How to Improve Efficiency in Your Muscles

Do you ever experience prolonged fatigue lasting more than two days after exercising or playing a game of golf? Do your muscles fatigue quickly? Do you want to improve efficiency in your muscles and move and feel better in your body?

When muscles are not performing optimally and efficiently, they often feel weak, tight, or are limited in their range of motion.

The reason for the weakness, tightness, or lack of range of motion is often met with forced stretching and strength training which can prove ineffective when the cause is neuromuscular. 

There is a great misconception in the movement rehabilitation industry that we need to strengthen our muscles constantly. Truthfully, however, our ability to contract and release our muscles comes from messages sent down from the brain. We need to ensure that our muscles are getting the right messages to stay functional and efficient. Our muscles need a regular “reboot” to stay working well, particularly as we age.

Have you had this experience? You keep working harder and trying to improve your strength, but you do not feel like you are getting stronger?

Or have you been engaging in a stretching routine for a long time and have seen little results?

Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA)

The discipline of Hanna Somatics offers tremendous insight into why you may not be seeing the results you desire from your current routine.

Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA) is the term that explains what happens when we lose voluntary control over the contraction and release of our muscles, causing limitations in our range of motion and ease of movement.

Somatics explains how our brain and nervous systems respond to life events by learning to habituate our muscles into shortened reflex patterns that restrict movement and lead to many health symptoms over time.

SMA is the most often the cause of persistent tension and pain in the body that is not resolved from stretching or strengthening.

Here are some of the ways that SMA shows up in the body:

• Postural changes such as difficulty sitting or standing up tall or a lean to one side
• Constant nervous system imbalance and energy drain
• Persistent muscular soreness 
• Joint wear and tear resulting in pain 
• Improper load transfer patterns and walking that lead to arthritis, joint problems, plantar fasciitis, bulged disks, etc.
• Compensatory or inefficient movement due to a lack of communication with the cortex of the brain and other muscles
• Inefficiency in the execution of the muscle in our activities
• Weakness

We invite you to consider a new approach to improve the efficiency of your muscles. 

Pandiculation is a powerful technique, discovered by Thomas Hanna, that efficiently and simply engages the muscle through active participation of the brain, moving the muscle into contraction, out of contraction, and to complete rest.

Through repetition, the technique of pandiculation allows your brain to regain voluntary control over your muscles to release stuck tension and improving their efficiency.

Exciting stuff, right? Want to learn more. Visit Resolve Pain Guru's learn page to discover how you can improve the efficiency of your movement to support your endeavors in life. 

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