Zenker Theory - Nature of the Beast

[Guest guest]

Dear Mel:

I'm really dumbfounded that these seemingly common linguistics I am

using are so difficult. Especially after searching well over 1,000

pages of abstracts relative to explaining my findings. I have also

reviewed and archived and gone through with and highlighted most every

thing in your P & Ps and physio. I was sensitized to this linguistics

issue when you brought it up on the Physio group.

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/physio/2000-07/0203.html

I will try my very best to watch my language so as to better clarify

the main issues. I have found in practice that getting patients and

athletes to understand how to make there bodies move and function

better is highly individual and emotional, especially when you are

dealing with all the underpinnings surrounding posture and pain. As a

result I am most successful when using analogies relative to their

experience. My walls are covered with posters, standard anatomical and

those that I have made as well as overheads to help teach individuals

the; what, where and whys. I have accumulated and created thousands of

images mpegs etc to try to accomplish this daunting task. So am I

sensitive to this issue ?

As you have pointed out repeatedly the problem lies in the perceptions

and conclusions that people have drawn and self perceptions based

largely fallacious half truths. But try to tell someone they are wrong

and you loose them in a heart beat. People don't want to be told your

wrong and I'm right. So rather than go there I try to find whats right

and help modify and improve the perceptions, using analogies,

pictures, peppered with a few new words. To the average individual, if

you bring up a word that even vaguely sounds scientific and they

become almost defensive or and withdrawn. This seems to stem from

another important issue, know one wants to look bad or dumb. So am I

sensitive to the issue of watching my language, you be the judge.

I was confident that using linguistics commonly used in the literature

with a group such as this would allow me to easily elucidate and

support my findings, but this assumption, has failed miserably. I use

the online dictionaries quite frequently when I come across a word

that doesn't jive. (http://www.onelook.com/) some times the

linguistics in the most current literature (peer reviewed) can't be

found. It's interesting to sometimes get a broader representation for

a particular word from different dictionaries or look it up in the

thesaurus, this gives possibly a broader " general schema " for the

meaning. A general schema at a biophysical level is described as an

interphyletic awareness or a common design across biophysical

structure and function, especially that of CNS. Just go to Pub Med

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed) and type

interphyletic. Especially interesting are these two:

Stein PS. Central pattern generators and interphyletic awareness.

Katz PS Neurons, networks, and motor behavior.

Now hit related articles in a new window and what you will find, (if

you aren't already interphyleticly aware) well it blew-my-mind and

opened not only a more diverse understanding but a humbleness and awe

and glimpse into the grand design. Is ancient wisdom (gut feeling and

intuition) partly true (just a matter of linguistics and

interpretation and refinement of the model) Should we resist the

tendency to always throw the baby out with the bath water or reinvent

the wheel but advance it and remodel it perhaps to a higher level.

The thing that helped me when searching the abstracts is to keep

anther window open with a dictionary so I can quickly search words

that disrupt my flow of comprehension.

