Muscle Medicine: The Revolutionary Approach to Maintaining, Strengthening, and Repairing Your Muscles and Joints by Rob Destefano, Joseph Hooper Page B
Authors: Rob Destefano, Joseph Hooper
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want to balance strength in opposing muscle groups (agonist and antagonist) so that the joints have the necessary muscle support throughout their entire range of motion. Every form of strength work comes with built-in advantages and disadvantages. Understand which types of exercises will help you best meet your fitness goals.
• Weight machines in the gym often become the path of least resistance for the novice, but they can be the most limiting form of strength work. The machine controls the movement so only some of the muscles in a movement pattern are used. The machines can be useful, especially for seniors or people with joint dysfunction who may not be able to handle some of the other types of exercises. Working on a range of machines with a knowledgeable personal trainer can be a great start, but you should still try to supplement with other strength exercises.
• Body-weight exercises such as push-ups and core exercises on a stability, or “physio” ball, provide the best foundation for “functional” body strength and balance—what you need to negotiate in the real world. They work a range of muscles from different angles, especially the essential core muscles that stabilize the entire body. Movement-based exercise—for instance, swinging a kettle bell—provides a similar benefit.
• Resistance exercises using a rubber cable, an elastic band, or dumbbells allows you to isolate and develop specific muscles (hopefully after you’ve achieved a good all-around strength base). Because you have to control the movement of the exercise, unlike with machines, you’re also getting some benefit by working supporting neighboring muscles and core muscles.
THE MUSCLE MEDICINE PROGRAM
We’ve taken from our three-phase strategy what we think are the best techniques for you to do easily and effectively at home. Our stretches are active-isolated, and our strength exercises, a mix of body-weight and resistance work, are basically an at-home version of what you’d get working with a good personal trainer or physical therapist. (We called on one of our favorites, Toni McGinley of Manhattan’s Alta Fitness, to help us choose and modify them.) The self-treatment section requires a little more explanation.
A particularly effective self-treatment technique we like to use uniquely modifies concepts from a number of muscle therapies. This unique technique is called F.A.S.T.™, for Facilitated Active Stretch Technique.™ In simplest terms, you are using an external pressure—your fingers, a ball, a stick—to “pin” the muscle near a tight, restricted area. In a conventional stretch, most of the tension builds up at the end of the muscle at its junction with the tendon. When you pin a muscle, you replace the natural endpoint of the stretch with one you define. While maintaining this pin with external pressure, you take the muscle through a range of motion, putting the targeted muscle fibers under tension. This allows you to focus your stretch at the area of tightness or damage. You can effectively control which part of the muscle you stretch, which makes your stretch versatile and therapeutic rather than generalized. (For example, bring the back of your open hand toward your body asif you’re signaling “stop” and bend your elbow. With the thumb of the other hand pointing in toward the body, apply pressure down and in on the meaty, top part of the forearm muscle. While maintaining thumb pressure, make a fist and curl it down, then straighten the elbow. You’ve just done a F.A.S.T.™ stretch to relieve the wrist extensor muscles that can tense up from too many hours at the keyboard.)
We’ll give you the precise how-to at the end of the “hot-spot” chapters, but here are the general F.A.S.T.™ principles:
1. By applying pressure at specific spots on the muscle, you pin the muscle just above or below the tight, restricted area.
2. As the muscle is actively taken through a movement, the altered “attachment
• Weight machines in the gym often become the path of least resistance for the novice, but they can be the most limiting form of strength work. The machine controls the movement so only some of the muscles in a movement pattern are used. The machines can be useful, especially for seniors or people with joint dysfunction who may not be able to handle some of the other types of exercises. Working on a range of machines with a knowledgeable personal trainer can be a great start, but you should still try to supplement with other strength exercises.
• Body-weight exercises such as push-ups and core exercises on a stability, or “physio” ball, provide the best foundation for “functional” body strength and balance—what you need to negotiate in the real world. They work a range of muscles from different angles, especially the essential core muscles that stabilize the entire body. Movement-based exercise—for instance, swinging a kettle bell—provides a similar benefit.
• Resistance exercises using a rubber cable, an elastic band, or dumbbells allows you to isolate and develop specific muscles (hopefully after you’ve achieved a good all-around strength base). Because you have to control the movement of the exercise, unlike with machines, you’re also getting some benefit by working supporting neighboring muscles and core muscles.
THE MUSCLE MEDICINE PROGRAM
We’ve taken from our three-phase strategy what we think are the best techniques for you to do easily and effectively at home. Our stretches are active-isolated, and our strength exercises, a mix of body-weight and resistance work, are basically an at-home version of what you’d get working with a good personal trainer or physical therapist. (We called on one of our favorites, Toni McGinley of Manhattan’s Alta Fitness, to help us choose and modify them.) The self-treatment section requires a little more explanation.
A particularly effective self-treatment technique we like to use uniquely modifies concepts from a number of muscle therapies. This unique technique is called F.A.S.T.™, for Facilitated Active Stretch Technique.™ In simplest terms, you are using an external pressure—your fingers, a ball, a stick—to “pin” the muscle near a tight, restricted area. In a conventional stretch, most of the tension builds up at the end of the muscle at its junction with the tendon. When you pin a muscle, you replace the natural endpoint of the stretch with one you define. While maintaining this pin with external pressure, you take the muscle through a range of motion, putting the targeted muscle fibers under tension. This allows you to focus your stretch at the area of tightness or damage. You can effectively control which part of the muscle you stretch, which makes your stretch versatile and therapeutic rather than generalized. (For example, bring the back of your open hand toward your body asif you’re signaling “stop” and bend your elbow. With the thumb of the other hand pointing in toward the body, apply pressure down and in on the meaty, top part of the forearm muscle. While maintaining thumb pressure, make a fist and curl it down, then straighten the elbow. You’ve just done a F.A.S.T.™ stretch to relieve the wrist extensor muscles that can tense up from too many hours at the keyboard.)
We’ll give you the precise how-to at the end of the “hot-spot” chapters, but here are the general F.A.S.T.™ principles:
1. By applying pressure at specific spots on the muscle, you pin the muscle just above or below the tight, restricted area.
2. As the muscle is actively taken through a movement, the altered “attachment
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