Hey Mike,
I would like to know more about this. I am not interested in debating. Just looking for info.
Thanks.
I'm interested also.
Anything that will help me to keep training.
I'm not getting older, I'm getting better!
I would like to know if you draw higher percentage hot celebrity chick clients than chiro's??
Before I get into how the particular system of postural alignment therapy works, I want to mention a few things.
One thing that I feel people need to change in regards to their own health is the dependency on other people to fix their problems. Our society has taught us that medical/health practitioners will fix all our problems, no matter how big or small, to the point that we practically don't need to take responsibility for ourselves. We do things to destroy our bodies and hope that someone can fix our problems with a pill, knife, crack, or rub. For example, we see that there are many people with high blood pressure who refuse to change their diet and eat habits. They count on the doctor to give them some pills to keep their blood pressure down. This is a horrible mentality. If you want to live a healthy pain free life, YOU need to take responsibility for your own health and you need to do it on a regular basis.
I have trained in BJJ for over 15 years and have hurt every possible part of my body that can be hurt. I don't feel like listing every possible pain and injury I have had because the list would go on forever, however, I will just say that by the time I was 31 years old, my body felt like it was 80 years old. Throughout my martial arts career, a medical doctors have not helped one single bit in regards to my problems. If you look at it logically, medical doctors can only do 3 things for you- give you a pill, perform surgery, or refer you to someone else.
With the injuries and pains that I personally suffered, I did not need surgery. Pill wouldn't help me because it only masks the pain and doesn't actually fix the problem. I was sent to physical therapy before and that did not help me at all (and now I know why). So I sought other alternatives. I have done chiropractic, accupuncture, massage, accupressure, ART (active release technique), yoga, etc... Some of the things I tried did not work at all. Some were very helpful. By the way, I did feel chiropractic and ART were helpful. But I felt something was really wrong with my body because I felt like I needed to be adjusted 10 times a day.
Despite all that I tried, by the time I was 31, my body was destroyed and I was getting injured every 2 weeks. When I started to think about my situation carefully, I began to feel that I was only "chasing symptoms" and not fixing the "core problem". I looked at all the BJJ instructors that were older than me and had been training longer than me. All of them had chronic pains. I realized that if I did not make a change, I was heading down the exact same path they had were going.
To be continued......
As I thought about how to fix my problems, I recalled a therapist that a chiropractor (I had been going to during college) introduced me to when I was 19. I recalled that it really helped the pain I had from the bulging disc I had in low back. I so e-mailed the chiro and asked him what that particular method of therapy was.
He told me that is was posture alignment therapy. To shorten the story, I gave it a try. Almost instantly, my low back pain that I had since I was 19 was gone. My knees pains eventually disappeared. My chronic neck pain that I have had for over a decade eventually disappear. This was not some voodoo shit. I have pics of myself when before I started this therapy and if you compare it to how I look now, even the untrained eye can see a drastic change in my body. By the way, I'm even far less bow legged than in the past!
I was so excited about the results I got that I started to have my students do this therapy. Those who did it have felt similar results. My student from Slovakia, Radek, did it and I'm sure he can post here about how drastic the changes were in his body too. I can tell you that my body feels like I am 17 now.
I was so impressed with this therapy that I eventually made the decision to get training in it myself. I know people always hear testimonials about how effective certain methods of therpay are and you wonder if it is for real. I can tell you guys that I started to work on people and I experienced seeing incredible results
firsthand. I'll share a couple stories....
I have this lady that does personal training with me and before we started our training session, she said she pulled her hamstring when she was working out on her own. I gave her a couple posture alignment exercises to do and the "pull" in her muscle instantly decreased about 95% and she was able to have me work her out normally. She did the exercises at home on her own and by the next day, the pulled muscle was gone.
My father-in-law has had surgery on both knees and suffers from chronic knee pain. When he would play golf, he would be limping around because his knees hurt so bad, but he sucked it up because he loves to play golf. He also had pain in his shoulder and neck that he has had since he was in his youth. After working with him, his knees no longer hurt and his neck and shoulder pain went away.
My mother is almost 60 and runs 3 miles, 6 days a week. She has had a pain behind her ankle for 4 years and her knees have been bothering her for 15 years. She will massage behind her ankle to ease the discomfort and she wore knee wraps to give her knees extra support. After working with her, the pain behind her ankle was instantly gone. The next day she ran her 3 miles without her knee wraps and felt totally fine.
