How the TB12 Method Can Help You Achieve Peak Performance at Any Age

In this interview, Alex Guerrero, cofounder of TB12 and personal body coach for Tom Brady — one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history — shares the natural and holistic program he developed with Brady, called the TB12 Method. Tom was told at one point that surgery for one of his injuries was unavoidable. This training method was said to have helped resolve his injury and return to the field, without surgery. 

The pair recently launched “The TB12 Method” mobile app on iOS, and co-wrote a New York Times best seller book about their philosophy, called “The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance.” A primary focus of the program is pliability training — deep force muscle work that lengthens and softens muscles at the same time those muscles are rhythmically contracted and relaxed. 

“I've been practicing this for a little over 20 years now, and when I first started, it was with the idea of just doing some good deep tissue work and helping athletes recover from whatever their injuries were at the time,” Guerrero says.

“Some of [my] clients … would feel better and would go back out and do their training, and then they would hurt themselves again … It became a pattern, and at some point I thought, ‘I really need to see what this mechanism of injury really is. And why are they feeling better but not getting better?’

As I started to … watch them actually train, I realized that everything they were doing, all their biomechanical movements … were all learned behavior. The brain was developing more neural pathways as it related to the way they were wanting to move. So, I thought our treatment principles should be based on the same thing.

And if the brain can create neural pathways based on functional movement, then I should be able to do some functional movement during my treatments so that the brain can create more neural pathways for getting better as opposed to just feeling better.”

Pliability Training

As he began working on muscle tissues through active ranges of motion, and having the client actively involved in the movement, they not only felt better but actually stopped reinjuring themselves. That’s when he realized that being pliable is different from being flexible.

Pliability actually correlates to how your brain connects to your body. In other words, it involves a neurological component in which the muscle-brain connection is being reeducated and rewired. According to Guerrero, pliability training is a good substitute for a regular warmup and/or cool down. He explains:

“In Tom's case, we will do pliability treatments [on the] lower limbs, calves, hamstrings, quads, hips, hip flexors and his right arm pre-practice. We do that to stimulate the nervous system. We want to activate his nervous system and get it primed and ready to perform its function of running and moving in quick ways, to be able to go out and throw the football 200 times and not be sore in his elbow or shoulder. (MORE)

Source: Mercola.com