Fitness: All Systems Go
“You’ll injure yourself.” These cautionary words came from my unofficial marathon coach, my friend Jacob, the one who recently ran a 50-mile race over punishing hills and is familiar with every species of ache and strain, the one who sternly admonished that I was running too fast—the one I should have listened to before the intermittent twinge in my left leg blossomed into a constant shooting pain that one afternoon left me hobbled on a lonely stretch of Brooklyn asphalt, unable to continue.
Then a colleague at Vogue told me about Troy Stallman who agreed to assess my situation at his Manhattan facility, All Systems Go. Troy specializes in something called Muscle Activation Techniques (M.A.T.). The idea behind M.A.T. is that many aches and pains, including sports injuries, are the result of weakness, which causes some muscles to work too hard as others shut down. “Your body is like a symphony orchestra,” explained Troy, who wields his metaphors with the same confidence he applies to a knotty quadricep. “Some muscles are tuned up and ready to play; others are off in the corner, smoking.” Inevitably, he said, the weak muscles stay weak, while the strong get stronger, leading to additional stress and imbalance. Troy’s mission is to wake up the sleepy ones—or, since the signals from brain to muscle are like cars on a superhighway, to make sure all lanes of traffic are open and flowing.
-Vogue