In my BJJ class, I have had students strain their neck. Normally, I know they would be out of commission for a week. I ran them through a couple exercises and their neck instantly felt a lot better and they got back into training right away.
I also had a student who started to feel a muscle strain in his rib/chest area. He wanted to just suck it up and keep rolling with me. We stopped rolling and I told him not to suck it up. I put him in an exercise and had him lay there for a couple minutes. When he got up, his chest/rib felt totally fine and we continued training without any problem.
I could go on, but the point is that I am such a firm believer in this because it only helped me, but I was able to "fix" numerous other people firsthand. I have been so excited about this because this method of therapy was able to fix my problems where chiro, accupuncture, accupressure, etc... were unable to.
To be continued....
Postural alignment therapy is kind of a generic term that I use. It is like saying "karate". Just as there are numerous styles of karate, there are several different systems that say they do posture alignment and the methods can vary quite dramatically.
Here's general idea of the system that I have been trained in. It is call Muscle Balance and Function. The human body has a certain "functional design"- basically what one would consider perfect posture. By the way, please don't think that posture only has to do with slouching and standing up straight. Within our lives, we do things to take our bodies out of that functional design (sports, sitting for long periods of time, accidents, surgery, traumas, what we do at our work, etc...). As a result, postural dysfunctions occur. The farther your body begins to deviate from this functional design, you then begin to feel pains, increased susceptability to injuries, etc....
Dang, I have to go work on a client for this postural therapy right now. I'll continue this later....
The human body is great when it comes to adapting. Postural dysfunctions cause your body to compensate and as athletes, we ask our bodies to do a heck of a lot of compensating. However, there is a point in which our bodies can't compensate any further and that's the point I reached before I began this therapy on my own body.
Think of your body like a car. If the alignment on your car is off, you can still drive the car, however, the tires will wear down prematurely and unevenly. You can rotate the tires, balance them, replace them, or try to patch them up, but if the alignment isn't straightened out, the tires will wear down prematurely and unevenly no matter what you do because all that other stuff does not get to the core problem.
Let's say the alignment is off and makes your car sway to the right. Like I said, you can keep driving on it and you can even drive straight by compensating by turn the steering wheel slightly more to the left. Eventually, the tires wear down so much in a certain spot that the tire may get a blow out. After getting a blow out, some people learn their lesson and fix the alignment. However, there are some people who will drive with a blown out tire, letting metal grind on pavement. Those people are really screwing up their cars.
To be continued....
So in the Muscle Balance and Function (MBF) System, what we do is you look a person's body, see the postural dysfunctions, and give the person corrective exercises, based on physics and biomechanics, in a specific sequence to get their body to return to its functional design. The various dysfunctions begin to disappear, you often see reductions or all elimination in pain. It is pretty amazing how the body is able to heal itself when given the proper stimulus.
What makes this postural alignment therapy different from physical therapy, chiro, MD's, is that we do not chase symptoms. We look at the body as a whole. Let's say you have neck pain. An MD would do some tests on your neck and if it is something that did not feel need surgery, they would probably give you some pain killer or anti-inflamatory and send you on your way. A physical therapist may give you some stretches and exercises for your neck, put you in traction, or put some heat or ice. A chiro may do some of the things that a physical therapists would do, but the main thing is they would adjust your neck. A massage therapist would obviously massage your neck. In the MBF system, I would look at your entire body as a whole and I can pretty much guarantee you that I wouldn't give you a single exercises that isolates your neck.
Here's a great example. My neighbor complained about a pain on the outside edge of her foot when she walked. She went to a foot doctor and the MD told her that the problem was that her calves were too tight. He told her to do certain stretches, had her buy orthodics, and made sure she had good running shoes. She did all that, but the pain in her foot never went away. I looked at her and told her that the problem was not in her calf, but rather was a result of everything else abover her leg. I told her to put her hands behind her head, spread her elbows, and squeeze her shoulder blades together. I then had her walk and asked her how it felt. She said that she did not lean on the ouside of her foot and her foot did not hurt when she walked. I told her that if the problem was truly in her calf like the doctor had said, putting her arms in a certain position would have made no difference. Later, she went through an entire personalize program and her foot pain was gone.
To be continued...
I have so much to positve stuff to say about what you have written but I will let you finish up. Thank you so much for taking the time for us Mike. My back is in bad shape, and you have me excited.
sounds very cool.... How did you get training in posture alignment therapy?
