I am going to post a few entries on different soft tissue techniques I use in my Madrid Chiropractic Clinic. The first post is on MET. The next post will be on Positional Release Techniques.

Muscle Energy Techniques (MET)

These techniques are personal favourites of mine and I use them extensively.  Almost all of my patients with neck problems receive at some point some MET work. In every (and I mean every) patient that I have treated with MET who has had pain when turning their head to the side, they have in the space of a few minutes of treatment been able to turn their head further to the side without pain.

Sometimes MET can be extremely effective. Yesterday I had the experience of seeing a patient that had a lot of pain when turning to the right and not being able to turn the full distance. After MET treatment he was able to turn completely to the right without pain. This obviously isn’t every patients experience of MET, but it can be a great way to treat some problems. My patients really like it as well because it is not a painful technique.
These techniques are pretty simple to perform. One aspect that I really like about them is that the patient can easily perform them in their own home. They are a bit strange to perform and typically the hardest part of showing them to patients is trying to get them to be gentle when they do them.

MET is not a uniquely Chiropractic technique. In fact it developed out of the work of some Osteopaths in the 60′s. These days it is adopted by Chiropractors, Physios, Massage Therapists and Osteopaths.

So what are MET techniques?

They are a group of techniques that use the patients energy to lengthen a muscle that is locked or in spasm. They can also be used to strengthen weakened muscles and to free up joint movement.

There are different ways and different situations that require different MET techniques, but the easiest way to understand what it is might be to go through an example.

Imagine you have a biceps muscle that is in spasm. This means the biceps muscle which is on your upper arm will be in spasm and most likely your arm will be fully bent at the elbow because the biceps muscle is flexed.

On the underside of your upper arm is the triceps muscle. This muscle  works to straighten your arm at the elbow. This muscle has to be relaxed when you flex your biceps muscle or else it will work against the force of your biceps muscle and stop any movement. This fact that when you use one muscle, the muscles that work to do the opposite become relaxed is important to MET.

It is possible to use the idea that the muscles that work in the opposite way to the muscle that is being used are relaxed (this is also called reciprocal inhibition). In our biceps example if we tried to use the triceps muscle , how would the body respond? The body’s natural response to trying to use the triceps muscle would be to relax the biceps muscle.

This is one example of a muscle energy technique.  The way I typically use MET is by stopping any movement in the muscle I am trying to treat and also in the muscles that are working in the opposite way to the muscle that has a problem. I have found that a very light force is far more effective than when the patient uses a lot of strength.

In our biceps example this would mean stopping any movement in the elbow and asking the patient to straighten their arm using 10% of their force. While the patient applies this gentle force, their nervous system is sending a message to their biceps muscle to relax. This is all happening without any movement in their elbow and without having to touch the biceps muscle.

If you are experiencing problems with pains in muscles and joints and are looking for an alternative solution I would really recommend considering MET as one part of a treatment plan. There is lots of information about MET on the web, one person I really recommend looking for is Leon Chaitow. He has written a couple of books on the subject that are exceptional.