Massage Therapy Journal Winter 2024

74 • Massage Therapy Journal

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Spindle-Stim Techniques Wake Up Inhibited and Weakened Muscles

Learn the drawbacks of muscle memory, and how spindle-stim techniques can help “wake up” neurologically inhibited muscles.

A ny professional athlete can tell you how building muscle memory improves their game. A tennis player starts with forehand and backhand strokes, practicing the proper grip, stance and swing mechanics under the guidance of a coach. At first, their movements are slow and carefully controlled to emphasize form and accuracy, helping encode the correct sequence of movements. Footwork drills, hitting targets with the ball, serving from different locations on the court, and combining different strokes and movements build the automaticity for the speed, agility, efficiency and accuracy necessary to win games. We all recognize that muscles don’t actually have memories, but we use the term muscle memory as an analogy because it captures the sense that

By Erik Dalton

our muscles are performing tasks in a coordinated way without requiring conscious thought. The reality is that all that movement is controlled by several brain regions, complex signaling along neural pathways, spinal reflexes and proprioceptive feedback mechanisms. Initially, when we perform voluntary movements, such as reaching for an object or walking, the brain consciously controls these actions. Similarly, reflexive movements, such as withdrawing your hand from a hot surface, are triggered by external stimuli and involve specific neural pathways that bypass the brain for quicker responses. Ideally, the brain initiates both voluntary and reflexive movements; the movements occur and then end. Once we stop moving or the stimulus prompting

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