I got home Sunday night from the first weekend of the R-Phase Z-Health cert. I confess, the system is WAYYYY more than I thought it was – even after having trained directly with Dr. Cobb. I think I would venture to say that it was a life-changing experience.
Before I went, I had been telling people that it was a “joint mobility” course, and it would help get people out of pain. Yes, it’s that, but it’s so much more. Now I tell people that it is about retraining the central nervous system (CNS) to help you move better, more efficiently, and get/stay out of pain. The response I have gotten has been, “oooh, cool” and one request to help a co-worker with his golf game.
At the cert, Dr. Cobb did a test on me to demonstrate how joint mobility affects strength. As I mentioned in my post about Swings and Levers, I used to have no hamstring strength and I could not swing more than a few reps without considerable pain. After a lot of joint mobility and some form improvements, my hamstring strength is now pretty good, which we demonstrated. To show the impact of a immobile joint, he jammed my heel joint and retested my hamstring strength. I had none – my hamstring actually cramped! He then had me do a few lateral ankle tilts to re-open the joint. Another retest, my hamstring strength was right back to where it was. He did similar demonstrations on others. If a joint isn’t working right, the associated muscle isn’t as strong as it can be. For anyone who is serious about performance, this is huge.
Dr. Cobb talks about the SAID (specific adaptation to imposed demand) extensively in his article The Logical Conclusion. This loosely translates in to “the body always gets better at exactly what it does”. For a KB lifter, it means that if you military press isn’t done perfectly, you’ve just taught yourself to be better at doing a bad military press. Pavel talks to this as well at the RKC (I know this, because he personally lectured me on this exact topic when I hurt my back doing swings).
My favorite part about this it that it is just how the body works, and the principles are the principles. (My other favorite part is that I came home feeling better than I have in probably 20 years – prior to breaking my back in a car accident).
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