Summer 2022 - 33

Greg Roskopf has 30 years of experience
working with such teams as the Denver
Broncos, San Francisco, Utah Jazz, and
Denver Nuggets.
to compensate for that and show up tight. The
tightness is secondary to weakness.
That tightness you feel is a good thing as it's
an attempt from the body to protect itself. And
yet, the recommendation was for Roskopf to
continue to loosen up the same muscles that
were tightening for protection. The American
College of Sports Medicine came out with a
position paper in 2011 evaluating all of the
research on stretching and came to three
conclusions:
* Passive stretching doesn't change any longterm
flexibility
* Passive stretching does nothing to relieve
muscle soreness
* Passive stretching can decrease force output
of the muscle for up to an hour
" Why would anyone want to decrease the
avoid the risk of injury. It's your body's natural
response to protect yourself. So, it's easy to
take this concept and apply it to the tightness
you feel in your muscles.
Muscles move bones and keep them in proper
alignment. If there's a restriction it's because
the muscles that are supposed to move you in
that position can't move in that position. When
muscles lose the ability to contract properly
they lose the ability to move bones the way
they're designed to move.
" Structure dictates function, " he added. " And
when muscles get injured they get weaker. Pain
is our check engine light. "
When muscles lose the ability to contract
due to stress, trauma ,or overuse, muscles lose
the ability to contract e3ffeicialy. When that
happens they lose the ability to shorten. So
when one muscle contracts, another one has
to relax. So when a muscle loses the ability to
contract efficiently, the other muscles will have
force output of their muscles before running a
sprint? Or before a competition? Or a battle? I
imagine these studies were done on collegeaged
student-athletes, who can bounce back
from a lot of things quicker than the average
person. So I was getting stretched out,
forcefully increasing my range of motion and I
couldn't get out of bed, " he said.
Tightness is secondary to neuromuscular
weakness. And whenever you have mobility
without stability you have a vulnerability to
injury. It's been reported that 55 percent of
soldiers will suffer a musculoskeletal injury at
one point.
" We need to teach people to move because
if we're dysfunctional sometimes functional
movement can reinforce dysfunction, "
Roskopf said. n
To learn more about Greg Roskopf, his
career, and the study of muscle activation
techniques (MAT), visit gregroskopf.com.
tacticaltrainingandconditioning.com | 33
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Summer 2022

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