Muscle Activation TechniquesTM as a way to improve the play of amateur golfers
- 15 amateur golfers participated in this study
- All participants were evaluated with a functional assessment that included overhead squats, single leg squats. The assessment also included golf swings, and Muscle Activation Techniques™.
- After 3 to 6 sessions of MAT, the participants were reevaluated.
- Subjects reported feelings of “looseness”
- Video analysis displayed more controlled movement during functional assessments.
- Post-MAT golf play showed an average decrease of 3.4 strokes per 18 holes. Additionally, participants experienced less muscular fatigue while golfing.
Practical application:
MAT can elicit these results because the treatments prepare the body for all types of force: golf, soccer, exercise, work, yoga, etc.
MAT targets muscle spindles and attempts to increase their sensitivity. Muscle spindles are specialized sensory cells that run parallel to your muscle fibers. They play a vital role in muscular contraction because they communicate with the nervous system information about a muscles length and its rate of length change. The brain needs this information in order to decide the amount of tension it will allow a muscle to develop.
You can think of the nerves serving the muscular system like you would the electrical wiring for a house or building. The nerves are the wiring and the muscles themselves are like the outlets and switches in the walls. In a similar way to how electrical wiring has a positive and a negative feed, the muscles in our analogy have two types of wiring.
By fine-tuning the wiring of a dynamic system, the human muscular-skeletal system, the system can operate more efficiently. This can result in increased performance markers because the familar motions (of a golf swing) are literally done with increased ease.
Special thanks to JENNIFER SCHWARTZ-BIGGLE that provide me this post.
