Click here to visit the website for  Muscle Activation Techniques

MAT improves the ability of your muscles to contract and the muscles ability to tolerate the forces involved in exercise, sport and everyday life.

MAT can be an active person’s best friend! It is a powerful supplement to your exercise that addresses the integrity and health of your muscular system. Our main focus is on the quality of your muscles ability to contract. We want to find the muscles that due to stress, trauma and overuse now have a low quality of contracting. We then, through various techniques (isometrics and manual palpation of muscle insertions), stimulate these muscles and restore them to again have the ability to contract with high quality!

The fact is that all of us overtime develop problems with our bodies, and with our muscles and joints. These accumulated problems at some point affect our ability to do and tolerate the activities that we enjoy or that cultivate health and fitness. Then an some point we begin to get discouraged that our body doesn't feel as good as it used to and that it doesn’t work or function as good either. We just learn to accept the downward spiral of our body breaking down a little bit at at time and endure the discomfort, the injuries, the surgeries, the medication along the way.

Types of problems that affect active people :

  • Discomfort problems, you begin to notice that some of the movements you do don't feel great, you can still do them but it takes more effort and there’s annoying sensations that seem to persist. You may feel “tightness” in certain parts of your body.

  • Pain problems, you are concerned that something has been damaged, there is some part of your body that has acute inflammation and you need medial attention to investigate.

  • Movement problems, certain parts of your body don’t move as well as they used, you struggle to move your body into the positions required for your sport or exercise.

  • Technique problems, you lack the skill to be able to move the way you should to create efficient movement that is less stressful on the body and also enhances your performance.

  • Alignment problems, either due to structural influences or a loss of muscular integrity you posture is not conducive to your body best being able to move and absorb the stress of exercise.

  • Over training problems, due to a decline in the ability of your muscles and joint to functional optimally you have a new lowered ability to tolerate the stress of exercise and sport which create inflammation.

  • Muscle function problems, due to stress, trauma and overuse some of your muscles can longer due their job, contracting, as well as they used to. They can’t move, align or control your joints as well (decreased mobility) as well as have a decreased ability to create joint stability and absorb the forces/stress involved in the movements you do in the gym or at home.

This is where MAT can help you!

We are fitness professionals that focus on the last problem, muscle function, which can have an impact on the other problems listed; discomfort, pain, movement, technique, alignment and over training.

The primary benefit of MAT is its ability to assess, prepare and improve an individuals muscular contractile capabilities in order to participate in, as well as, measure the tolerance to the demands of various forms of exercise and sport.

MAT is a very specific, non-medical process with a narrow application to the assessment, improvement and maintenance of integrity on a persons muscle system. This process is great for active people who enjoy

  • Running, cycling, swimming

  • General exercise

  • CrossFit and various high intensity workouts

  • Tennis

  • Golf

  • Professional, collegiate and high school athletes

“Bedford has helped accomplish over 200 of its partners’ major conservation goals. They inspire everyone to care for the planet.”
— John Smith, Nature Conservancy Magazine

What to expect during a mat session

  • A short conversation about how your body has felt and performed since the last session.

  • Evaluate your range of motion in several areas (based on your initial assessment and personal plan) and compare them right to left.

  • Choose which range has the biggest discrepancy/limitation that day. This will be the main focus of the the rest of the session.

  • I will pull up a list of all the muscles that would have to contact in order to create that motion. An example would be one knee can’t bend as much as the other one. So we would have a list of all your hamstrings and other muscles that would be involved in that specific motion.

  • We will then perform a hands on muscle test on each of the muscles on our list per chosen range of motion on the limited side we found earlier.

  • When a muscle tests weak when we are working through the list we then activate that specific muscle using either specific isometric contractions or via a manual palpation of that muscles insertions sites.

  • This is followed by a retesting of that muscle to confirm that we have indeed the function of that muscle.

  • We then continue that process til we clear the list then we perform the same things on the side of the body.

  • Then we re-check the chosen range of motion to see if symmetry has been restored.

  • If time allows we will either continue to another limitation or apply a stress to the initial limitation chosen and work through and go through it a second, or possibly a third time. The applied stress may be enough to “shut down” the muscles again and this added process helps us to increases how much stress these muscles can tolerate.