Over my 18 years in practice, I have developed dozens of techniques to isolate specific muscles and minimize injury. My guests love the techniques and I wanted a platform to not only share these stretches with them, but share with everyone. The result is the TIME Technique: Tension Isolation for Muscle Elasticity. These techniques allow you to isolate specific muscles, evaluate your mobility, and apply specific comfortable positions at a therapeutic tension to create normal elasticity and movement. This manual shows each stretch in detail, including photographs of me doing the stretches. Each stretch is placed on a single page so you can review it easily while you are performing it. It can be used by a professional as a reference to prescribe stretches, but it is easy enough for the general population to understand. With the exception of the name of the muscle itself, normal language is used. Isolating muscle tension has multiple benefits: -Reduces the risk of injury to other areas of the body. For example hurdler or seated hamstring stretch is notorious for causing low back problems; -Allows you to evaluate the elasticity of the muscle and measure improvement; and -Allows the rest of your body to be stress-free while you focus on allowing a specific muscle to let go. In addition to isolating the muscle, it is preferred to not put contact directly on a muscle while stretching it, so it should not be against the ground or be grabbed while stretching it. For example, when performing the classic seated hamstring stretch or hurdler stretch, the hamstring is on the ground. This interrupts normal muscle elongation and can cause injury and interferes with the brain’s ability to detect (and release) tension. When carefully followed, these stretches can help you achieve the perfect position and amount of tension to lengthen specific muscles in such a way that it will provide therapeutic benefit for you to decrease pain, heal injury and improve performance. It is a nice resource for anyone wanting to complement their athletic activities or reverse the effects of repetitive stress. It also complements other flexibility programs, such as Yoga, by allowing you to isolate specific areas and enhance your daily practice.
