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NEWS/ARTICLES
MUSCLE ACTIVATION TECHNIQUES (MAT)
IN LAWRENCEVILLE, NEW JERSEY
- Statistics
- What is Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT)?
- How can MAT help you?
- When do you need MAT?
- Who can benefit from MAT?
- The MAT Process
- About the Founder
Statistics
DID YOU KNOW……..
- 65 million Americans have lower back pain at any given time. (1)
- 50% of all working Americans admit to having back symptoms each year. (2)
- 33% of all Americans over age 18 had a back problem in the past 5 years severe enough for them to seek professional help. (3)
- The cost of this care is estimated to be a staggering $50 Billion yearly--and that's just the more easily identified costs. (4)
- Some experts estimate that as many as 85% of all of us will experience a back problem at some time in o ur lives. (5)
- Lower, or lumbar, back pain is the second most common illness-related reason given for a missed workday; work-related back injury is the number one occupational hazard. (6)
WE CAN TURN THE STATISTICS AROUND... Back to Top
What is MAT?
- MAT is a new technique developed by Greg Roskopf in Denver, Colorado. This therapy addresses muscle weakness, which helps restore normal body alignment and reduces pain and risk of injury. Stress, injury or trauma, and overuse can cause the messages and connection between the brain and muscles to function improperly. As a result, the stronger muscles compensate for the weaker muscles leading to potential problems with alignment in the joints. Misalignment in the joints can lead to problems such as joint instability and pain.
- MAT is indeed the missing link among all the rehabilitation and natural pain management therapies that are available in the industry.
- MAT is a unique non-invasive therapeutic approach to pain free living. It treats, eliminates or alleviates chronic pain or injury permanently by using the components of physiology and biomechanics and transferring them into a systematic approach that evaluates and treats muscle biomechanical weaknesses.
- These hands-on techniques can drastically improve flexibility, strength, endurance, and control stability; benefits are immediate for MAT stimulates the neuromuscular loop, unleashing the body's natural abilities.
- This biomechanically based system uncovers the cause of problems that lead to pain, re-injury or inhibited sports/job related performance. The end result is not only to increase joint motion but also to increase joint stability through the range of motion.
- MAT attacks pain at its roots: inhibited muscles cause the body to compensate and become misaligned, resulting in pain or injury.
- MAT is a non-invasive methodology for improving everyday activities for all age groups and body types.
- MAT allows the body to achieve optimal levels of function, without pain or injury by increasing the body’s range of motion, restoring muscular alignment, and eliminating compensation patterns. Back to Top
Do you want to do the things you used to do, pain-free? MAT’s unique drug-free therapy quickly restores pain-free movement, so you can enjoy all of your activities. MAT is the solution for your entire family. Many clients have improved so quickly, they have been able to avoid pending surgery.
Want to perform to your maximum potential? If you want more range of motion to improve your game or simply enjoy daily activities, MAT can either enhance your current physical therapy methods or be used as a stand-alone rehabilitation program. Don’t accept the “no pain, no gain” myth. MAT will help you eliminate the pain and limitations associated with aging by reversing the degeneration process. With MAT, everyday people are treated like million-dollar athletes.
How is MAT different from other methods and rehabilitation techniques? MAT’s unique therapy addresses the cause of your discomfort, not just the symptoms. Results are quick and long lasting. Normal stretching or massage techniques focus on symptoms to loosen muscle tissue, but too often, those results are only temporary. MAT restores body alignment and activates inhibited muscles that are causing your pain. Experience MAT’s lasting results and live your life pain-free.
Whether you are an athlete, a youth playing sports, a baby boomer or a senior, MAT restores your pain-free movement and performance levels. MAT will give you a new lease on your active lifestyle, so you can return to the tennis court, golf course, swimming pool or athletic field without pain. MAT is a prerequisite to exercise because you are preparing the body for what you are asking it to do. With MAT you can perform at a higher level protecting yourself from injury. Back to top
You need MAT if:
- If you experience physical pain when doing everyday tasks such as lifting groceries, sitting at the computer, driving, exercising, reaching overhead, squatting or stooping.
