The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [129]
Time spent with Dr. Two Fingers added up. Fifty dollars per muscle reactivated means that function doesn’t come cheap. I had a total of four sessions and covered more than 50 muscles.
I couldn’t accept all of his supplemental programs, but I knew that exploring the fringes required casting a wide net. To find the few things that worked, it was sometimes necessary to bite your tongue and withstand things you knew didn’t work, even within the same offices.
In the end, I tested his treatments with the only jury that really mattered: objective weights.
The changes were not subtle.
Take the pectorals, for instance. Since fracturing both collarbones in my teens, I have had disproportionate trouble recruiting the chest, making the bench press and similar movements my weakest exercises.
Twenty-four hours before my second session with Buhler, I performed decline flies with 40-pound dumbbells for a maximal five repetitions.
Twenty-four hours after the session, I performed slow decline flies with 50-pound dumbbells (20% increase) for 14 repetitions (180% increase).
Incredible.
Before you aim to improve a muscle’s output (weight or repetitions lifted) by increasing size, it’s important to ensure that the input (neural system) is functioning properly. Do you really need “stronger muscles,” or is the wiring just not conducting the signal properly?
If you can’t make a trip to Dr. Two Fingers, see the MAT resources at the end of this chapter for a local option.
4. ACTIVE-RELEASE TECHNIQUE (ART). AREA FIXED: SHOULDER INTERNAL ROTATORS.
Dr. P. Michael Leahy’s engineering education began with aeronautics in the air force. His fascination with structural mechanics only fully expressed itself much later, in 1985. This was the year ART was formalized and patented, the year he applied his engineering to human soft-tissue injuries. Leahy, a veteran of 25 Ironman triathlons, has since been doctor to, among others, Olympic gold-medal sprinter Donovan Bailey, Gary Roberts of the NHL Toronto Maple Leafs, and Mr. Universe Milos Sarcev.
The basic premise of the method is simple: shorten the tissue, apply manual tension, and then lengthen the tissue or make it slide relative to its adjacent tissue. Simple does not mean easy; as Leahy explains, “It’s as simple as playing a piano and just as difficult.”
What does this look like in practice? If muscles are adhered to one another or to bone, it looks a lot like tearing muscles apart. See the visual preview below.
Getting manhandled.
I first encountered ART in 2001 through Frank Shamrock, five-time middleweight Ultimate Fighting (UFC) champion.
Frank had his first ART treatment in July 2001 following an acute lower back injury during training. He was unable to walk and didn’t expect much:
I had seen more than 30 chiropractors throughout the world over a 16-year period for lower back pain and numbness in my leg. With the training injury that prompted my visit, I couldn’t raise my head above waist-level, and I was sleeping on the living room floor in the fetal position. I had always been told one of two things by orthopedists and various MDs: I would need to have my vertebrae fused, or simply tolerate the pain of an injury that was irreversible. Based on past experience, I was certain that I would need to cancel the K-1 kickboxing fight I had scheduled for one month later.
In four sessions of approximately 10 minutes each, the doctors at the Janzen & Janzen Sports Health Clinic in San Jose, California, eliminated the cumulative scar tissue and adhesions that had created the pain in Frank’s lower back. He was carried out of the gym on his trainer’s shoulders on Thursday and was training at 100% the following Tuesday.
Three weeks later, Frank won his K-1 fight by first-round KO. Frank then recommended ART to B. J. Penn, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Champion, who used ART to restore full range of motion to his left shoulder (preventing surgery), right shoulder, and hamstring,