All sports and most professions require a greater use of certain muscles. Muscles that are used more frequently – explosively or for endurance – grow and get stronger than their antagonists. They shorten and then overpower and elongate their weaker antagonists.

The question is: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is the traumatized short muscle over powering and thus lengthening its antagonistic muscle? Or, is a neuromuscular dysfunction with decreased muscle tone and lengthening of a muscle causing its antagonist to shorten due to lack of opposition?

In either case, this muscular imbalance will decrease range of motion (flexibility), creating changes in posture which will change alignment and upset joint integrity.

I believe that muscular imbalance is the underlying reason for all joint or muscle dysfunctions and pain.

Correcting muscular imbalances restores function as well as heal and prevent injuries. Aligning the body and restoring muscular balance by strengthening the “weak link” muscles will also enhance athletic performance. The more fine tuned the machine is, the better it will perform.

With HMT we can come up with customized protocols for each athlete or patient where we strengthen the elongated weak muscles and stretch the short over powering muscles.

Each and every sport has common injuries due to the fact that certain muscles are used more frequently than their antagonists.

We have had great success with sports specific exercise protocols both to rehabilitate, as well as prevent those injuries by strengthening the “weak link” muscles.

Soccer, football, and basketball athletes with shortened overpowering quadriceps and relatively elongated weak hamstrings, suffer from: ACL ruptures, patellar tendonitis (jumpers knee), patellar femoral syndrome, and hamstring strains and tears.

Ice hockey, football, and soccer athletes with shortened hip flexors and relatively elongated weak core and abdominals, suffer from sports hernia, groin pain, and lower back pain.

Baseball players with muscular imbalances in their throwing shoulder frequently have shortened internal rotators and horizontal adductors that overpower the relatively weak external rotators and horizontal abductors.This is why they are more prone to suffer from rotator cuff injuries and shoulder impingements. These are just a few examples of common injuries in different sports.

In the Club at Los Gatos, at the HMT clinic, Tobe Hanson and HMT trainers, assess for muscular balance and design custom made protocols to improve posture, restore range of motion, and restore muscular balance. This is a holistic approach to physical therapy and sports performance with superior results since every person’s exercise protocol is custom made for their individual needs.

This is in sharp contrast to most physical therapy offices where every single patient gets the same exercise protocol for the body part that is injured.

When an exercise program is custom-made for the person’s muscular imbalance, the results are amazing, and the individual gets better, stronger, faster. Faster injury recovery, injury prevention and improved athletic performance.

Meet the HMT trainers Patrick Cushing and Gabe Marin at the Club at Los Gatos.