People often question me about why I don’t yell at them when they stop before they complete the “prescribed” reps or time interval for an exercise. Many of them have had trainers whose philopophy was “Just when you think you can do one last rep, do 5 more!” My clients are told that what their body is telling them ALWAYS overrides anything I tell them. The Z-Health school of thought is about training your body the right way and listening to what it is telling you. Here is Z-Health in a VERY small nutshell.
Z-Health Performance Solutions
Mobility Alphabet – each joint was meant to move into 4 planes of motion. Think of each movement as a letter in your alphabet and each of those “letters” make up a word
Sensory Motor Amnesia – If you don’t use it, you lose it. If you stop moving a joint in a certain direction, your body assumes that you don’t want that range of motion and “forgets” how to perform that movement to make room to learn other things. Simple proof: cut your thumb, immobilize it and it becomes stiff - not because of a cut on your skin, but because you haven’t been moving it.
Proprioceptive Map – Your Central Nervous System (CNS) constantly takes a scan of your body and sends signals to your brain to create a virtual 3-D map. The parts of your body that have full mobility are clear on this map, whereas areas of lost mobility are fuzzy.
Proprioceptive Map and Pain – Pain does not live at the site.
o “Pain” is your brain interpreting a warning signal.
o Your body is built for survival. Pain is important when there is actual danger involved (i.e. when you touch something hot and your CNS sends signals which make you quickly pull your hand away from the hot object.)
o There are other times when your brain sends unnecessary warning signals in the form of pain when you move your body into safe, but unfamiliar ranges of motion and the CNS perceives that movement as dangerous.
o When you begin moving your joints into all planes of motion, your proprioceptive map becomes clear and these ranges of motion are no longer perceived as dangerous, so there is no unnecessary pain.
Proprioceptive Map and Performance - Based on the clarity of your map, the nervous system decides how much energy it will supply to fuel the muscles which create movement.
o Your body as a car: muscles are the engine and your CNS is the battery
o Whenever the nervous system senses a threat it reduces the amount of speed and strength available for contraction of the muscles to prevent the body from damaging itself.
The SAID Principle “Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand” – The body always adapts to exactly what it does.
Pain follows the SAID Principle: If you get used to moving into pain, you get good at making yourself hurt
o When you are in pain, compensation patterns arise which set you up for more pain in other areas of your body and more poor performance patterns
What exactly is Z-Health?
o Z-Health is a system that retrains your CNS through joint by joint mobility drills
o Z Health improves athletic performance by focusing on improving the nervous system and making the map clearer (proprioceptive enhancement).
o As the body becomes more efficient at moving, speed and strength increase (with the same amount of effort) while the threat of movement (and resulting pain signals) decrease.
According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) the majority of people who begin an exercise program quit within 6 months because they get hurt. They get hurt because they proceed with a poorly drawn map. Even “relatively healthy” individuals may be suffering from inefficient movement patterns, stuck joints, etc. which limit performance.