The secret to fixing weakness
After multiple years of knee pain, a client said to me,
"My previous physio told me I've got a weak quadriceps (a thigh muscle referred to as VMO),
and I need to strengthen this muscle so I can walk, squat, stairs and cycle without pain."
My response, "Before we jump to strengthening exercises,
let's consider why this quadriceps muscle is not strong.
Does the muscle really lack strength?
Or is the muscle weak because it is INHIBITED?
I.e. this muscle may not be 'switched on' by the nervous system"
His answer, "I hadn't thought of it that way.
How can I know?"
I replied, "By working together, that’s what we will discover and solve"
To clarify I explained, "A muscle that lacks strength becomes stronger in a matter of a few weeks with strengthening exercises."
He said, "I've been doing the strengthening exercises religiously for more than a year with little improvement,
so I guess we've got the answer to that one."
I agreed, "Unfortunately this is an all too common experience I hear."
A muscle which is not switched on (inhibited) becomes stronger immediately
when what is blocking the messages allows it to be switched on.
Removing what is blocking allows the nervous system to send the messages to make the muscle contract strongly"
He asked, "How do we do that?"
"I'll search your body for any build-up of strain,
because it's the strain in our bodies that causes the nervous system to block messages to contract muscles.
Then I'll release this strain with hands-on treatment."
"The treatment allows the nervous system to send the messages to your quadriceps to make it contract strongly again.
We see this improvement occur in less than 300 milliseconds during a release."
And this is what happened.
The release made immediate improvements in his quadriceps muscle strength and decreased knee pain.
The hands-on treatment that achieved this success
was pressure-releases applied to joints in the mid-back.
You may find this as an interesting example of a topic I explained in a previous email;
that the main problem is often different from the location of the pain.
I have a challenge for you.
Next time you feel weakness in a muscle;
Question is it weak because it needs strengthening or because it needs removing what's blocking the messages to the muscle?
Trial strengthening exercises for a few weeks by yourself or with the expertise of a trainer and see if it improves
If the strength returns - fantastic, keep going.
If the muscle remains weak - it is like that the muscle is inhibited as described above.
If it's important to you to get the muscle strong,
book with us to discover how to get the muscle contracting fully.