Why Your Stuck Clients Might Need Less Activation, Not More
For years, I was trained in the "more is better" model. Client has weak glutes? Activate them more. Poor balance? Add more balance drills. Limited range of motion? Mobilize more, stretch more, strengthen more.
And listen, activation work is absolutely valuable! I used it all the time and I loved watching clients light up muscles they didn't even know they had.
But here's what nobody taught me in school, and what changed everything once I finally learned it: sometimes the most powerful intervention is actually giving the nervous system LESS input, not more.
I know that sounds completely backwards, right? Like, how does doing less create better results?!
Stay with me here because this is where it gets really good. When you understand how to use inhibition strategically (which just means temporarily reducing or blocking certain sensory inputs), you can reduce pain and improve movement quality literally instantly. Like, in seconds. And once you see it work, you'll never look at chronic compensations the same way again.
So let's dive into why inhibition works at a neurological level (yes, we're going full neuro geek mode and I'm so excited!), three specific ways you can use it in real time with your clients, and the practical examples that will have you testing this in your very next session.
Why Inhibition Works (The Neuroscience That Makes This So Cool)
Reduce Noise to Improve Output
Your client's brain is constantly receiving input from every sensory system all at once: vision, hearing, vestibular information, proprioception from joints and muscles, touch receptors in the skin, even smell and taste. That's a LOT of information to process every single second.
When one of those sensory systems is too loud or too dominant, the brain can actually become threatened by the sheer volume of input. Think about trying to have a conversation in a room where someone's blasting music at full volume. You can't focus, you feel overwhelmed, and you probably want to leave the situation entirely.
The nervous system responds the same way! When there's too much sensory noise, it goes into protection mode. Movement becomes guarded, range of motion decreases, pain sensitivity increases, and your client feels stuck.
Inhibition helps quiet that overwhelming signal so the brain can move with clarity and confidence instead of threat and protection. And when the brain feels safe and clear, movement quality improves immediately.
Improve Signal to Noise Ratio
Here's another way to think about this: when one sensory system is overdominant or completely fatigued from working overtime, it produces messy motor output that shows up as compensation patterns, asymmetries, and inefficient movement.
It's like trying to listen to your favorite podcast while someone's mowing the lawn right outside your window. The podcast (the signal you actually want) gets completely drowned out by the lawnmower (the noise that's overwhelming everything else).
Inhibition balances the sensory load so the brain can actually hear the quieter signals that have been getting buried. Movement becomes safer, smoother, and way more coordinated because the brain finally has access to clean information it can actually use.
Expose Hidden Deficits
This is my favorite part, and it's where inhibition becomes such a powerful assessment tool in addition to being an intervention.
When you remove or temporarily dampen one dominant signal, you force the brain to reorganize and find a different strategy. This reveals the true driver of dysfunction that's been hiding underneath the compensation pattern.
So many times I've inhibited one system (like covering a client's dominant eye or plugging their better ear) and suddenly a completely different issue becomes obvious. Maybe their balance suddenly gets worse, revealing that they've been over relying on vision to compensate for vestibular dysfunction. Or maybe their balance immediately gets BETTER, showing that too much visual input was actually creating threat.
Either way, you now have crystal clear information about what their nervous system actually needs instead of just guessing based on what you can see on the surface.
3 Ways to Use Inhibition in Real Time (Let's Get Practical!)
Auditory Inhibition: Quieting the Ears (CN VIII)
How to do it: Plug one ear with your finger or an earplug, use an earmuff, or simply decrease ambient noise in your training space.
Why this works: Cranial Nerve VIII (the vestibulocochlear nerve) handles both hearing AND vestibular input from the inner ear. When one ear is overdominant (maybe because the other ear has hearing loss, or one side is just working way harder than it should), the entire system becomes unbalanced.
Think about it: if your brain is getting clear auditory input from the right ear but muffled or no input from the left ear, it starts to organize movement around that asymmetry. Your posture shifts. Your gait pattern changes. Your neck and shoulder tension increases on one side because the system is constantly compensating.
Inhibiting the dominant side cleans up the vestibular load, improves tone throughout the body, and restores midline control that's been thrown off by the imbalance.
Real life example: One of my alumni had a client that was deaf in her left ear and has been her entire life. For years, she struggled with neck tension, balance issues, and this persistent feeling of being "off center" that nobody could quite explain.
When she plugged her right ear (the only working ear) to temporarily reduce overall auditory dominance, her whole body movement improved instantly. Her shoulders dropped. Her gait evened out. Her balance steadied. It was one of those moments where they both just looked at each other like "WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!"
Her nervous system had been working overtime to process all auditory input through one ear, which was creating massive compensations throughout her entire body. Giving her brain a break from that constant demand allowed everything else to reorganize.