- If you have had surgery and you want to optimize and accelerate your recovery.
- If your sport calls upon you to practice the same movements over and over again, leading to muscular imbalance.
- If you repeatedly re-injure yourself in the same ways, such as spraining your ankles. Back to top
Who could benefit from MAT?
MAT can help to reduce or eliminate pain in a non-invasive and no-medications environment from the following conditions:
- Muscular Imbalances
- Muscle Pain
- Back Pain
- Shoulder Pain
- Hip/Knee Pain
- Sciatic Pain
- Rotator Cuff Injuries
- Carpel Tunnel
- IT Band and other sports related injuries
- Chronic pain
- Specific injuries; acute and chronic
- Restricted motion
- Sports injuries
- Joint pain
- Pain associated with aging.
Or if…
- Massage makes you worse.
- Chiropractic adjustments don’t hold.
- Stretching doesn’t help.
- You have pain with exercise. Back to top
Step I: Range of motion exam (ROM), designed to evaluate joint motion. This determines where the body has limited or asymmetrical motion and which muscle groups may not be functioning at optimal levels. In the MAT philosophy, the limitation in motion is not caused from muscle tightness but rather underlying muscle weakness.
Step II: Once positional limitations in range of motion have been identified, the plane or planes of weakness must be uncovered. To accomplish this, joint and position -specific muscle testing (neuroproprioceptive response testing) is applied, through precise the specific planes dictated by limited range of motion.
Step III: Once the positions of instability have been identified, the neurological connection must be restored and we reactivate the muscles that tested “weak.” To strengthen these positions of instability, specific, graded-intensity isometrics or precise palpation are used to restore proper proprioceptive input to the muscle spindle. This stimulates the circulation and nervous system, restoring the neural connection between both. Once the neurological feedback to the contracting muscle is restored the antagonist will get the signal to relax, range of motion is then restored and pain is decreased.
Step IV: Checks and balances apply. We re-test to make sure that the range of motion and muscle strength have been achieved.
RESULTS: Increased and Improved ROM and strength, decrease or elimination of pain, and creation of a mechanically and neurologically advantageous environment for healing. Back to top
"MAT Bridges the Gap between Fitness and Rehabilitation"
Greg Roskopf started his career in California as a strength coach for Fresno State from '85-'88, where he also received his Masters Degree in Exercise Physiology.
While at Fresno State, he began to work with performance athletes. He started questioning why some athletes would breakdown, while others could work through fatigue and achieve higher performance levels. He knew there had to be a fundamental explanation. Greg began to focus on the biomechanics of the body and sport/training demands. He understood that each athlete had to be evaluated individually, with different muscle strengths, weaknesses, and adapted compensations.
This is when he realized that the documented training programs could not be universally applied. He observed that once the unique mechanics of an individual's body were identified, his or her exercise program seemed to be making the strong muscles stronger and the weak muscles weaker; thereby emphasizing the imbalances. This led him to believe that protocol training might actually contribute to injury, rather than preventing it. In turn, Greg looked to the rehabilitation field. He was interested to see if similar underlying factors affected the healing process when dealing with injuries. There he theorized that by ignoring the mechanics of the body, practitioners might be inhibiting the injured tissue from properly mending.
The process of continually looking at "cause and effect" as they relate to pain, and of challenging traditional sports and medical theories, brought Greg to his current position. He has developed a unique approach for systematically identifying and treating muscular imbalances through non-invasive manual therapy.
Because Muscle Activation Techniques(MAT) is bio-mechanically based and designed to treat anyone affected with muscle weakness (and its associated pain) regardless of the cause, the Muscle Activation Techniques(MAT) treatment practices are gaining recognition throughout all facets of the sports, health and fitness industries.
Greg has worked as a biomechanical consultant for various professional sports teams including: the Denver Broncos, the Utah Jazz, and the Denver Nuggets as well as professional golfers from the PGA, LPGA. Back to top
