Body Tempering Techniques for Physical High Performance

With the evolution of the latest science and technology-backed tips, there are new ways emerging to protect your physical body from stress, inflammation and injury. In this blog we will introduce the emerging sports performance concept of body tempering (aka fortifying techniques). It can also be referred to as soft tissue mobilization, using techniques such as placing heavy weight cylinders or foam rollers across the body's muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia. This technique is reputed to help in preparing muscle for activity and also to improve muscular recovery. Let's get into the details.

How Body Tempering Can Increase Your Body Strength

‍Donnie Thompson, record holding powerlifter and leading proponent, says that body tempering helps in reducing muscle soreness or discomfort, and assists in boosting overall body performance.

“Tempering is a method in which pressure is imposed to increase strength and toughness, and this essentially serves to bring out the intrinsic properties of the material under stress. When we apply this to human beings, especially athletes, the severe testing conditions may be rendered highly resilient to future challenges and stressors.”

Tempering can potentially increase your body strength, which in turn is known to reduce risk of injury. Tempering rethinks sports injuries through the 'antifragility' lens and the general notion of how sports injuries linger. With this comes the concept of making athletes 'future proof', in terms of being robust enough to withstand various physical sports risks and scenarios that are often difficult to foresee.

When athletes do body tempering before a workout, it can potentially help in reducing the risk of hernias, muscle rupture, ligament tear and other injuries related to strength training. This technique also reduces the risk of trauma that is caused by breaking tissue out of the adhesive state, and also increasing an athlete's range of motion.

One of the key points to remember while doing body tempering is that one always does the active movement after the passive movement technique. This aids in locking in mobility changes during stretching actions.

How does Body Tempering Work?

It has been observed that body tempering is beneficial for athletes by assisting in the improvement of muscle condition, and as an alternative for the traditional form of stretching. Body tempering techniques work by strengthening the body from inside out. For someone who seeks gains in strength, their body must work together in order to act like an efficient machine. For this one needs to condition the nervous system and the body to work in synchrony.

Tempering or fortifying your body can also be done via controlled exposure to cold, to bolster the immune system, build resilience, stimulate the CNS (Central Nervous System), and increase muscle tone.

As seven-time Mr. Olympia Arnold Schwarzenegger noted, gaining an extra edge in muscle development makes all the difference.

The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion.

Body Tempering Routines

There are various muscular focal points and methods that coaches can work on using body tempering:

- Hamstrings: here the athlete needs to work on belly muscle by pushing back and forth.

- Frontside & Backside Work: the best posture for the body tempering is to start at the interior of the body and then work on the posterior of the body.

Targeted areas that are commonly treated with body tempering:

- Back

- Quads

- Hamstrings

- Calves

- Chest

- Abs

- Triceps

- Biceps

In the above-mentioned areas, body tempering techniques can be applied to increase resilience to muscle strains. When practiced over the the long term, it may offer a reliable way to sustainably increase overall body strength and physical robustness for high physical performance.

Consequently, this approach can play a significant role in injury prevention and in the rehabilitation of joint risks or movement range, such as with ankle strain or hamstring flexibility, to protect against the inevitable physical traumas that come with sports.

Takeaway

When we speak about the safeguarding measures and interventions to protect our body, body tempering appears promising. Adopting this perspective and general strategy for managing injury risk may offer of the best emerging methodologies to help athletes to overcome injuries, improve physical power, and enhance bodily kinaesthetic intelligence through stimulation of the nervous system.

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