ARPwave Loosening

So, how does ARPwave loosening work? Well, it's quite simple: we know that a muscle needs to lengthen so that it can absorb more force, which is why people stretch. What we don't necessarily know is that traditional stretching actually ends up stretching tendons and ligaments, setting people up for injury.

In order for a muscle to lengthen, it needs to RELAX. Think about it; the reason you hit a wall in any range of motion is because of a muscle tightening. If the muscle can relax, you can move farther. And what controls a muscle's ability to relax? The nervous system.

The nervous system sends all of our muscles a signal to either turn on or turn off, to contract or to lengthen. Trying to stretch a muscle, you are fighting this underlying neurological signal that is turning the muscle on to protect itself. Instead of fighting the underlying signal, ARP loosening allows us to work with it.

The ARP can actually be set to send a signal to relax muscles, so that they can go through a greater range of motion. Altering that neurological message actually creates change at the foundation, allowing real adaptation to occur. Check out this video to see how PGA tour pros use the ARP to lengthen their muscles to prepare for workouts, both on the course and off.

Remember from our previous discussions that injuries come from problems with force absorption: if force entering the body is not absorbed by the muscles, it gets diverted to other areas that are not designed to handle it. Well, in order to be able to absorb force, a muscle needs to be able to eccentrically elongate. And that is exactly what we train with ARP loosening. With a two minute process, you can be prepared to perform with dramatically less risk of injury. No warm-up required.

As great as the ARPwave system is for rehabilitation of injury when it does happen, I always maintain that the greatest gift we can give is injury prevention. ARPwave loosening is the way to make an athlete more resistant to injury. Come try it out to see how this is possible.

Injury Prevention, A Case Study

Between 2000 and 2004, Augsburg College's Division-III football team had the following number of hamstring injuries:

2000: 11
2001: 14
2002: 9
2003: 10
2004: 12

The following two seasons, they incorporated ARPwave loosening in place of a traditional dynamic warm-up before all of their workouts, practices, and games. The number of hamstring injuries became

2005: 0
2006: 0

ARPwave loosening took the team from an average of 11 hamstring injuries per year to zero, and it did so while decreasing the amount of time necessary for preparation (a whole body loosening takes just 2-3 minutes, and the athlete is ready to perform immediately after without further warm-up).

The reason for this success is simple: the ARP can be used to instantaneously relax and elongate muscles. The end result of the ARPwave loosening process is a longer muscle, and a longer muscle can absorb more force and dramatically reduce the risk of injury. A longer muscle can also create more force, which is going to allow athletes to run faster, hit farther, and throw harder.

In the next post, we'll talk in detail about how the ARPwave loosening process works.