To complement the article “Targeted Muscle Testing: A Kinesthetic Approach to Address Muscle Weakness” in the December 2014 issue of MASSAGE Magazine. Summary: Quick Self Fixes are a series of specific connective tissue stretches and joint motions; they provide a way for massage therapists and others to help strengthen weak muscles.
Thinkstock | Dorling Kindersley
True or false: Exercise is the only way to make weak muscles strong.
False. A significant number of weak muscles can be made instantly strong, and kept strong, by doing specific connective tissue stretches and joint motions—Quick Self Fixes. The underlying concept of this approach, created by chiropractor and kinesiologist Cassius Camden Clay, D.C., is that making space within the body’s tissues at precisely the correct places strengthens muscle function by allowing for better movement of the body’s energies and fluids. The connective tissues we stretch include ligaments, tendons and fascia. They are a complex network of intertwined layers of strong, interweaving tissues that connect and hold everything in the body together. Nerves, blood vessels, lymphatic channels and cerebrospinal fluid spaces are supported by and travel through this massive connective tissue system. Making space within the body’s tissues at precisely the correct places instantly strengthens targeted muscle movement.
Quick Self Fixes can have a significant effect on posture, balance, gait and athletic function. Jake Knighton, a USA Weightlifting Level 1 sports-performance coach, uses Quick Self Fixes during training. “When I was introduced to Quick Self Fixes, I was skeptical,” he said. “After taking the course, I was a believer. As an Olympic weightlifting coach, I had to try it on my clients. It wasn’t until after their dramatic, instant improvements that I was 100-percent sold.
“After they did their fixes, they were no longer favoring a side in their squats, and those little nagging injuries and pains went away in due time,” Knighton continued. “This is an invaluable tool for any coach.”
Quick Self Fixes were developed from multiple bodywork disciplines, including chiropractic, massage, assisted yoga, osteopathy and Targeted Muscle Testing. Designed to emulate the muscle-strengthening effects of these practitioner-performed disciplines, Quick Self Fixes are self-maintenance techniques that empower individuals to enable or enhance their own bodies, as needed, without additional cost or appointment time. This is an important health and cost-saving benefit, because a person may need many individual fixes to retain strength over time.
This Biceps Tendon Fix makes the biceps brachii muscle instantly strong.
The setup
1. To fix the right biceps, allow your right arm to hang loosely at your side, with the palm lightly touching the front of your right thigh.
2. Use the thumb of your left hand to pin the biceps tendon on the front of the upper right arm, just below the head of the humerus. (Don’t pin too high.) Your thumb will be parallel to the floor and pressing the tendon firmly, yet not painfully, toward your opposite shoulder.
3. To stabilize this pin, place the four fingers of your left hand onto your right shoulder.
Note: Do not cause pain. Be gentle.
The fix
Hold your left thumb pin steady while you flip your right arm at a slow speed outward, backward and behind your body. At the end of this motion, your arm is straight at the elbow and your palm faces away from your body. This motion externally rotates your arm from the shoulder, stretching the biceps tendon under your pin.
About the Author
Barbara Sharp is a licensed massage therapist in Marietta, Georgia, with 20 years of experience. She found Targeted Muscle Testing, Quick Self Fixes (www.quickselffixes.com) and assisted yoga postures from Thai massage so helpful that she expanded her class note-taking skills into writing three full curriculums to help others have a written resource to learn from and reference. See www.quickselffixes.com for a 30-minute video and 16-page, printable booklet of five Targeted Muscle Tests and corresponding Quick Self Fixes for the shoulder.