Like I mentioned before, look at what causes our dysfunctions- movement or lack of movement (static positions). BJJ is movement. Sitting at a desk in front of a computer is a movement (or lack of movement). If you look at someone who sits in front of a computer all day, your going to see someone with a head and neck sloped forward, rounded shoulders, and a flat back- and your going to see someone with neck and shoulder pain.
So if movement can move your body out of position, then it makes sense that movement can move your body back into position...and that's what the MBF system does. That is why people say that chiro adjustments are "addictive" and that chiro's are trying to scam you by getting you to come in to see them regularly. The reason that happens is because after the chiro's adjust you, your bad posture pulls the adjustment back out of place. On personal note, I think the combo of posture therapy and a good chiro and ART is great combo.
Postural alignment therapists simply give you a personalized menu of exercises to return you to your functional design. The therapist puts together a program for you and it is up YOU to do it daily to fix your own problems. Why do you have do it is daily? In order to counteract all the things that you do every day to mess your body up- BJJ; sitting for hours in front of the computer hunch over like a monkey; sports like golf, baseball, tennis that rotate your body in 1 direction; etc....
Your posture determines the position of your skeleton, all your internal organs, your circulatory system, and your nervous system. So this not only has a direct effect on your health, but a huge effect on sports performance and I will talk about that later.
Got to teach some BJJ now. To be continued....
ttt for this, me and mike have talked some of this in the past and I took his advice on chiropracty. Now I am def interested in this, as I want to start using this stuff asap.
Let's say you take 2 people with the exact same limb length, size, weight, etc... One person stands with his feet perfectly straight and the other person is toed-out (duck footed). Have the 2 people at a starting point and a finish line 100 feet away. Have those 2 people take the exact same number of steps. When the person with straight feet gets to the finish line, the person who is duck footed (which is extremely common) will actually be about 15 feet behind (if their feet were angled about at about 15 degrees) even though they look the exact same number of steps.
Why did does this happen? Because of physics. For every force, there is an equal an opposite force. The 2 people are trying to move forward, however, the person who is toed out is not generating and equal and opposite force directly forward. The position of his feet is actually generating force diagonally forward.
So when you talk about sports performance, think about how being duck footed effects an athlete's performance. That athlete has to expend more energy run the same distance than another athlete that is properly aligned. Think about how that effects speed.
Let's talk about "cardio". I remember when I was in junior high, we would have to run in PE class. After we ran a mile, the PE teacher would tell us to put our hands behind our heads. Why? Because he wanted to maximize the capacity of our lungs so we could get as much oxygen as possible as we were sucking wind after that run.
With that in mind, let's look at an adult that is slouched over. Remember that your posture determines the position of your organs. With that slouched posture, you feel that your lungs are capable of maximizing its capacity as you do your aerobic conditioning?
There are many more issues when it comes to sports application, but I only mentioned a couple. Postural dysfunctions, like an infection, can become worse over time when untreated, especially when people push their bodies to its limits. Of course old age will eventually effect us all, but you have to wonder how much of the inability to perform is because your dysfunctions have gotten worse as time has passed versus the actual aging process.
To be continued....
Bolo, are you talking about the Egoscue method? That seems to fit what you're saying the most. There are some other methods that are similar, like Feldenkrais.
I'm interested in learning more.
All right. More then 1/2 year ago, Mike said me that he found interesting method, which could be my our missing link in training. I have been always very curious about injury prevention stuff, but actualy I have never got chance to get it down and understand their principles.Keep in mind, that thanks to my LEO, military and police training camps (where I am working as a professional head coach) I had opportunity to get in touch with top MD?s in my country. But nobody from them was able come out with solution for my problems!!!
So I did a little bit research on net in the beginning, and during my visit to US in January, I finally had opportunity to visit real postural therapist.The result was simply amazing! At that time I started to get in to phase, where injuries become like weekly habit. I felt really bad, and I started to feel, that my progress sooner or later will be stopped, which nobody likes of course. But postural alignement method find out answer for my situation. The therapist found out where is core of my problems and designed specific menu , which was very unique. The exrecises looked like nothing in comparation with my weightlifting stuff.....but I can tell you, during first minutes of exercises it was real killer. Really brutal stuff:) Now, I saw how weak from inside I really become. Righ after 45 min of exercised I felt really awesome. I was much lighter on my feet, my overall balance felt much better.,..etc....just typical signs of postural stuff.
