What is Muscle Compensation & How to Fix It – 2 Solutions: Muscle Compensation Simplified

This article discusses how muscles de-activate, short-circuit, and shut down. Although it’s written from an athlete perspective, the concept applies to all of us throughout our lifetime. Using the USW analysis system, our treatment involves identifying and re-activating muscles, fixing biomechanical faults and treating soft tissue trauma and inflammation. This combination of therapies gives the patient almost immediate pain relief, better motion and a sustainable return to health.

What is Muscle Compensation?

• Trauma that changes muscle function, coordination, and biomechanics, that restrict recovery.
• Adaptations the body makes in the present to keep it going don’t work over the long-term.
• A shift in mechanics and posturing to protect a recent or ongoing injury, which places a new strain on the musculoskeletal system, tendons and ligaments and creates a new problem.

Specifics

• Injuries cause inflammation and joint swelling where the brain then or inhibits (SHUTS OFF) the muscle from working normally. This persists long after the pain and swelling has subsided.
• This is a protective mechanism to keep the muscle from being damaged further.
• Lack of nerve signal to the muscle cannot be resolved with strength training.
• The inhibition of the nervous systems control over the muscle can last for years.

Additional problems and concerns

• Over time, muscle compensation spreads to other parts of the body as they biomechanically adapt to the imbalances. This lack of mobility can lead to joint dysfunction and arthritis.
• Uncorrected injuries are magnets for new injuries.
• Comprehensive rehabilitation should only begin AFTER the muscles have been re-activated.

How we fix a Muscle Compensation/De-activation problem

1. Our doctors have a specific test for each of the 600 muscles in the human body and can quickly determine whether its firing or not.
2. The AMIT muscle activation protocol takes about 5-10 per muscle and involves 9 unique contacts for each muscle; 3 spinal adjustments and 6 acupuncture and reflex contacts.