Muscle Memory!

We get asked a lot of questions during treatments, but some occur time and time again. Many of you will be familiar with the life size anatomical charts on the wall of the clinic which draw great interest. Clients frequently observe how incredible, how, interesting and how complex the body is, which, in turn leads into one of the most common questions we are asked here at The Reinge Clinic: 'How do you remember all those muscles ?'

Good question, because there are 600 to 800 muscles in the body, opinions differ on what constitutes one muscle 🙄 , not to mention 206 bones 😵. (Enter that pub quiz now! 🤣)

So, how do we remember them all, well actually that bit is relatively easy! It may take many years to learn them all, but once you have done that, well.... nothing really changes...... Everybody has the same number and arrangement regardless of gender or race and we have to think about them every day in order to solve problems, so each days work acts as a constant reminder.

In fact, I often comment that I feel a mechanic has more to learn and remember than us, because every manufacturers car is different to another.

What the question actually leads to is that it's not really about remembering the muscles and bones, it's really about understanding how they all act and interact and in particular; how those interactions change when an injury occurs. That's the bit where we actually have to get clever , because all of a sudden it's individual to the client, no two injuries are ever really the same. That often gets us reaching for our anatomy books and having discussions over the dining rom table. 🤣 . The longer a client has had the problem, more complex the issue becomes as the body adapts and compensates making muscles do some very interesting things sometimes! We often refer to an onion analogy. In the centre of the onion is the initial problem or injury the client received. Over years layers of adaptive muscle compensation will occur to keep you functioning. Our job is to peel off those layers and get back to the original issue so we can fix it. Now that bit does take some serious anatomical knowledge.

That knowledge can only be gained through good old fashioned time served and experience. Rather luckily, Gina and I have over 42 years of experience between us and there really is very little we haven't seen or dealt with in that time. That's the wonderful thing about this job, just like a bottle of good wine, it improves with age 🤣

So that's how we remember it all and if you have a problem that 'cant be solved' give us a call, you may be surprised 😀.