January 11, 2012

Eliminate pain by correcting your walk: Part 1: Correcting Your Walk

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Topics: Biomechanics, Gait Cycle Analysis, Health, Muscle Testing, VTS Courses

While most people are surprised to hear that they are walking incorrectly, it doesn’t usually come as a complete shock. After all, nobody’s perfect, right?

But what is a shocker is that a huge percentage (in my experience, about 75%) of our physical pain is a direct result of imbalances in how we walk. The GOOD NEWS is that it is possible to eliminate pain by correcting how we walk. Get it right and you’ll walk like you’re 20 years old, even if you’re 70. Get it wrong and you’ll walk like 70, even if you’re 20.

To give this subject the attention it deserves, I’m going to publish it as a two-part entry. This is Part 1: Correcting Your Walk. The second will be Part 2: Eliminating Pain.

Gait Cycle Analysis, or the science of how we walk, can be reduced to 4 simple things we’re all doing wrong. Each of these is a weak link in our chain of muscles, and like any chain, the weakest link is where we’ll feel pain.

The 4 steps are: Continue reading →

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November 28, 2011

Experiments in Muscle Testing – Episode 1: The Pilot Episode

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Topics: Biomechanics, Health, Muscle Testing

I’ve always felt that the best way to let creativity flow is with good friends, good food and a 10 course meal from ancient Rome.

This night was no exception. The girls approved a “boy’s night out”, the boys came over to my place and I did up one of my famous roman feasts. I very rudely wrote the menu in classical Latin and then forgot to translate it into English, so I spent half the night explaining what everything was. Lesson learned…

Here’s the menu, with translation below:

Continue reading →

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August 12, 2011

Experiments in Muscle Testing – Episode 2: The Problem With Bicep Curls

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Topics: Biomechanics, Health, Muscle Testing

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If the industry-standard form on a bicep curl is completely wrong, wouldn’t someone have figured this out long ago? Surely everyone can’t be doing it wrong???

And how about the latest techniques that Fitness Gurus like {BLEEP} are teaching? If they’re wrong too, why don’t the gurus themselves realize this? Has the whole world gone crazy?

Welcome to Experiments in Muscle Testing Episode 2. Find out the answers to these questions, and more, below.

Continue reading →

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April 28, 2011

How to End Impingement Syndrome & Sciatica

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Topics: Biomechanics, Health, Muscle Testing

Chances are, you know this person. I’m not going to say who it is, but you may know them personally…

With muscle testing, we usually start at the root cause and work out. First of all, that’s a better way to find the root cause, but second, and more importantly, it allows us to remain objective and not get caught up in the assumption that goes along with any condition which has been named: eg. that the condition is an end in itself and has no solution… which is bunk.

But in this case, I’m working backwards, literally. Its 7:00 a.m. and I’m about to go to sleep for the night. The thing that kept me up was putting the finished touches on the manual for my muscle testing and biomechanics course VTS Level 1.

A lot of people ask me about impingement syndrome and sciatica, and how I am able to use muscle testing to eliminate them, and since its a big part of the course content, I’d share a tidbit. Here it is: enjoy.

Continue reading →

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April 19, 2011

The #1 Thing Stopping you from Achieving Your Goals–Twice!

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Topics: Biomechanics, Health, Muscle Testing, Philosophy

Image courtesy of despair.com

Consider this: In a culture that makes an idol out of success, where failure is one of our biggest taboos, despair becomes an act of independence.

The fact is people fail all the time, and nowhere is this more evident than in the area of setting fitness goals. Why?

Over the years, I’ve noticed that most people fail at their fitness goals at two stages in the process, and for the same reason, both times. Continue reading →

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April 1, 2011

Why you’re probably doing every exercise wrong

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Topics: Biomechanics, Health, Muscle Testing

Image: Weight Lifting by mjzitek

Okay, first off, we have to define “wrong”. Wrong = performing an exercise in a way that shuts off your nervous system, even though you may not know its happening. Obviously, right? If you knew your form was wrong you’d correct it instantly.

For example, what’s wrong with the form of the dead lift featured in the picture above?

