Hear It From Andrew

I like to use an analogy for putting MAT into more understandable terms.  Our neuromuscular system is similar to using your cell phone.  Cell phones operate at their best when they have five bars of service.  When they only have one or two bars of service, the phone will work, but the reception isn't always great, calls/text don't always go through, and it drains the battery faster.  With MAT and the neuromuscular system, we are trying to take you from one to two bars of service, in that it gets your body from A to B, but you may move differently than you used to, might not even realize your body movement patterns are "off", and/or you may just be exhausted all the time without any rhyme or reason.  To taking it back up to four to five bars of service, movement isn't labored, have some "pep" in your step, enjoy the things that really matter to you, whether it's hauling groceries independently by yourself into your home, taking strokes off that golf game, running up and down the court with friends, playing on, and getting off of the ground with grand kids, and all of this without the pain you had.  

This is achieved by going through a thorough active range of motion (AROM), identifying bilateral AROM discrepancies, and treating all the muscles involved in the limited side.  This process is done when the practitioner palpates where a muscle attaches into bone, gently using friction onto the muscle tissue (which houses muscle spindles, the "cell phone towers of our body"). This will essentially improve your cell phone tower signal, this will then allow the muscle to contract more efficiently, which will help improve your range of motion, and also potentially lower your body's inflammatory response.