Summer 2022 - 32

TIGHTNESS
AS A SYMPTOM OF
MUSCLE WEAKNESS
By Wesley Sykes, Managing Editor
G
reg Roskopf was 19 years old when he
fractured his L5 vertebrae in his lumbar
spine. The injury forced him to cut his football
career short and, eventually, led him to a strength
and conditioning career working with such
professional teams as the Denver Broncos, Utah
Jazz, San Francisco 49ers, and Denver Nuggets.
But more than all of that, Roskopf's injury led
to a breakthrough discovery in how to treat and
prevent chronic pain.
He was 25 years old and could benchpress
400 pounds and squat another 500, and, yet,
he was dealing with chronic pain.
" I could barely touch my knees nevermind my
toes, " he recalled. " I wore knee wraps. I wore
weight belts. I had orthotics. I had all these
forms of external artificial stability devices to
give me the support that my muscles weren't
providing for me. "
He sought out every specialist he could in an
effort to find a solution to his chronic pain. And
at every appointment, he noticed a through
point - everyone said he was 'tight.' The
recommendation was stretching, foam rolling,
dry needling, and deep-tissue massages to
loosen up the muscle and tissue. And the next
day after a massage he couldn't get out of bed
due to numbness and shooting pain throughout
his body.
" What was wrong with me? I understood
32 | Tactical Training & Conditioning | Summer 2022
how the body works, I worked out, and was
successful in training professional athletes, " he
said. " If this was how I felt at 25, what would
happen at 50? "
His injury led him to develop the Muscle
Activation Techniques (MAT) to rewire the way
his nervous system communicates with his
muscle system.
" Being a range of motion (ROM) specialist, I
started to see a pattern emerging: Wherever I
saw limitations in ROM, there were correlating
muscle weaknesses. Because of some of the
negative issues I was experiencing personally
through my ROM-based treatments, I thought
maybe this tightness that I've been taught to
focus on is a symptom, " Roskopf said. " Maybe
the tightness relates to another underlying
problem: muscle instability. "
Roskopf explains it like walking on a sheet
of ice. When you do that, you tend to revert to
your center of gravity and take shorter steps to
Summer 2022

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