Jammed Joints Equal Weak Muscles: Z-Health Videos

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Last weeks running = 44 miles: Monday- 8 miles, Tuesday- 8 miles, Wednesday-8 miles, Thursday- 8 miles, Friday- 0 miles, Saturday-4 miles, Sunday 8 miles. At the last moment I realized that there was a race at Mine Falls Park on Saturday and so I entered the Otter Run 5K put on by 3C Race Productions. I ended up finishing in 3rd place overall in the unremarkable time of 20:16 (results). My left hip felt so much more balanced then it has the past few years running so many times on this course. It was a much better race then the one on Sunday and a better starting point for the season. I am very much looking forward to the Gate City Striders track workouts starting this week.

What can you say about another entertaining Boston Marathon race. A new course record for the men and a dramatic finish for the ladies. Lots of Striders and other friends ran super races! Robert Cheruiyot ran a super race for a new course record. The most ridiculous news report on the race suggested that he may have cheated by stepping up on the sidewalk. Oh really? No this is silly and is certainly no Rosie Ruiz move. View the video here.

I saw some interesting Z-Health videos today where Dr. Eric Cobb demonstrates the Arthrokinetic Reflex. According to his thinking. a jammed joint equals weak muscles. I find the Z-Health joint mobility program interesting. It never solved my problems, but I did learn about the movements of the joints and probably just never became proficient in learning exactly how to utlilize the movements in the precise way and manner to effect the changes I needed. One problem I had with the program was that it never fully explained why things were supposed to work. These videos show a little more of the "why" about jammed joints.

This video shows how a jammed joint in the foot affects the hip flexor on the same side by weakening it. This intrigues me because I have had a weak left hip flexor along with misaligned joints in my left foot. The middle toe-pull move is supposed to fix the joint in the foot and thus strengthen the hip flexor. I can't always make it work, but last month it did work perfectly when my hip flexor was gimpy. If you scroll down this page you will see how to do a toe pull.



This video show how the limited motion of the heel in running shoes can impact the heel and create weakness in the hamstring.



This video explains the arthrokinetic response.



This one explains Z-Health in 3 minutes.



This video explains active vs. passive care. The body learns and responds best when it fixes itself not when someone else does the work. Of course it only shows the passive care with joint manipulations. If you look down this page a bit, you will see the outside toe-pull that is supposed to be the self-care for for the cuboid joint.



These final two videos explain more about Z-Health.





There is supposed to be a new Z-Health video coming out next month that explains more about the science of why Z-Health works. You can find out more about Z-Health here. What I would like to see from Z-Health is the "which" and "when" videos. They have some on the "how" and will be putting out the "why". It would be most beneficial to know which exercises to do for certain conditions, so you can use the correct joint mobility routines instead of hunting on your own for the right one which may or may not work. Seeing how quickly Dr. Cobb could manipulate a joint to jam and unjam it makes you wonder how a wrong movement pattern may be jamming joints and creating havoc in your body on a daily basis just due to bad movement patterns.

Carson Boddicker has an interesting blog post on the hip flexor muscle today regarding stretching and strengthening the psoas muscle. You can find it here  on his blog (also found under my blog list on the left of this page). He suggests doing moves like bridging before doing hip flexor stretching to fix dysfunctional movement patterns in the hips.