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Motor Point Acupuncture: Unlock Peak Muscle Performance, Prevent Injury, Transform Athletic Potential in Elite Athletes with Rich Hazel
UNLOCK ELITE-LEVEL MUSCLE PERFORMANCE:
TREAT ATHLETES, PREVENT INJURIES, TRANSFORM LIVES
Motor Point Acupuncture is one of the most powerful yet underutilised tools available to acupuncturists working with pain, injury, and performance-driven patients.
This iteration of Motor Point Acupuncture represents an evolved approach, moving beyond isolated needling techniques toward a sport-specific, biomechanics-informed understanding of muscle function.
Rather than treating all athletes the same, the workshop focuses on how different sports place very different demands on the neuromuscular system — and how motor point acupuncture can be applied strategically to optimise performance, resilience, and recovery in each context.
WHY THIS WORKSHOP MATTERS
Many athletes and active patients present as strong, conditioned, and well-trained, yet continue to experience:
- Recurrent or stubborn injuries
- Performance plateaus despite consistent training
- Poor recovery and overload patterns
- Pain that returns as intensity increases
In these cases, the issue is often not a lack of strength, but impaired muscle activation, timing, or coordination within the kinetic chain.
Conventional assessment methods frequently fail to identify:
- Subtle muscle inhibition
- Compensatory movement strategies
- Inefficient force transfer between regions
- Muscles that appear “strong” in isolation but fail under speed, fatigue, or load
NOT ALL SPORTS STRESS THE BODY IN THE SAME WAY
A further challenge is assuming that all sports place similar demands on the body, when in reality the neuromuscular requirements differ significantly.
Running-based sports such as football and soccer typically require:
- Repeated acceleration and deceleration
- Efficient force transmission through the lower body
- Resilience under cumulative training load
Rotational and overhead sports such as baseball, tennis, and volleyball rely on:
- Sequential power transfer through the kinetic chain
- Precise timing between the lower body, trunk, and upper extremity
- High-velocity movement with increased joint stress
TREATING ATHLETES BEYOND INJURY
A key focus of this course is working with athletes who are currently healthy and uninjured, but want to:
- Improve performance output
- Reduce injury risk
- Improve recovery between training and competition
The workshop reframes motor point acupuncture as a tool not only for rehabilitation, but for optimising neuromuscular efficiency, coordination, and load management.
This allows practitioners to:
- Identify hidden neuromuscular dysfunction that standard testing often misses
- Understand sport-specific biomechanics and movement demands
- Apply motor point acupuncture in alignment with how each sport actually loads the body
The result is treatment that targets performance limitations and injury risk at their source, rather than responding only after breakdown or injury has occurred.
A DIFFERENT WAY TO UNDERSTAND MUSCLE DYSFUNCTION
This course reframes how muscle problems develop and persist.
Participants will explore:
- How sustained muscle tone progresses into shortening, contracture, and dysfunction
- Why energy depletion and impaired relaxation drive chronic muscle issues
- How joint irritation, pain, or overload can inhibit muscle activation at both peripheral and central levels
- Why pain is often a downstream consequence rather than the primary problem
Rather than treating pain in isolation, the emphasis is on understanding the biomechanical logic of different sports to restore efficient muscle behaviour and system-wide coordination.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
All material is taught through clinical reasoning and application, not rote protocols.
Motor Point Acupuncture Foundations
- What defines a motor point and why it differs from trigger points and channel-based needling
- The neurophysiological rationale for motor point stimulation
- Local, central, and molecular effects of treatment
- Current research and clinical evidence in pain, performance, and rehabilitation
- Safety considerations, contraindications, and practitioner responsibility
Muscle Inhibition and Performance Loss
- The difference between normal protective inhibition and pathological inhibition
- How joint injury and overload disrupt muscle activation
- Why strength alone is a poor indicator of functional capacity
- Clinical strategies to restore effective recruitment and output
Muscles as Functional Systems
- Understanding muscles as part of integrated myofascial and kinetic chains
- How force is generated, transferred, and dissipated through the body
- The relationship between trunk control, limb velocity, and injury risk
- Why distal pain often reflects proximal dysfunction
Sport and Movement-Specific Biomechanics
- Principles of power generation and sequencing
- Stretch-shortening cycles and rate of force development
- How breakdowns in timing increase stress on vulnerable tissues
- Reducing injury risk by improving load distribution and coordination
- The role of the kinetic chain in running, jumping, throwing, and striking sports
- Sport-specific movement patterns and performance demands
- Applying acupuncture to enhance performance, prevent injury, and support recovery
PRACTICAL & CLINICAL APPLICATION
This is a highly practical, hands-on workshop.
Across the four days, participants will engage in:
- Live demonstrations of motor point acupuncture application
- Supervised hands-on practice
- Clinical reasoning discussions linking assessment findings to treatment decisions
- Application to performance enhancement, injury prevention, and recovery
- Rather than memorising techniques, participants will learn how to think clinically, allowing treatments to be adapted to different sports, presentations, and patient needs.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
- Understand muscle dysfunction beyond trigger points and pain
- Recognise patterns of inhibition, compensation, and overload
- Apply motor point acupuncture with greater precision and purpose
- Integrate biomechanical and neurological reasoning into clinical practice
- Improve confidence when managing complex athletic and injury-prone cases
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Rich Hazel
Rich Hazel uses a unique style of acupuncture that relies heavily on knowledge of neurology and sports medicine. He was one of very few people to learn Motor Point Acupuncture at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York where he completed his Master of Science in Acupuncture, Orthopedic & Sports Medicine. Rich has also studied Neurofunctional Acupuncture and Exstore Functional Muscle Assessment with some of the best orthopedic acupuncturists in North America and spent years studying trigger points and the treatment of myofascial pain from the works of Dr. Janet Travell and Dr. C Chan Gunn.
His unique style allows Rich to get excellent results for sports injuries, sports mobility and performance, and acute and chronic pain of all kinds. He now teaches this unique style of acupuncture to other acupuncturists in the US and abroad and is on the faculty at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York.
DETAILS
Date: Thursday 14th May to Sunday 17th May 2026
Time: 9am – 5.30pm (on all 4 days)
Venue: Vibe Hotel – 111 Goulburn Street, Sydney NSW 2000
CPD: 26 CPD Points
Included: Notes, Morning Tea, Afternoon Tea
PRICING
Deposit: $300
Early Bird Prices (ENDS 14TH APRIL 2026)
Practitioner Rate: $1750
Student (Full Time – Undergraduate): $1650
Regular Prices
Practitioner Rate: $1950
Student (Full Time – Undergraduate): $1850
TERMS & CONDITIONS
Early Bird: Full payment is required 4 weeks prior to the start of the Seminar and Workshop
Registrations cancelled up to one week prior to the seminar will be refunded less 20%. We regret that refunds are not otherwise possible.
RECORDING
If you wish to purchase for the recording only, please contact us to register your name. We will inform you that it will be available to purchase once it is ready. Please allow 3-4 weeks after the live seminar end date for the recording to be released.
Recording (Revisit) Access Fee for live participants and recording purchase – 5 years: $99