#42 — Muscle Activation Technique for Performance and Pain, with Rhonda Mansell

Sponsor: RePowerU: 12 Elements of Fitness Assessment (a free service): https://formfaca.de/sm/SR_8_j7es ——— MAT is based on four pillars: Look at limits in range of motion (ROM), and where a limited ROM is found,  look at the muscles involved in creating the normal ROM…those are the muscles that are weak or are not firing wellTest those muscles to confirm inhibition Treat those muscles to reactivate themThen retest the range of motion to confirm resolution So, how long does the effect last?   “Until you break it”.   ——— Outline of Discussion What is MAT? It’s a biomechanically based process designed to identify and correct muscular imbalances that are responsible for chronic tightness…pain….decreased performance.  MAT practitioners do not treat pain directly…they don’t seek pain and go to the location of the pain to provide treatment.  Instead, MAT practitioners look for imbalances between right and left side of body, which would indicate an area of weakness which may be the cause of the tightness, pain, decreased performance.   Rhonda Mansell background: Been in the fitness industry for 30+ years.  10 years ago had a client go to MAT, which intrigued Rhonda.  She looked into MAT and decided to learn it.  The first day experience in class included every person had a story about how MAT solved their long-standing problem. Rhonda has treated olympic athletes, elderly parents of clients and athletes of all types. What is a neuromuscular (brain to muscle) connection?  What is inhibition? It you use a box as an analogy for brain to muscle connections, an elite athlete’s box would be full of connections.  The elite athlete would be able to engage all or nearly all of his/her muscle fibers on demand.  The typical person’s box would be much less full.  The typical person cannot actuate his/her muscle fibers on demand due to a variety of possible reasons including a lack of training to tell the brain such connections are needed. Imagine a graph.  At the top is the maximum threshold and at the bottom is the minimum threshold.  Above the top / maximum is injury and muscle failure.  Below the minimum is muscle atrophy and possibly cell health (from non-use).  In between is the “set point” for that muscle. Ideally the set point is close to the maximum.  But as we age our muscles do not function as well or recover as quickly as when we were younger.  The set point can be far below the maximum due to over training, injury, overuse, muscle inhibition, not recovering well.  By increasing the connection between the brain and the muscle, you can improve the set point to get it closer to the maximum threshold. What is set point?   it is the physiological operating window.  The load that the muscle can handle.  If you exceed it, you are going to get inhibition of that muscle, especially if you keep exceeding the set point.  That means, the set point (and power output) will fall further below the maximum threshold (where the set point would be with zero inhibition).  It shows up as tightness or pain.  The muscle fibers are not actually being damaged. Muscles are a set of muscle fibers.  Muscle fibers in a muscle do not all turn on at the same time, not even if you want to lift the heaviest thing you could.  We’ve all he