Shoulders Versus Hips

by Greg Crowther

This jingle tries to articulate (hee hee) some key differences between two joints.

The shoulder joints are mobile, with impressive R-O-M;
The hips are highly stable, so you can’t dislocate them.
The shoulder’s glenoid cavity is quite a shallow socket;
The hip joint’s acetabulum provides a deeper pocket.

• sheet music (with melody play-back)

Songs like this one can be used during class meetings and/or in homework assignments. Either way, the song will be most impactful if students DO something with it, as opposed to just listening.

An initial, simple follow-up activity could be to answer the study questions below. A more extensive interaction with the song might entail (A) learning to sing it, using an audio file and/or sheet music as a guide, and/or (B) illustrating it with pictures, bodily poses, and/or bodily movements. The latter activity could begin with students identifying the most important or most challenging content of the song, and deciding how to illustrate that particular content.

(1) Which kind of joint is the shoulder: ball-and-socket, condylar, gliding, hinge, pivot, or saddle? How about the hip?

(2) How does this song's melody illustrate the relative ranges of motion of these two joints?

(3) How do the ligaments around each joint reflect the tradeoff between joint stability and flexibility?