Applied Kinesiology

Has anyone had any experience/knowledge with applied kinesiology?

Thomas Kurz recommends it in his book (Stretching Scientifically) to balance out muscle imbalances. 

Also found this video on youtube (interesting stuff): 

Thanks in advance

PS: Am i the only one that watches the GB intro video on the home page before every workout for motivation? 

It's weird.  I went to chiropractic school and took the class as an elective.  There may be some applications, but there's A LOT of purely subjective testing (the practitioners I've encountered aren't interested in objective measures of strength output; they preferred the "feel") and a ton of conjecture.  We've tried testing the AK peoples' accuracy in determining muscle weakness and found very poor reliability when they didn't have a chance to confer with one another.  

Sven Ravnstag said:

It's weird.  I went to chiropractic school and took the class as an elective.  There may be some applications, but there's A LOT of purely subjective testing (the practitioners I've encountered aren't interested in objective measures of strength output; they preferred the "feel") and a ton of conjecture.  We've tried testing the AK peoples' accuracy in determining muscle weakness and found very poor reliability when they didn't have a chance to confer with one another.  

Ironically, many people would say the same thing about chiropractic.

That's not ironic at all; it's to be expected that a profession in which a good deal of pseudoscience is tolerated would provide fertile ground for a pseudoscientific diagnostic system.

One of the major problems with the chiropractic profession is that it's difficult to make umbrella statements regarding much of anything about it. There are chiropractors doing so many different things and claiming so many different benefits and applications for all of them that people within the profession only have a vague idea of what's going on in the profession as a whole. Everyone who practices thinks that what they do is what constitutes chiropractic, and that goes for the nutcases as well as the legitimate practitioners.

Well if you're going to be all reasonable and rational about chiropractic's legitimacy, then I guess it's not really ironic after all... But it could have been!

Sorry...I've got to be hyper-rational to inoculate myself against the weird!

So this is the reason that doctors generally disregard chiropractics, because of the pseudo science? I only know 2 chiropracters, and they have been extremely competent. I do not know their method nor do I care what they do as long as it works!

Fresh-

MDs who think poorly of chiropractors do so for a number of reasons, some of which is based on legitimate concerns or negative personal experiences from co-managing a patient with a DC. Others are ignorant about chiropractic and speak the opinion of someone who taught them what to think on the subject.

My experience with the profession has led me to believe that the main problem is the lack of quality control in the profession. It's like the Wild West in terms of what chiros are doing and how they choose to practice. There are plenty of DCs doing good work, but this has more to do with their own professional ethic in seeking out legitimate standards and technique than from some central source of practice standards.

I don't discourage people from seeing a DC, but as a soon to be graduate of chiropractic school u feel compelled to offer meaningful criticism of problems I believe to be more or less endemic to the profession.

Whatever your experience with a DC, because of the lack of uniformity in what constitutes the practice of chiropractic, it's difficult to extrapolate that experience to the profession as a whole because of the lack of uniformity in even basic practice procedures. If you have a great experience with a DC and refer a friend to another doctor across town, their experience may be profoundly different. And in chiropractic there's an unfortunate preponderance of weird and dogmatic that interferes with what the legit practitioners are trying to accomplish.

Sven Ravnstag said:

Fresh-

MDs who think poorly of chiropractors do so for a number of reasons, some of which is based on legitimate concerns or negative personal experiences from co-managing a patient with a DC. Others are ignorant about chiropractic and speak the opinion of someone who taught them what to think on the subject.

My experience with the profession has led me to believe that the main problem is the lack of quality control in the profession. It's like the Wild West in terms of what chiros are doing and how they choose to practice. There are plenty of DCs doing good work, but this has more to do with their own professional ethic in seeking out legitimate standards and technique than from some central source of practice standards.

I don't discourage people from seeing a DC, but as a soon to be graduate of chiropractic school u feel compelled to offer meaningful criticism of problems I believe to be more or less endemic to the profession.

Whatever your experience with a DC, because of the lack of uniformity in what constitutes the practice of chiropractic, it's difficult to extrapolate that experience to the profession as a whole because of the lack of uniformity in even basic practice procedures. If you have a great experience with a DC and refer a friend to another doctor across town, their experience may be profoundly different. And in chiropractic there's an unfortunate preponderance of weird and dogmatic that interferes with what the legit practitioners are trying to accomplish.

I know that there are big differences between practices, I just wanted to know why