The New Frontier

Nice post Gabe. Will check out the article and keep us current with the specifics of how you like to use it and what patients seem to respond the best. Vibrations and oscillations are where the game is…

Great article Gabe. Fascinating overlay with neuroplasticity. I’ve always felt that environmental factors are under appreciated in functional training from a neural perspective.

Really interesting frontier and a great article, Gabe. Oscillations, in general, do seem to repeatedly show up in many discussion sections of primary literature sources. Of interest, in 2008 Jonathan Rees, following Stanish (1986) and Alfredson’s (1998) famous eccentric tendinopathic regimens, revealed high frequency oscillations in tendon force present during eccentric loading. These, he proposed, may function on dysfunctional tendons in like manner to Wolff’s bone remodelling theory. Any thoughts on this from your research? Again, nice article.

First off, thanks for the compliments Chris and Bronwyn.

Jonathan,

I am unfamiliar with the work of Reese etc., but there is quite a bit of work being done that looks at external oscillatory force and its influence on human tissue. There is also quite a bit of theory on the natural oscillatory nature of the human body and the tissue within it.

When discussing vibration training, I always point out that there are many aspects of everyday life where the body attempts to react to a vibratory influence upon it. A good example would be heel strike and the vibrational dampening that occurs with the quadriceps, glutes etc. as they respond to the ground reaction force. This is referred to as “muscle tuning” and the “muscle tuning hypothesis” describes the potential means (at least one of them) by which WBV can benefit a patient. The ability to dampen also emphasizes the amazing ability of the nervous system to adapt through feedback and feedforward mechanisms.

As far as eccentric loading, it would make sense that perhaps the contractions are also requiring this muscle tuning phenomenon to occiur. Much like wolff’s law on bone, perhaps it may occur in line with the direction of stress and load tensioning.

I will have to check it out.

Thanks, Gabe. I will certainly have to read up on the muscle tuning hypothesis. Sounds very interesting. I also could not agree with you more regarding the importance of most closely mimicking, during rehabilitation, those forces our bodies experience during functional, everyday activities.