So many thoughts...

I got an email recently asking me to describe the differences between Z health and CST, now granted I have much more experience with Z but I think I'm in the position to answer this reasonably well but I thought I'd ramble on a little bit and go for a more general slant on joint mobility.

I've been thinking alot about joint health and as the saying goes you are only as old as your connective tissue, I see many facets and hopefully other people with chime in but until then this is what I've been thinking...I think of everything from a loading standpoint (I'm going to avoid delving into nutritional aspects and anatomy specifics), there's volume, intensity, speed, complexity, and precision. My thoughts on volume and intensity come from Pavel's writings and those he cites, speed and precision come from Z health, and complexity from CST. I understand there are probably some semantic differences in how people view this so I'll try to clarify...coming from an ADD individual this may be a little murky but hopefully not...In both Super Joints and Beyond Bodybuilding Pavel mentions two extremes heavy lockouts and supports and then high rep sets, I usually explain it like this: with respect to intensity, if you can do something with a hundred pounds then using one pound isn't much, and when it comes to volume if you can do something one hundred times then doing it once isn't much more than a drop in the bucket....Now I know the reason for this is actually more that by doing heavy supports it's like resetting the threshold higher for the joints and by doing them you decrease the level that joints may shut down to protect the body during exercise and with the high rep movements its more of a bathing the joints in fluid by repeatedly moving them allowing the structure to be bathed and flushed out by fluids and nutrients but like I said I'm talking generally. When it comes to speed and precision this is where Z comes in for me. A lot of mobility programs are big movements and while it may be great for warming up the larger movements allow for compensations to creep in unknowingly...if you can't refine how can you possible intregrate properly? Z is a systematic method for regaining and refining your movement on a joint by joint basis as well as ways of integrating properly. If you start with R-phase it mentions 4 speeds for a reason , they all matter. Slow lets you find the gaps in your movement and gives you time to mentally assess what's going on cognitively rather than assuming you're doing everything else right beside the movement you're focusing on. When you're going slow, you'll frequently find 'jumps' or 'rachets' I think these are the gaps that your body is uncomfortable with. When you speed up the movement it's likely if not certain that you'll skip over these gaps unknowingly. Think about it like this with music as an analogy, a digital signal is made up of a bunch of small pieces that when joined together make a seemingly continuous wave, as opposed to an analogue signal which is actually continuous with no small steps but rather a smooth shape. I think that Z takes your body from a digital to an analogue signal. since there are no uncertain gaps the body is able to make a smooth transition from one joint position to another, so do you want your body to guess where it's going or to know? I'll take the later. On the other end of the spectrum is sport speed, this is quick, it's supposed to be, not to many sports happen in slo-mo, unless you're watching an instant replay. If slow shows you where you're uncertain, fast shows you where you're body is uncomfortable. In R-phase most all movements are either front and back, side to side, or circles, and in I-phase figure eights get added in, each of these cover more surface area within the entire circumference that the joint can cover. While Z gives the template to understand movement, CST puts it out there a little more in black and white. If you think about 4 quadrants like in a graph, you have a figure 8, an infinity, diagonal infinity left to right, and diagonal right to left. After infinities there are cloverleafs and finally waves, I'm assuming that since all of these take place in what is essentially a 2-D grid I would think that changing levels to incorporate even more complexity is possible but Z-health's S-phase takes care of this with position specific and believe me just playing with speed and the basic movements provide more to work with than many may realize.

There are other aspects to go into like open versus close chain but I think that is better handled later.

I've said before that Z health lets the body move the way it's supposed to instead of the way it has to. I tend to compensate well with movements so I need the precision first other wise I trick my self into thinking what I think and what I do are the same and in the past this hasn't been the case. I like all the different systems and I've gotten a lot out of each one and they all have a lot to offer just make sure that what you're looking for in what you currently lack is what you actually need.