Tools Used by Elite Athletes
We are seeing successive generations of championship athletes compete at older ages. In the last 2 years, we have seen Phil Mickelson win a Major Championship at Age 50, Tom Brady win a Super Bowl at age 43, and Novak Djokovic shooting for a Grand Slam at age 34. The techniques they are using are would appear to have real benefit and are increasingly different than what is used by the general public. We have done a lot of research on these tools and believe there is significant value for ordinary people not just elite athletes.
Selective Functional Movement Assessment – we believe that it is incredibly valuable to know where your areas of strength and deficiency are in terms of movement. A selective functional movement assessment is one way to getting a baseline. In our case, the SFMA showed that one of us had 20+ degrees of thoracic spine rotation to the right but only 3 degrees to the left. This is obviously horrible for golf. We were able to correct the issue with 1 session of ART. Once issues are identified, it is critical to determine if there is an underlying structural issue requiring treatment by a physician or if must be addressed another way.
https://www.functionalmovement.com/system
Muscle Activation Technique – athletes who vouch for Muscle Activation Technique include Peyton Manning and Bryson DeChambeau. In the case of DeChambeau, he was struggling with back issues and thought he was going to require back surgery. Instead of surgery, he discovered that Muscle Activation Technique could help him add muscle and swing speed while managing injury risk. He is currently trained by Greg Roskopf the creator of Muscle Activation technique.
The basic theory behind Muscle Activation Technique is that your overuse muscles or have trauma to muscles, your bodies protective mechanism “turns off the nerve connection to the muscle”. When this happens, you can go into a downward spiral where another muscle(s) compensates for muscle that is turned off. This can lead to a chain reaction of muscles that are turned off. Muscle Activation has a protocol for testing muscles and turning them back on by stimulating connection between the nerves and muscle.
We have tried muscle activation technique and can vouch that it works. In our case, flat feet and weak feet lead to a break down of foot muscles which leads to a chain reaction of failures upwards. It was extremely shocking to have a muscle that you can no longer control and then have it activated. We believe that without muscle activation, we would have had injury issues over time due to overuse of compensating muscles – most likely lower back muscles.
https://muscleactivation.com/
Active Release Techniques – works must faster than stretching
ART is a soft tissue method that relieves tension by removing fibrosis and knots in tissue which result from injuries or overuse. In effect, this is a more precise and highly trained approach to a VERY DEEP TISSUE MASSAGE. It is not for the faint of heart in terms of pain tolerance as muscles that develop fibrosis and adhesions are also very sensitive.
ART is widely used in professional sports with almost all NFL, NHL< and NBA teams using it. There are also numerous controlled studies which show it is effective. ART is most typically provided by Chiropractors.
We have tried and continue to use ART and are impressed with the results though it is very painful. It has provided results that would have taken a LONG time to achieve with stretching alone. In addition, our Chiropractor has a very high level of knowledge of the body and this has allowed him to target very specific movements such as increasing external shoulder rotation.
Below is the main web site for ART:
https://activerelease.com/
Below are some of the studies on ART:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4563290/
https://www.jptrs.org/journal/view.html?volume=2&number=1&spage=27
https://www.jcdr.net/articles/PDF/12218/37558_CE%5bRa1%5d_F(SHU)_PF1(PAB)_PN(SHU).pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1556370714000534
Dry Needling – Dry Needling is an invasive procedure where a fine needle inserted into a muscle aimed at trigger points. It can be done superficially or deep tissue. A trigger point is a tight band in a muscle. Dry needling can be used in variety of areas in the body.
We have tried dry needling but not to the point where we can really say it has solved an issue for us. Below are the studies and meta analysis of studies on dry needling. It is generally favorable but there is some question about quality of studies.
https://www.jabfm.org/content/23/5/640
https://www.jospt.org/doi/full/10.2519/jospt.2017.7096
https://academic.oup.com/ptj/article-abstract/101/3/pzab070/6145047
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33027765/
Yoga – yoga is one the best tools available for maintaining your body. We believe in the saying, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” Yoga is designed to have you use a wide range of muscles in each session pushing your limits on both strength and flexibility.