Muscle Activation Techniques

There many theories on how to increase a persons range. Increasing a persons range of motion is great, as long as they are stable in that position. Most injuries occur in extreme ranges of motion and when we are eccentrically loading a position (as discussed by Josh Henkin in his L.I.F.T. course)

I have spent some time studying varies stretching techniques from AIS, PNF, Static holding, all to “loosen tight muscles” Then there is the school of thought that the “fascia is adhering to the muscles or scar tissue has built up and this needs to be taken care of. So we use a foam roller or have a body worker “release” the fascia, scar tissue, or work on “trigger points”. If this has worked for you, great, my personal and professional results have been less then satisfactory. I am not saying they don’t work, they just didn’t work for me or several of my clients.

A few years ago I took a class given by the people From Muscle Activation Technique (MAT) called Jump Start, silly name I know but that is what it is called. Basically MAT looks at muscle tightness as being secondary to muscle weakness. We where taught a series of range of motion tests and from that screening we tested for positional weakness. We also discussed that, if we tell our bodies to do a job, it will do the job, but maybe all the muscles aren’t working? So lets say 5 muscles are required to do knee flexion and only 4 are working, eventually those 4 get tiered and start to feel tight. So then what do we do, we stretch, does it help? For me it didn’t.

I sent one of my clients to Troy Stallman, of All Systems Go, Troy is a MAT specialist here in NYC. This client had tried everything and was to the point where he couldn’t sleep at night, I finally convinced him to give Troy a try. He did about 10 sessions with Troy, and then he cam in for a training session with me. I was taking him through the warm ups and I noticed such a difference in the way he was moving, all of the movements had an increased range of motion and he felt great. Strong and stable.

If all of your muscles are working, there is less chance of injury.

” Man can only become what he is able to consciously imagine”  Dane Rudhayer

L.I.F.T.

Last October I went through Josh Henkin’s L.I.F.T. program. The course covered so much material, I needed to do it again. It was a great weekend with the crew out in Long Island and a old friend John, who I met when I did a internship at the institute fro human performance. Really long forward to incorporating Josh’s principals into my coaching.