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| Pain | Dancer and sportsmen have well-trained muscles. Does that mean that they are free of pain? No, they often have to struggle with specific problems relating to the locomotive system, which can seriously affect their performance in their professional life and their free time.
Dancers suffer more from complaints of the lower half of the body: backache, knee pain, pulled muscles of the inner side of the leg, pain in the lower leg and joints of the foot...
For sportsmen, the symptoms depend on the nature of their particular sport. For almost every type of sport there are typical patterns of pain or movements which are frequently painful. Golfers, tennis players, footballers etc., all have their specific weak points. Well-trained muscles, and still pain?
How can that be? What is the cause?
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| | Causes | Seen from the FMT point of view, the cause of upset balance lies within the entire muscle system. What is the best way to picture this?
The muscle system adapts to the demands and strains imposed by our daily lives. That is, depending on how and how much I train, my muscles are in different conditions regarding length and strength.
Strength is determined by the amount of muscle tissue.
Length is determined by the order of the muscle tissue.
If a muscle is well-trained in length and strength, then the muscle tissues are not only arranged in order next to each other, but also behind each other i.e. the muscle is long and slim, but also powerful. If a muscle is only trained for power, then its muscle tissues are arranged parallel, i.e. the muscle is thick and short. Both variations have the same amount of muscle tissue, but the muscle tissue is arranged differently.
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| |  For pain to arise, not only strength but also the ability of the muscle to be lengthened is of particular importance. A careful balance in the entire muscle system is necessary for dancers and sportsmen to be able to move without pain.
I would like to illustrate this with a diagram:
The vertical arrow represents the length of the muscle. The horizontal arrow shows the muscle thickness. The different bars correspond to individual muscles. The area of the bars represents muscle strength.
Illustration 1 shows the condition of an untrained person without any complaints. His muscles are not particularly long or thick, but roughly equally formed. The muscle system is balanced. He is basically free of problems, but is not capable of any special physical achievements and is susceptible to muscle injury if subjected to sustained exertion or unaccustomed strain.
Illustration 2 shows the condition of a football player with complaints. Due to the nature of his training, many of his muscles are highly trained, but in thickness rather than in length i.e. considerable strength but little length. Some muscles which are used less frequently in this sport have practically the same condition as in an untrained person. This leads to an imbalance in the muscle system. Injuries and muscle function disturbances may easily occur if movements require too much length from the “short and thick” muscles.
Illustration 3 shows the condition of a dancer with complaints. Much more length is required in training. Many of the muscles are long and thin i.e. a lot of length and strength. The muscle mass is distributed more along the length, therefore the dancer has as much strength in his slim trained muscles as the footballer in his fatter trained muscles. In the dancer, too, some muscles are less highly trained than others, causing an imbalance in the muscle system. As for the footballer, muscles are at risk of injury from function disturbances, but in this case by too much length being demanded of the untrained muscles.
All in all it is therefore important that the relationship in length is balanced within the muscle system in order to be able to move without pain.
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| | Therapy | | Therapy consists basically of re-establishing balance in the muscle system. In the case of acute pain, the affected muscles must be treated manually. Training should thereafter be suitably altered, also to prevent any re-occurrence.
I.e. the football player should train his muscles more for length in order to achieve a balance in length in the muscle system. The dancer should involve the untrained muscles more in the training, even if they do not play as important a role in dancing.
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| | Muscle lengthening training according to FMT
Here just a basic word as there are few generally applicable exercises. They have to be put together for each person individually.
The purpose of training should be to stimulate the organism to form new muscle tissue (more strength) and to arrange it in muscles in series (more length).
This can be achieved, for example, by stretching a muscle to its furthest length and working it at that point against resistance.
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| | An example
Training the large pectoral muscle (M. pectoralis major)
Lie on the back on a narrow training bench (approx. 40 cm wide). The feet are placed on the floor (knees bent 90°, legs slightly apart). Train with weighted cuffs around the wrists. The stretched arms are moved in a circular movement from the body to the head and back, whereby they should remain as far as possible behind the frontal plane of the body.
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