A major factor in understanding human motion is that muscles move bones and muscles hold bones in proper alignment.
When muscles can’t contract efficiently, they can no longer effectively hold bones and passive structures in their proper alignment.
Postural deviations begin to occur and when deviations in posture occur, functional movement patterns begin to be altered. Posture is the position where all movement starts from. Therefore, If postural alignment is altered, when you start from a bad position, you will never be able to get into a good position through functional movement.
The body is forced to work at a mechanical disadvantage. Therefore, increased stress will be placed on the body as it attempts to get from point A to point B.
Greg Roskopf, Founder and Developer of Muscle Activation Techniques, always says "It’s like driving your car with bad alignment: the harder and faster you drive it, the faster it will break down".
Many of the orthopedic injuries that we see, in sports and with aging, have to do with failure of the muscles to maintain proper alignment of the structure. This altered alignment places abnormal stresses and increased wear and tear on the associated joints and tissues.
Structure dictates function, but the function of the muscles dictates whether or not the structure can move the bones into the ranges that the structure dictates that they should move into.
Whenever you see limitations in range of motion, the consideration with MAT is that the muscles that move you into that position are not able to contract effectively. Thus, the muscles cannot shorten effectively so range of motion decreases.
If you can’t turn your head to the left as well as you can turn it to the right, it is not necessarily a structural issue that is limiting the range of motion, but a functional issue, where the muscles that create left rotation are not able to contract to move them into left cervical rotation...
Are you interested in learning the MAT approach for treatment of neuromuscular imbalances in order to unleash the bodies natural healing power?
