You may have gone into a doctor’s office and had them check your muscle strength. Usually, this is used as a neurological test to see if your nerve roots (the spot where your nerves exit the spine) are functioning properly. These tests will give us a look into the nerve root, but they also let us test to see the functionality of the muscle itself, the function of the nervous system, and the function of the body’s physiology as a whole when performed correctly.

A muscle should always be strong enough to go through the full range of motion and resist pressure against strong pressure while contracted. When the muscle is “weak”, meaning it can not sustain the pressure or reach the full range of motion, there is some sort of disfunction happening either with the nerve or the muscle itself (for more information on these disfunctions, read my articles How do Subluxations happen? and The Five Factors). Using diagnostic tests, a clinician should be able to differentiate and treat the exact cause of the muscle disfunction.

In the study of anatomy, the nerve supplying the muscles extending directly across and acting at a given joint not only supplies the muscle, but also innervates the joint and the skin overlying the muscle.

Hilton’s Law- John Hilton

Using muscle tests, we can also find other problems within the body. Think of muscle testing as a window into your nervous system. When we put a stimulus into the body, said stimulus affects the muscle through the nervous system, which can cause a “strong” muscle to become “weak”. For example, If you have a strong bicep muscle when tested, then you touch a spot where you have pain, the “strong” bicep may become “weak”, indicating that there is a problem, disfunction, or subluxation in that area. I like to think of this as the stimulus causing the nervous system to become overloaded and causing a short circuit affecting the entire body. These stimuli can be a multitude of things like touch (pain, temp and proprioceptive neurons, acupuncture, etc.), taste (gustatory reflex), or even thoughts and sound.

As a clinician, I use muscle testing to locate and clear problems. When these problems are cleared, the body can start to heal itself fully. Many of the techniques which I practice use the art of muscle testing, namely Applied Kinesiology and Neuro-Emotional Technique. I do this so that your body will tell me what problems are going on and what it is ready to work on. I do not need to rely solely on intuition or palpatory skills. This is a direct arrow, allowing me to pinpoint the root causes of your problems.