From that time, ( more then 6 month ago) I work on my postural exrecises EVERY day. My body has got through HUGE transformation, and it has direct link to my performance. My flaxibility, strenght, conditioning, balance ...etc. all has dramaticly improved. Right now I am in stage, where -just like Mike, I am going to invite postural guy to my country and absorb knowledge in order to write my personal menus and work with my pro guys(and become postural guy). I definitely know, it will be very helpfull here. Last week , my stand up coach, R. "Chico" King from South Africa(www.mymalife.com), came to my gym in order to train me and my guys .And during his visit, we personaly discussed about postural therapy.He is big supporter for this method,...just like pro GOLF player Jack Niclaus...and many others top pro athletes.
So check this method out, you will get huge favour for your body in long run....
Radek
www.jkd.sk
Slovakia
The Egoscue Method does correct posture and uses similar exercises, however, the MBF System is completely different in its methodology. My instructor, who created the MBF System, actually worked with Pete Egoscue in the early 90's and was one of the first 4 therapists who helped Pete Egoscue open his clinic in San Diego.
Pete Egoscue is a genius, however, he did not want others to know exactly what he knows. He holds out information, even from his own therapists. One of my students got a menu from a very experienced Egoscue therapist. I looked at the menu and saw that there was one exercises he really shouldn't be doing as it was harmful to his knees. Coincidentally, my student said that the particular exercises did hurt his knees. I re-wrote my students entire menu and he felt a lot better.
The biggest difference between MBF and the Egoscue Method is that MBF is an actual system that is based on physics and biomechanics in its application. The Egoscue Method has no system. I know this because when I originally wanted to learn posture therapy, I took the Egoscue course. The course was so terrible that I walked out half way through and asked for my tuition back. I have had instructors hold back information in my BJJ training, so I knew exactly what the people at the Egoscue course were trying to do. Having gone through that sorry ass course, I can not recommend the Egoscue Method anymore knowing how their therapists get trained and knowing that there is something better out there. My feelings were confirmed when my instructor later told me about conversations he had with Pete and also when I found out how many of their clinic directors were frustrated and felt that info was being held out on them.
I highly recommend people read Pete Egoscue's book "Pain Free" and "Health in Motion". Can the Egoscue Method help people? In a way, yes, because when you have so many people who are extremely dysfunctional giving them any functional posture exercises will help. The Egoscue Method has helped many people. However, if you are going to spend your time, money, and effort, I'd feel a lot better knowing that I was doing a program that was 100% correct rather than only 70% correct.
Actually, there are very few MBF practitioners and most of them are in Canada (that is where the instructor lives now). There's no one in the Midwest that I know of.
The main reason this particular method is not was well known is simply because my instructor, Geoff, had other aspirations in life and decided to pursue those interests. The postural therapy was just a means for him to make some money until we was able to make money from those other interests. Now that is able to make a living from his other interests, he had dropped out of the therapy scene as much as possible. When he did the posture therapy, he just happened to figure out a scientific system and was really good at.
Geoff is a freakin' genius when it came to this stuff, but he truly did not enjoy being a therapist. He only teaches this stuff this private groups and will work on people if they approach him, but he really doesn't promote it all. If no one approached him ever again about learning his method, he could care less. Personally, I think it is an incredible waste of talent, but he obviously had different goals in life.
If you are interest in this method of therapy help fix some of your problems, prevent injuries, or increase your performance, drop me an e-mail at mjen@pacbell.net and I'll see if I can help out.
I can't wait to read this later tonught. Gotta go train my ultimate back escapes. I just pulled it out from storage. That vid is a gem.
By the way, since we are discussing controversial issues of health that may go against many people's conventional way of thinking, I would like to mention this great disclaimer that was written by Pete Egoscue:
Ours is a highly litigious society. Which means, in plain English, we like to sue each other, blame each other, transfer responsibility to others.
Since, as you'll see, responsibility is a continuing theme of this program, the space which is usually reserved for what lawyers refer to as the "disclaimer" is being used to make an additional and, I believe, more important point.
You've seen the words many times: "The following material is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician. The reader should consult a physician before embarking on this or any health program..." --- or words to that effect. The all-purpose liability firebreak.
Disclaimers are a legal necessity, but they are a cop-out. This material is no substitute for the participant taking responsibility for his or her own health. Therefore, I have an important recommendation to make: If you really need a disclaimer, close this program and put it aside unused.
I hope you don't --- because what I have to offer in the program will change your life.
- Pete Egoscue