What is Muscle Testing?

Muscle testing is one of the forms of neurological testing used at Spencare Chiropractic Health.  It follows the principle that when the body’s nervous system is not functioning properly, the body will not be able to adapt to increased amount of stress through a particular muscle, making a muscle seem weaker than what it should be.  Despite what it looks like, muscle testing is not used to determine the strength of a muscle.

The History of Applied Kinesiology Muscle Testing

Dr. George Goodheart performing a muscle test

Muscle testing is one of the foundations of testing in Applied Kinesiology.  It is similar to myotome testing, a procedure taught to all health care practitoners, but can be used for every muscle in the body and doesn’t rank the results of the test.  For AK muscle testing, a muscle is either “strong” or “weak”.  It was utilized and developed by the founder Dr. George Goodheart when he noticed that many individuals had weak testing muscles depsite having no signs of injury or atrophy.  One day, Dr. Goodheart noticed that a patient with weak neck muscles had nodules near the origin or beginning of that muscle.  After rubbing those nodules out, the corresponding muscle regained its functional strength when tested.  Dr. Goodheart used this information to identify what stresses or patterns would normally turn a strong muscle weak, and how to eliminate these stresses to restore a properly functioning nervous system for every muscle in the body.

In Applied Kinesiology, any muscle can be tested, even the ones in the mouth.  Clinical correlations have also been linked with each muscle in the body to particular organs and a particular nutrition.  For example, the deltoid muscle is related to the lungs in the body.  It is not uncommon for an individual who has the flu or the common cold to have a weak testing deltoid muscle.  The deltoid muscle is also correlated with vitamin C, indicating that someone with a weak deltoid muscle might be deficient in it (w

In Relation to Physical, Chemical, and Emotional Stresses

In Applied Kinesiology, muscle testing can be used to evalutate a person’s functional nervous system and find bodily dysfunctions caused by physical, chemical, even emotional stresses.  Hopefully by now the physical aspect of a weak functioning muscle should be obvious, whether due to trauma, mis-alignment/subluxation, or fatigue from overuse.  With regards to chemical stresses on the body, the nervous system immediately knows and reacts to things that it knows don’t belong inside of it causing it to go weak.  An extreme example is if a person were to consume poison.  Don’t you think that person’s nervous system and their muscles would react differently after consuming poison?  Another great example is that of allergies.  A person that may be lactose intolerant notices extreme bodily changes upon consuming too much dairy products and would also experience weakening of their muscles.  What many people don’t understand that many people do have adverse reactions to particular foods that they might not know about, which can be discovered through muscle testing.  On the reverse side, eating something that the body craves has also been shown to make a weak muscle strong.  For those with nutritional deficiencies, taking a supplement will make the body function properly, making that muscle stronger.

People also don’t realize that emotional stresses can be just as bad for the body as a physical or chemical stress.  Would you disagree that someone that is depressed would have a less than optimal body system?  Would you be surprised if that same person was not performing to their best compared to when they weren’t depressed?  How about when they are angry, frustrated, burnt out, etc?  Emotional stress is definitely a hidden factor in many people’s health conditions that is rarely addressed.  In Applied Kinesiology, emotional stresses can be identified and removed first by looking at muscle testing.

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