RSS
Home
Neuromuscular Therapy 101: What is compensation? (Part 2)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
How injuries impact motor function
When hurt, injured muscles overload, similar to an overloaded electrical circuit. Traumatized muscle tissue becomes temporarily unable to contract with its normal strength, and its tissue goes “off-line” until it heals. The challenge is that it’s more difficult to “reboot” an injured muscle than it is to reset an electrical circuit breaker.
After injury, the MCC initiates Motor Learning to create a compensatory motor program, recruiting the remaining available muscles in order to maintain enough structural integrity to keep functioning as well as possible.
This creates new motor programs which are stored in Motor Memory, overwriting the original programs. Compensation is a natural response to injury.
After healing, the compensatory programs remain in Motor Memory, resulting in persistent muscle tension, lost range of motion, weakness, and pain.
You can address these problems by utilizing the MCC’s natural neurological processes of Motor Learning and Motor Memory during rehabilitation. Functional muscle testing (as described in Kendall’s Muscles: Testing and Function) performs a necessary function for the MCC. It gives the MCC an opportunity to see if it remembers how to isolate and activate the muscle fibers that perform a specific movement. If the MCC no longer has the program in Motor Memory, the muscle tests “weak.”
In the right rehabilitative environment, a “weak” muscle test can be the start of a very interesting process, as the client’s MCC interacts with the therapist’s skills to recreate proper motor programs.
A “weak” muscle test shows the MCC it has forgotten how to activate a muscle, because the MCC doesn’t get the expected result. In response to this “failed” response, the MCC initiates Motor Learning. It’s as if the MCC says “well, that didn’t work, so how do I do it?”
When Motor Learning is activated, the practitioner can perform a gentle release or relaxation of the compensating muscle(s), and then test the muscle function again. As the previously weak function strengthens, the MCC compares the new results to the previous test. The goal here is to show the MCC that it can activate a muscle in a more efficient way, rather than initiating with the compensatory muscles. The MCC then encodes the new activation sequence and stores it in Motor Memory, overwriting the old, biomechanically inefficient compensatory program.
Following this treatment process, directed exercise is helpful in reinforcing the new motor programming and insuring the injury pattern does not return.
* See The Neural Basis of Motor Control by Vernon Brooks
*********************************
Howard Nemerov is the developer of the Nemerov Method of neuromuscular therapy.
Internet articles are never a substitute for appropriate medical advice.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
.jpg)
Plantar fasciitis is an inflammation of the plantar fascia, which the National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines as a “very thick band of …
.jpg)
Manual therapy impacts your health and wellbeing beyond simply resolving symptoms you feel in your body. This is why it is important for you to …
