How ABR Nutures a Proper Trunk – Limb Coordination

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We are supplying this link so that all can see a great illustration of how the proper body – limb coordination works.

This is the example salamandra shows us on the left. The body starts with the undulatory motion, and the limbs follow the undulation of the body. The example in the middle has a blocked undulatory motion, but she still can come forwards. On the right however we see an example of the inverted coordination. When the limbs react first and try to impose this movement to the central connections (spine) – then the complete chaos occurrs. This shows us the fundamental issue with any training based upon a method that starts with the periphery – limbs, through imposing movements on to the child from without through devices, splints, commands, standing frames, etc. Then one imposes the movements from without through the limbs. In this case, a child with a weak core needs to stiffen with his central connections and becomes at the most more like the middle salamadra.

Watch the clip several times, to get a feeling for how the undulatory motions initiate our movement. The human being of course has the undulations in all three planes: sidewards, forwards/backwards and rotations – and all work together at once.

ABR techniques are designed to help the child to develop and to initiate the undulatory motions at ages and stages where it is normally no longer possible. In fact the establishment of these movement stages belong to the earliest development moments from 0 to six months. After the age of about six months, the child can no longer initiate and establish these movements on his own.

The sequences of activation not only relates to the trunk and the limbs, but also corresonds to muscle types belonging to the trunk and limbs respectively. The muscle types that react first belong to the trunk (type one) and those that have a higher reaction threshold (type two) are mostly the superficial muscle layers typical of the limb reaction.
Training through normal exercises can only initiate an inverted sequence of reaction within this highly organized muscle reaction sequence.

The waking up of and activation of the type one muscle fibers belongs intrinsicly to ABR work which is desinged to install the “baby stages” of deep intrinsic undulatory movement in children and adults who have long left the baby stages – and also in those that at this young age are too weak to initiate the proper coordination between the deep intrinisic muscles of the trunk and those of the limbs on their own.

Diane Vincentz

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