Visual Inhibition: Quieting the Eyes (CN II, III, IV, VI)
How to do it: Cover one eye with an eye patch or your hand, dim the lights in your space, use tinted lenses, reduce peripheral visual noise, try pinhole glasses, or simply have your client close their eyes.
Why this works: Visual input is hands down the MOST dominant sensory system your brain uses. We're talking 70 to 90 percent of all sensory processing is visual! That's massive.
When there's too much visual demand (think bright fluorescent lights, busy gym environments, screens everywhere, complex visual patterns), the brain can actually perceive this as a threat. It's working SO hard to process all of that visual information that it has fewer resources available for coordinating movement, maintaining balance, or regulating pain.
Inhibition helps the brain "quiet the visual field" so the vestibular and proprioceptive systems (which often get completely buried under visual dominance) can finally sync up and contribute to movement organization.
Real life example: I once had a client who struggled with balance exercises no matter what we tried. Single leg stance was shaky. Tandem walking looked uncertain. She just felt unstable all the time.
On a hunch, I covered her dominant eye for a few reps of single leg balance. Within seconds, her balance improved dramatically. She stood taller, felt more centered, and could actually hold the position without all that shakiness.
What was happening? Her brain was getting SO much visual input that it was overwhelming her vestibular system. By reducing visual dominance, we allowed her vestibular system to actually do its job and contribute to balance instead of being completely drowned out.
Sensory Motor Inhibition: Blocking Dominant Compensation Patterns
How to do it: Use your hands, props, or physical constraints to block your client's automatic compensation pattern. This could be a rib shift, foot collapse, jaw clench, shoulder hike, or any other go to strategy they use without even thinking about it.
Why this works: Your client's brain has established dominant sensory motor pathways based on years of repetition. These pathways create predictions about how to move, and the brain defaults to these predictions because they feel familiar and safe, even if they're creating pain or dysfunction.
These dominant pathways create noisy predictions that keep the system stuck in the same compensatory loop. Light tactile input creates something called sensory gating (which involves Cranial Nerve V and mechanoreceptors in the skin), and this gives the brain new information that interrupts the default pattern.
When you inhibit the automatic compensation strategy, you force the brain to choose a different motor plan. And often, that new plan is actually cleaner, lower threat, and way more functional than the old pattern!
Real life example: One of my students worked with a client who had chronic low back pain during squats. Every single time he squatted, his ribs would rotate to the right. Every. Single. Time. My student tried cueing, strengthening, mobility work, everything. The pattern stuck.
One day, my student placed her hand gently on his right ribs and said "don't let your ribs move away from my hand as you squat." That's it. Just light tactile inhibition of the rotational compensation.
His pain decreased immediately. His squat looked completely different. His brain accessed a new, safer pattern the moment the old one was blocked. The novelty of the constraint gave his nervous system permission to try something different, and that something different happened to be way more functional.
You can also use the "really wrong to get really right" strategy, where you have them exaggerate the compensation on purpose for a few reps, which then makes it way easier for their brain to find neutral.
Quick Takeaway (Because This Is Important)
Here's what I want you to walk away understanding:
Activation equals more information. You're adding input, waking up dormant systems, and giving the brain new signals to work with.
Inhibition equals cleaner information. You're reducing noise, balancing the sensory load, and allowing the brain to actually hear the signals that have been getting buried.
Both are valuable! Both have their place in your toolkit! But inhibition is the tool that most movement professionals never learned, and it's often the missing piece for clients who feel stuck despite all the activation work you've been doing.
A quieter nervous system moves better, coordinates better, and hurts less. And when you give your clients that experience of what "quiet" feels like, they finally understand what their body is capable of when it's not stuck in protection mode.
Your Next Step: Test Inhibition This Week
Okay, here's your homework (and I promise this is going to be so fun):
Pick one client this week who has a chronic compensation pattern or persistent pain that hasn't responded to traditional approaches.
Choose one inhibition strategy from the three methods above. Cover an eye. Plug an ear. Block a dominant movement pattern with light touch.
Notice what changes immediately. Does their pain decrease? Does their movement quality improve? Does a hidden deficit suddenly become obvious? Does their face light up with that "wait, WHAT just happened?!" expression that we live for?
Write down what you observe so you start building your own pattern recognition around when to activate versus when to inhibit.
The more you practice this, the faster you'll develop the clinical intuition to know exactly what each nervous system needs in the moment. And your clients will start experiencing those instant shifts that have them telling everyone about you!
Want to learn more about using inhibition strategically with every type of client you see? Comment MENTORSHIP on any and all of my Instagram posts or send me a DM to learn about the program where we go deep into assessment, inhibition, activation, and stacking so you can create transformational results with confidence. I cannot WAIT to geek out about this stuff with you!