Chesterton’s Fence & Neurological Tightness

“Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.”

Information Will Always Be Incomplete

At Absolute, we don’t just act because we get a finding. We act because we have an understanding of what that finding means. We synergize feedback loops—Point A to Point B. This is how we program in real time with less uncertainty—that is why we don’t mind the uncertainty, we embrace it with our strategy.

Case in point: neurological tightness.

What Is Neurological Tightness?

Neurological tightness is the behavior of the nervous system when it actively limits tissue from being taken to length. This is a concept from Functional Range Systems.¹ In real life the concept (finding) equates to the neurology spending energy to constrain the tissue from lengthening/stretching.

This is a top-down output, not a bottom-up biological limitation. And it’s why we often say in our clinical case videos:

The nervous system is the “gatekeeper”.

The nervous system either opens the gate—allowing us to assess joint function and the bottom-up element of reactive strength (connective tissue architecture + behavior)—or it shuts it. The video below shows this behavior as we attempt to take the adductor tissue to length and get the finding of neurological tightness.

From the Clinic: Neurological Tightness

Why This Matters in a Reactive Strength Paradigm

Inside an amplifying reactive strength paradigm—where connective tissue is constantly being blowing up (see the NBA Reactive Strength Problem)—neurological tightness is a regular clinical finding.

Especially when the bottom-up biology is underdeveloped, injured, or degrading.² In those cases, the nervous system maybe outputting tightness to shield suboptimal connective tissue from dynamic loading—being taken to length. This shielding behavior of the nervous systems is a core concept in our programming learning module for Point B reactive strength management.

Tightness Finding

So when we find tightness, we don’t automatically work to dampen it—we work within our inside-out special strength mental model of reactive strength (see above). We definitely don’t stretch it. Instead, we treat it as a leading indicator of a reactive strength problem—this is one way we program to hedge against reactive strength injury.

We view tightness as a behavior of the neural network of absolute strength.

When neurological tightness is present, the network recruits and outputs at submaximal levels. This is not weakness—it’s behavior of the network: tightness.

Enter: Chesterton’s Fence