Time for another guest post from Paul Ingraham, his second. Paul recently contacted me to say he wants to do a post that "criticizes the idea of trigger points,” which is interesting, because he’s written a whole book about trigger points. I told him whatever you do, just make sure the title of the post sounds like a Chuck Norris movie.
In parts one and two of this series I discussed Barrett Dorko’s interesting theory that ideomotion can prevent and reduce many sources of chronic pain. To briefly summarize, ideomotion is a non voluntary movement prompted by mental activity. All mental and emotional activity is coupled . . .
I have written previously about how posture and mood are a two way street. For example, feeling bold can cause you to adopt an expansive posture, and adopting an expansive posture can make you feel bold. This an example of embodied cognition - the brain’s use of physical movements as part of its process of forming mental representations. There are numerous . . .
I did an interview! With Will Stewart.
Will is the owner of 3-D Optimum Performance and he just decided to start interviewing everyone in sight who thinks the nervous system is the primary target for manual therapy or athletic training.
In a previous post I introduced the concept of ideomotion, which is a non voluntary movement prompted by mental activity. In this post I’ll discuss Barrett Dorko’s interesting theory that ideomotion may play a role in reducing and preventing some common sources of chronic pain. Here is my (hopefully accurate) interpretation of Dorko’s theory in a nutshell....
Excessive sitting will shorten your hip flexors. I have read this sentence many times. What I have never read is a citation to supporting evidence at the end of the sentence. It’s one of those claims that no one ever questions, like you should drink eight glasses of water a day. Let’s see how it stand up to some critical inquiry....
Ideomotion is a movement that occurs as a result of mental activity, but independently of conscious volition. This makes it a very mischievous movement. Although most people have never heard of ideomotion, it is the likely explanation for a wide variety of interesting phenomena, such as ouija boards, cold reading, poker tells, various scams and magic tricks, and certain claims of supernatural power
Ever notice that athletes sometimes wear medical tape on various parts of their body during competition? During the 2008 Olympic games, numerous athletes, including volleyball star Kerri Walsh, wore interesting formations of "kinesiotape" on their shoulders, knees, and backs. David Beckham and Serena Williams are also fans of the tape. Perhaps this is just because David and Serena are fashionable types - they are bored with tattoos and looking for the latest in alternative body adornment.
A few weeks ago I posted a twenty five minute audio lesson on improving the squat. Below is a link to volume two. If you haven’t done volume one already, I would highly recommend that you do that before moving to volume two. On the other hand, I think I saw Godfather Two before the first one, and the results were excellent.
In sports, one of the most important (and completely overlooked) keys to performance is the processing of visual information. I just came across a study that helps demonstrate this point in an interesting way.
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