Using this related articles button and pressing the show # to a larger

number allows you to scan relevant abstracts, as well as limiting the

search to reviews helps. Most of the hundreds of abstracts and

research I have archived span many diverse fields and correlative the

interphyletic awareness now being seen. It has allowed a better

understanding of how adaptation relates to genetics (largely from a

process called mechanotranscription) and how incredibly adaptive and

plastic we are. Some of the searches that allowed a broader insight

are as follows: Autonomic and imagery, activation frequency and muscle

performance, Chaos and Coordination, cocontraction, Complexity and the

nervous system, corticospinal and motor imagery, Central Pattern

Generators and Proprioception, elastic recoil energy, Fusimotor,

imagery and motor skill, injury AND incoordination, Kinesthetic and

graviception reference for posture, kinetic chain and rehabilitation,

Loading and healing, Load-regulating mechanisms in gait and posture,

Motion & postural dynamics, motor and afferent and feedback and

performance, motor competence & self esteem, motor memory, Motor and

Skill and sensory, Motor and Skill and plasticity, movement dynamics

perspective, muscle Spring model, Neuromodulators and synaptic

strength, Neuro-motor intention, Neuronal Pattern generation,

Goldspink G and muscle and metabolism, pattern generators and

proprioception, Proprioception and movement, Proprioception and

stimulus-response compatibility, Proprioceptive regulation of

locomotion, Protein and Kinase and Exercise, Quanta and proton motive

force, Rhythmicity and preperformance, Sale DG and Postactivation

potentiation, sensorimotor training and neuromuscular control, Spatial

Codes and Precues, muscle fatigue, Tone and Tensegrity, vibration and

human, viscoelastic characterization, IGF AND integrins, Dendritic

plasticity, Fusimotor and discharge and rhythmic and movement, Golf

Motor and Skill and sensory, mechanoreceptors, Muscle spindle and

motor leaning, Proprioception and kinesthesis, Rapid and plasticity,

Muscular imbalance, extracellular matrix and gene expression and

mechanical, Proprioception and arthritis, regulating and Ca2,

Summation & Temporal, Viscoelastic, cell adhesion and synaptic

plasticity, stored elastic energy, Instability and Stabilization,

Sensory and motor and learning, proprioception and integrins and

Mechanotransduction, Synchronization, Transcription and exercise and

calcium and plasticity, tensegrity and mechanotransduction, long term

potentiation, dynamic and synaptic efficacy, optimal function theory

AND performance, individual zones of optimal functioning model,

optimal function AND peak performance AND sport, Neurotrophin

regulation AND synaptic transmission, Brain & motor learning, brain

MAPS cortical organization, calcium signaling, oscillatory kinetics,

Transcriptional gene expression skeletal muscle, somatotopical

representations ….

These are a partial sampling of the abstracts that I have archived,

read, highlighted and put in a folder called !!!book. By the way if

there are any publishers out there??? Because I'm ADHD (controlled)

and impulsive, as you can see one thing always led to another to

search for some answers and models. Over the past 25 years I have

become a packrat and hoarder of articles and literature, I just can't

throw the stuff away.

The above are a sampling not to impress anyone but perhaps a glimpse

of the nature of the beast and my obsessive search for some dam

answers. So do you think I have derived all my ideas from some

guru, you can only be the judge. I am only wishing to share some of my

experience and more importantly share a methodology that took 25 years

to find (I'm a little slow) something that in itself (discovered by

the way serendipitously out of frustration) represents the

accumulation of many years of trial and error and tactile sensitivity.

I truly believe that there is some truth in everything but connecting

everything to everything is why science and the human experience are

not YET or will ever be entwined. It's important not to jump to

conclusion, throw the baby out with the bath water and to try to see

and help even the gurus expand their horizons. A daunting task indeed.

You can't be all things to all people, but there is an interphyletic

(is you will) commonality.

" However, " interphyletic awareness, " as it was referred to at this

conference, is not important just for what it can tell us about how

mammals work. It is also important to learn of alternative ways in

which organisms solve similar problems…. The next revolution in the

field is likely to come from a paradigm shift regarding such control

of motor circuits, similar to the shift that has already occurred in

our understanding of the pattern-generating circuits themselves. Such

flexibility of control is the basis for decision making in the nervous

system and the very essence of what animals must do throughout their

daily lives. " Katz PS, Neuron 1996 Feb;16(2):245-53 Neurons,

networks, and motor behavior

Quite frankly I thought that everyone with a little background could

readily see a bigger picture here. However I plead guiltily to

dysgraphia, (I also suck at numbers). But what all athletes, and I'm

very partial to athletes, are able to experience is a commonality of

the rewards of peak performance states and sensing the elements that

can get us higher and higher. Doing it for the rewards and fun of

doing it, autotelic. That is of course unless the individual is

misguided or corrupted by doing " IT " for other rewards, looking good

to other people. I'm not by any means on any lofty pedestal, I have

spent considerable time skiing the bumps under chair lifts full

people. But this some how as everyone can attest to, provides a little

extra inspiration and spark.

I'll stop here and try in an upcoming post to possibly bring some

simple applications I have found for this methodology. I have called

this methodology CTK, Counter Tension Kinetics only because after

searching and studying many techniques and exercise systems there

really isn't anything quite exactly the same. However it has elements

of ballistics, plyometrics, PNF, active forms of myofascial release,

stretching, various forms of sensorimotor training etc. I'm not that

hung up on a name but if it's different you have to call it something.

Sincerely seeking

Dr. Zenker

Performance Edge Dynamics

Santa Cruz, CA

" The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is

the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is

a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,

is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. " (Albert Einstein)