Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minute Tuesdays where we are talking about one exercise topic for two minutes and giving you three reasons why you should follow our advice. Now this week, we are talking to those of you who are unsure if you may be a candidate for Muscle Activation Techniques®. How do you know if MAT® will be right for your body?
When I was first introduced to Muscle Activation Techniques® in 2010, I had never seen it before or heard of it before. But, the goal of MAT® fit perfectly with an idea I had developed about 18 months earlier. See, throughout high school and college, I was really big into sports performance. Initially, my interest stemmed from wanting to improve my own performance, but it soon grew into wanting to help others improve their performance, as well.
By my senior year of college, I was working with a number of sports teams and individual athletes on campus. I was also constantly running experiments on myself, the most notable of which was testing the hypothesis that if I could just get my body working the way it was designed to work, then I would be able to perform at a much higher level than I ever was before.
At Muscle Activation Schaumburg, we often receive the question of, “How do I know if Muscle Activation Techniques® is something I should be doing?”. This is a very valid question because MAT® is something that helps a wide variety of people, from professional athletes to professional parents, from elementary school kids to executives, and from the most active among us to those who are far more sedentary. All of these populations seem to benefit from MAT®, so how can you know if MAT® is something that you are a candidate for?
When it comes to the “who” of MAT®, we generally see that our clients fall into one of three categories here at Muscle Activation Schaumburg. But, the category that you fall into depends on how you answer the following three questions. If you want to know if you are a candidate for MAT®, ask yourself these three questions: (more…)
As a Muscle Activation Techniques® practitioner, I often get asked the question, “What is MAT®?”. This is then usually followed up by, “How do I know if I need it?”. Fortunately, there are many signs that you may benefit from MAT®. While some signs and symptoms may appear after needing MAT® for years, I want to discuss four early warning signs that may present themselves before you experience any bigger issues. If you notice any of these warning signs within yourself, that can be a clear indicator that your body is in need of Muscle Activation Techniques®.
This week, I want to dive headfirst into this discussion of, “What is Muscle Activation Techniques®?”. Specifically, I want to discuss what the number one goal of MAT® is and why achieving that goal is important.
But, in order to understand what MAT® is, we need to first understand how it began. MAT® was developed by Greg Roskopf and has been taught since the early 2000’s. Greg has his world corporate headquarters south of Denver where he is a consultant to many of professional sports teams in the area as well as many high-level individual athletes.
Early on in Greg’s career, he recognized that many people have asymmetrical motion between the right and left sides of their body. For example, somebody may be able to lift their left arm all the way up but only lift their right arm part of the way. Now, his original training had him focusing on stretching the side that didn’t move as well. This is a concept that I am sure many people are familiar with, where if your muscles feel really tight you try to stretch them to help get your joints moving better and loosen the muscles up.
However, Greg soon became introduced to this idea of muscle testing where a practitioner pushes on a client’s limb to see how much force they can generate. And it was from there that he started to correlate that if somebody’s shoulder or hip couldn’t move as well on one side as it could on the other, there were often muscle weaknesses that were associated with the limited side, too. Furthermore, when those weak muscles were addressed and their output improved, joint motion would improve as well.
This correlation became the basis for what is now known as the Roskopf Principle, which states that muscle tightness is secondary to muscle weakness.
A question we often get at Muscle Activation Schaumburg is, “What’s the difference between Muscle Activation Techniques® (MAT®) and personal training?”. As personal trainers and MAT® practitioners, this is an important clarification for us to help our clients and prospective clients with.
For us at Muscle Activation Schaumburg, personal training and MAT® go hand in hand. While there are distinct differences between the two, there are a lot of similarities, as well.
Check out this awesome testimonial from Charlie and Julie’s client, Laurie! Laurie has been coming to Muscle Activation Schaumburg since the beginning of 2017 and has been participating in both Muscle Activation Techniques™ (MAT™) and customized personal training sessions. While her initial concern was improving the function and strength of her shoulder, she has now progressed to maintaining her strength and mobility through infrequent but consistent muscle tune ups. Laurie is now a consistent exerciser on her own and continues to utilize Muscle Activation Techniques™ to make sure her body is firing on all cylinders. This ensures that she is able to get the most out of her workouts and progressively improve her health and physical function.
Check out this fantastic testimonial below from one of Julie’s rock star MAT™ clients, Sue! Sue had been suffering from leg and knee issues when her friend reccomended she look into Muscle Activation Techniques™ at Muscle Activation Schaumburg.
As an avid tennis player, Sue wanted to get back to playing the game she loves on a regular basis. Julie started working with her to improve her muscular system through the Muscle Activation Techniques™ process in addition to specific resistance training for her hips and knees.
After seeing Julie consistently for a number of months, she has been able to not only return to the tennis court, but keep her body tuned up and feeling great with homework exercises to compliment her maintenance MAT™ sessions at Muscle Activation Schaumburg.
If you are a Voyage Chicago reader, you may have recognized a couple of faces featured on their website this past week. Voyage Chicago did an interview with Charlie and Julie about building Muscle Activation Schaumburg. Charlie discussed the process of first conceiving of the idea of MAS, bringing it to reality, and the struggles along the way.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Charlie Cates and Julie Errington.
Charlie and Julie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
The idea of owning my own exercise facility started during my freshman year of college. I was really into sports performance but knew I wanted to explore the business side of things, as well. By the end of my freshman year, I had made the decision that I would one day go into business for myself running my own exercise facility.
Check out this awesome testimonial from one of Julie’s amazing MAT™ clients, Sadie! Sadie had been suffering from an IT band issue as well as a knee issue for a year and a half before she found Julie. She had tried everything she could find to help with her issue, but it wasn’t until she tried MAT™ that she noticed significant improvement. Now she is back to running over three miles and is running faster than ever!