his highly earned 14,000.


    "There is so much of my Personal Improvement Starter Scheme about, people have told me they are flooded, swamped by it. However since I remain committed to process of empowering people to succeed, and by popular request of almost 2 people, I'm happy to announce an all new Sequential Career Advancement Manual. Available exclusively from me for a rock bottom price of ?14, 000."

    A hui hou,
    Steve
     
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