muscle contraction

If you have had back pain, odds are that you have visited either a physical therapist or a chiropractor. They are the most frequented medical practitioners for all types of structural pain, and our teacher community has been enriched by both these (and many other types of) practitioners. For this post, I have invited Vera Baziuk, a chiropractor and Gokhale Method® teacher based in Edmonton, Canada, to join me for a Q&A. We would like to share with you how she sees the interface between chiropractic and our method. 

Using the word “eccentric” might sound like I’m about to write about muscles behaving in weird ways that are different from usual muscle behavior! But what I’m referring to, eccentric muscle contraction, is often pronounced ee-sen-trik, not ek-sen-trik. How muscles contract Eccentric muscle contraction is the reverse of the concentric contraction that we typically associate with muscle training. For example, the dumbbell curl that makespops up the bicep prominent as you lift the weight towards your shoulder is a concentric contraction. The muscle contracts and shortens. But lowering the dumbbell back down again, which requires the muscle to lengthen, also takes