Z Health TestimonialThe testimonials keep rolling in! Yeah ha! When I open my inbox and find a really cool testimonial in there, I have to admit that it TOTALLY (like I still live in the 80s or something) makes my day.
It is WHY I do this, spend all the time reading studies, trying stuff out, talking to others---it is to get RESULTS since that is why athletes pay money!
I can't take much of the credit since I never did an exercise for them. They have to put the time into it each day and do their exercises in good form. Nobody will ever be able to do that for you. I am just providing the stimulus to get them moving in the correct direction.
I truly believe your body wants to be healthy and perform at a much higher level, it just needs the right "push" at times to get moving in the correct direction again.
Here is one Joe Pavel, RKC, Z Health R, I Phase Trainer put in his newsletter recently
Since taking the Z-health certifications last spring and Summer I have…
1. Signed up and participated in judo classes. Just yesterday I received my yellow belt.
2. Rode a unicycle.
3. I can ride a Ripstick for however long I want
4. I got rhythm- I know this is hard to believe but it is true. I can do more than the "white man dance" at weddings now, which makes my wife very happy!
5. I've fixed my aches, pains, eyes and previous injuries, with the help of my Z- Health Master Trainer Mike T. Nelson.
Why did this all happen?
It happened because I move better now than I ever have in my whole life. That's from doing daily Z-Health drills and from seeing a Z-Health coach.
It works better than anything else I've ever tried at fixing your bodies restrictions to improve your movement skills because every problem is a movement problem.
No drugs, no surgery no long recovery, no needles, no trips to the hospital where you might end up with flesh eating disease (this happened recently to a woman where I live.)
Just simple, precise, joint movements can deliver the right release from a restriction, instantly.
After the session I did with Joe recently, I got this email
Thanks for the great Z session on Saturday. I crushed Ben my partner in judo when we randoried, wrassled. But man was I sore yesterday from the new nervous system stimulis. -Joe Pavel
Congrats to Joe for doing his "homework" also and getting his reps in! Nice work! If you are interested in some Z Health training, be sure to drop me a line.
Check out Joe's Blog below
Kool Kettlebells
On to some more studies on the nervous system. My notes at the end of each as always. Here we go!
Heat reactions in multiple sclerosis: an overlooked paradigm in the study of comparative fatigue.
Marino FE. School of Human Movement Studies & Exercise & Sports Science Laboratories, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. fmarino@csu.edu.au
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating and debilitating disease characterised by a range of symptoms such as motor dysfunction and muscle weakness. A significant MS symptom is heat sensitivity so that exposure to heat will increase body temperature and consequently the appearance of neurological signs. Although some people with MS can undertake exercise, it is thought to be limited by the sensitivity to heat and the subsequent rise in body temperature which occurs.
It has been found that central fatigue is a determining factor in muscle activation and performance in normal healthy subjects. However, it is unknown whether thermal strain also induces central fatigue in MS even though muscular fatigue in MS is due mainly to central rather than peripheral factors.
CONCLUSION: This review focuses on the similarities in the manifestation of central fatigue in both MS and healthy subjects with reference to thermal strain and heat reactions.
My Notes: Be sure to check out the other studies I covered that look at the effects of heat below
Performance Research for February: Central fatigue exercise 3
On to another study!
Locomotor exercise induces long-lasting impairments in the capacity of the human motor cortex to voluntarily activate knee extensor muscles.
Sidhu SK, Bentley DJ, Carroll TJ. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Muscle fatigue is a reduction in the capacity to exert force and may involve a "central" component originating in the brain and/or spinal cord. Here we examined whether supraspinal factors contribute to impaired central drive after locomotor endurance exercise. On 2 separate days, 10 moderately active individuals completed a locomotor cycling exercise session or a control session. Brief (2 s) and sustained (30 s) isometric knee extension contractions were completed before and after locomotor exercise consisting of eight, 5-min bouts of cycling at 80% of maximum workload. In the control session, subjects completed the isometric contractions in a rested state.
Twitch responses to supramaximal motor nerve stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation were obtained to assess peripheral force-generating capacity and voluntary activation. Maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) force during brief contractions decreased by 23 +/- 6.3% after cycling exercise and remained 12 +/- 2.8% below baseline 45 min later (F(1,9) > 15.5;
CONCLUSION: Thus locomotor exercise caused a long-lasting impairment in the capacity of the motor cortex to drive the knee extensors. Force was reduced more during sustained Maximum voluntary contraction after locomotor exercise than in the control session.
Peripheral mechanisms contributed relatively more to this force reduction in the control session, whereas supraspinal fatigue played a greater role in sustained Maximum voluntary contraction reduction after locomotor exercise.
My Notes: Interesting study, but it goes to show that trying to tease out central (aka brain) issues from peripheral (muscle) is very hard to do and in reality it is probably a combination of both.
Cortical voluntary activation of the human knee extensors can be reliably estimated using transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Sidhu SK, Bentley DJ, Carroll TJ. Health and Exercise Science, School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
The objective of this study was to determine if a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) method of quantifying the degree to which the motor cortex drives the muscles during voluntary efforts can be reliably applied to the human knee extensors. Although the technique for estimating "cortical" voluntary activation (VA) is valid and reliable for elbow flexors and wrist extensors, evidence that it can be applied to muscles of the lower limb is necessary if twitch interpolation with TMS is to be widely used in research or clinical practice. Eight subjects completed two identical test sessions involving brief isometric knee extensions at forces ranging from rest to maximal voluntary contraction (MVC).
Electromyographic (EMG) responses to TMS of the motor cortex and electrical stimulation of the femoral nerve were recorded from the rectus femoris (RF) and biceps femoris (BF) muscles, and knee extension twitch forces evoked by stimulation were measured. The amplitude of TMS-evoked twitch forces decreased linearly between 25% and 100% MVC (r(2) > 0.9), and produced reliable estimations of resting twitch and VA (ICC(2,1) > 0.85). The reliability and size of cortical measures of VA were comparable to those derived from motor nerve stimulation when the resting twitches were estimated on the basis of as few as three TMS trials.
CONCLUSION: Thus, transcranial magnetic stimulation measures of voluntary activation may provide a reliable and valid tool in studies investigating central fatigue due to exercise and neurological deficits in neural drive in the lower limbs.
My Notes: This may be a cool tool to help sort out the differences.
That is it for now! Any comments, let me know
Rock on
Mike T Nelson
