Autogenic vs Reciprocal Inhibition Series (Part 1): Terminology Breakdown

So let's take a look at this.

This is, I think, in probably the top 10 most important figures in the book.

It takes a little bit of work.

So try to be patient to understand what's in it.

But we're going to talk about this and then we're going to come back and forth with it written out as words, back and forth until it makes sense.

So once that imbalance exists, things start happening, right? That you can't stop from happening.

So let's look here on the second line.

It's going to cause altered reciprocal inhibition.

So we'll go through each one of these.

But when this muscle is tight, then what that is saying is this muscle is tight and it causes its partner muscle to lengthen, right? All that's saying is tight muscle causes weak muscle, all right? And then this leads to synergistic dominance, where it's like now we have a weak muscle.

So when it's time for that weak muscle to do its job, how's it going to do it, right? It's too stretched out.

It's not going to be able to forcefully contract the way that it's designed to.

So somebody else has to pick up the slack and do that job.

And ultimately, the way that we can see this is because when the muscles are the wrong length, the joints are gonna pull, are gonna be pulled at the wrong angles.

So we're gonna be able to observe it through joint motion, right? We're not ever like actually inside their body measuring their muscles, right? We can see it only through the joint motion.

All right, so let's go through this, what should happen versus what does happen, and then we'll come back to that slide.

I always think of this in numbers.

When I get these questions, I ask myself, are they talking about number one, two, three, or four? So in the perfect body or in the body that we correct, the first thing is that we will have muscle balance, right? We're not gonna have that muscle bunched up.

We're gonna have fixed that.

When that one can pull at the right length, then its partner muscle can also pull at the right length.

They're gonna work like a pulley should.

That means that we have the right length tension relationship.

We're gonna talk more about that later, but all that means is the muscles can do what they're supposed to.

They can come to the right length, they can create the right amount of tension, just like they're designed for.

It's always gonna be called reciprocal inhibition.