I can see four major things wrong with it:

Continue reading →

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March 25, 2011

Why Standardized Fitness Testing Doesn’t Work

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Topics: Biomechanics, Health, Muscle Testing

The interesting thing about assumptions is that we don’t know we’re making them.

The woman in the above picture is lifting a massive tire. To her credit, if she wasn’t bending down so low she would have amazing form–her leg spacing and degree of hip and knee flexion are perfect. As it is I’m a bit worried about her back.

You’ll probably recognize this exercise from televised Strong Man competitions, and therefore think it is “normal”. But its not normal at all. Unless she drives a monster truck that is prone to flats, when in her life would she ever need to lift a tire this size? The belief that it is normal is an assumption we don’t know we’re making.

In the same way, most standardized Fitness Testing protocols are assumed to be normal, but have more in common with a “feat of strength” than an actual assessment.

Let’s look at a few examples: Continue reading →

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February 20, 2011

Why Vitamin D is the new C: and how to never get sick

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Topics: Biophysics, Health, Muscle Testing, Supplements

I distinctly recall my 7th grade teacher telling me about Vitamins and their functions. At the time, it all went completely over my head except 2 things, which were the worst 2 things I could have remembered because they were both completely wrong:

  1. The most important vitamin: C. If you take enough you’ll never get sick
  2. The least important vitamin: D. You get all you need from the sun.

In my 20’s, essentially when I started working indoors all year-round, I started to get sick 2-3 times a year. In my late 20′s, I was sick 5-6 times a year. By my early 30′s, I was only getting well 5-6 times a year and the rest of the year was one long illness after another.  I mega-dosed on every vitamin & mineral I could think of except D (because I thought I was getting all I needed from the sun). Nothing helped.

Then I was exposed to the following youtube video by Dr. John Cannell and finally, the lights came on.

Continue reading →

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February 19, 2011

Wayne Dyer on Muscle Testing Sound Waves & Chris Rock on Robitussin

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Topics: Biophysics, Muscle Testing

Watch the first 2:35 of the following youtube video to hear Wayne Dyer speaking about muscle testing. Sorry that the video quality gets blurry, it was the clearest version I could find.

Wayne’s story about muscle testing the rap CD on his son has a grain of truth to it, but I’m afraid he missed the point and doesn’t understand muscle testing at all:

It is verifiable that certain sounds have an inhibitory effect on the Central Nervous System. There are two levels of science to it:

The Science of Muscle Testing Sound Waves

1. Volume: As any rock concert musician will affirm, sounds that are too loud can cause permanent damage to the nerves in the ear. The CNS picks up microscopic damage during auditory input and if a muscle test (CNS test) were performed at this time, the tester would get a weak response. Keep in mind that there are 25+ things that can go wrong with a muscle test and another 7+ things that can go wrong with a CNS test. Continue reading →

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Things that can go wrong with a CNS Test

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Topics: Biomechanics, Muscle Testing


How a Central Nervous System Test (CNS Test) is different from a muscle test:

A muscle test: is specific to the muscle you’re testing, and its purpose is to determine strength in a given muscle or range of motion.

A CNS test: has nothing to do with the muscle being tested. A muscle is chosen as an ‘indicator muscle’, and then used as a feedback loop while the CNS is exposed to various stimuli. If a stimulus weakens the CNS, the indicator muscle goes weak as a response, and the person is said to have ‘CNS Tested weak’ for that stimulus.

The principle of CNS testing is one of the most important discoveries in the history of human biology. I predict that as health care practitioners learn how to use it properly, it will change the face of modern health care.

The issue with CNS testing is that results differ, sometimes wildly. There is an infamous story about a woman who went to see a rogue CNS Tester who had taken a weekend course by Dr. George Goodheart, the founder of Applied Kinesiology (the medical discipline that uses CNS Testing as its primary diagnostic technique). The rogue tester informed her that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked, that it might be cancer, and that she was incapable of ever bearing children. She then went to another Doctor (not sure whether they were A.K. or not) who correctly informed her that not only did she not have cancer but that she was pregnant. Continue reading →

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