active isolated stretching: the mattes method

to better understand ais:mm, it is helpful to understand a few physiologic laws of the body. the first of these is called, sherrington's law of reciprocal innervation.

before i talk more about this, i need to explain that, for the most part, skeletal muscle can do only one thing, contract. in general, there is no inherent mechanism in a muscle to get it to elongate on its own. in order for a skeletal muscle to elongate (which i'll just call the 'agonist' muscle), the opposing muscle (or 'antagonist' muscle) must contract. for example, say you were doing a dumbbell curl and were contracting your bicep. in order for you to elongate your bicep, you would have to contract your tricep.

so, sherrington's law states that when you activly send a singnal from your brain to contract your tricep, the brain sends a corresponding signal to you bicep to "relax", allowing it to be elongated (even though it isn't elongating on its own). more formally, you could say:

for every neural activation of an agonist muscle, there is a corresponding inhibition singal to the antagonist muscle.

so that's the first law to bear in mind.

the second law is called wolff's law. wolf's law has to deal with the physical structure of a bone and the soft tissues (the muscles, tendons, fascia, etc.) that surround it. so you could say that both the hard (bone) and soft tissues become distorted in relation to the amount of stress imposed upon them. you could switch this around a bit and say that the tension in the soft tissues could eventually pull and distort the shape of the hard tissues.

this law just helps in understanding that stress or tension in the soft tissue can and does eventually affect the placement and structure of hard tissue. so too much tension in the body can distort the body over time.

another factor to bear in mind is something called the stretch reflex. the stretch reflex is responsible for maintaining a certain amount of tonus ("tone") in a muscle. there are certain sensory receptors called, muscle spindles, that get stimulated if the length of a muscle is stretched beyond a certain limit. the end result of this is the muscle contracts and shortens to maintain this set point length. ais: mm, believes this reflex activates after 2.0 seconds of maintaining the stretch. this is why the ais: mm technique does not hold the stretch for longer than 2.0 seconds at a time.

[side note: "tone" in this sense refers to the continual, partial contraction in a muscle organ when you are awake and conscious. this is rather important when maintaining your body posture. this is NOT the same as when you go to a gym and say to your potential trainer, " i don't want to gain muscle, i just want to be tone." first of all, yes you do want to gain muscle mass you squishymonkey. muscle is very metabolically active and helps you burn fat. secondly, what you are refering to as "tone", we call "low body-fat percentage so you can actually see the results you've been working so hard for".]

so with these concepts in mind, i'll take a quote from aaron's stretching book because now it should make more sense to you:

"the mattes method incorporates a key concept, which states that
only relaxed myofacial structures will allow themselves to be optimally
stretched. adhering to wolff's and sherrington's laws, the mattes
method facilitates optimal myofacial stretching of isolated muscles
without activating a protective myotatic reflex contraction. the
mattes method utilizes a gradual stretch of no greater than 2.0 seconds,
promoting full range of motion and flexibility without activating
antagonistic muscle group contraction."

-from mattes al. active isolated stretching:
the mattes method. sarasota, florida:
aaron mattes therapy, 2000.

(okay then. sorry if my citation isn't up to chicago manual of style standards. it's been a while since i've done formal writing.)

so here's how it breaks down:

1. identify the muscle to be stretched.

2. isolate it from its normal load from gravity (you can't get a muscle to relax when it's too busy flexing to hold you up).

3. activate the antagonist muscle by having it flex until the limb has moved to its full range. (this is the application of sherrington's law)

4. gently move the limb one or two degrees (very slight) past its limit with only a few ounces of force.

5. hold for no longer than 2 seconds so that the defensive reflex doesn't kick in.

6. move the limb all the way back to original relaxed starting position.

7. repeat at least 10 times, with each additional repetion moving just 1-2 degrees further than the previous one. don't get greedy with progress. this is a gradual and incremental increase in range.

8. whoop. there it is.

there is a protocol to follow, as the muscles in the body generally need to be opened in a certain order, but this protocol allows for modifications along the way according to the individual body in question.

there is one more thing i want to comment on, and it refers to the idea of multiple stretching repetitions in step 7. if you imagine the soft tissue like a sponge soaked in water, you don't simply squeeze it out once to rinse it out. you squeeze and then relax multiple times to flush it out. likewise, when you have multiple repetitions you effectively flush out the muscle. ais: mm can increase local blood flow and help warm up tissues. so lactid acid build-up and other metabolic waste products from workouts can be eliminated faster. the increase in localized bloodflow can help to reduce delayed muscle soreness.

well, this, in a nuthell, is what active isolated stretching: the mattes method is. if you can actually go and get work done by someone who actually is WELL trained in this modality, give it a shot. now again, no one modality works for everyone all of the time, but when ais: mm works, it works phenominally well. your body will feel VERY different. for more information, check out aaron's website, www.stretchingusa.com. thanks for reading. cheers.