What is Body Tempering and why should you be doing it?

Body tempering

What it is

his is our definition of what body tempering is:

Body Tempering is a tool used to accelerate sport activity performance and recovery by combating soft tissue restrictions.

Body Tempering is utilizing weight to assist in joint and soft tissue mobilization. That weight can be light (3-5 lbs) up to Heavy (165 - 300 lbs). It is a tool to improve range of motion, increase flexibility, reduce soreness, mobilize the myofascial layers, address trigger points (or tender points), strengthen tendons, and alter sympathetic nervous system excitation.

It is a fundamental part of numerous professional and high level athletic programs. These include the NCAA football Champion Clemson Tigers, The MLB World Series Champs Kansas City Royals, The NCAA Women’s Basketball National Champion UCONN Huskies, The NFL Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles, and Gold Medal Olympic Shotputters and Swimmers.

Any Coach, Athlete or Strength professional trains to outperform their competition. With your current level of knowledge are you equipped with every tool possible to help this happen. That training is meant to address the 2 main impediments to progress: Pain and Injury. Body Tempering, at it’s very DNA is meant to squash these roadblocks and help you be more prepared than your competition.

It’s designed to reduce tone leading to sprains/strains.

It’s design to open up range of motion and improve flexibility/mobility to achieve ideal positioning for training.

It’s design to reduce feelings of fatigue to lengthen work out time and reduce soreness to enhance future training sessions.

Body Tempering is meant to help augment any training or rehab protocols to help remove any doubt that you did everything you could to train to meet your individual goals. It is not meant to stand alone as a technique. It is also not meant to be a crutch for dealing with more serious medical issues in the absence of professional medical care. We often wait until something is broken to fix it and ignore the importance of routine maintenance. Tempering meant to help prevent injury or in a medical capacity to help reduce soreness, reduce tightness, and improve range of motion, not act as an isolated treatment. Body tempering without optimal movement or training is going to be inefficient. 

We, at Compound PR have had the unique opportunity to work with all kinds of athletes and patients. And, of all the unique characters we have encountered, Donnie Thompson exists in a different echelon of elite athlete and innovative mind. That innovation is born of a lifetime of training and forged by the weight of a 3,000 lb total. Through the trial and error that occurred in his training facilities, he discovered body tempering. And as a result, his gyms have produced multiple white lights in lifting on the platform with no real injury and reduced pain that doesn’t impede their training or performance. Body Tempering is a fundamental part of that success.

The History of Body Tempering

Body Tempering was developed by Donnie Thompson in August of 2014. 

Body Tempering started by coincidence possibly as late as 2006, and quickly caught on at the Compound. It has grown into a fundamental mobility tool used at the highest levels of professional and olympic sport. At its infancy, Donnie was hearing of great athletes (including local university athletes) having hernia surgeries which he believed were likely due to severe muscle adhesions. These events were occurring at levels that he believed could be reduced or prevented for most athletes. For elite powerlifters and heavier athletes, laying on foam rollers was simply insufficient. More volume and weight was needed to get the desired effects of improved mobility and increase tissue pliability. Donnie and other members of his gym at the time, The Compound, had been using heavier KettleBells and loaded PVC pipes to diffuse muscle groups like the abs and quads for years. These tools were very useful and worked well. Then one day, Levi the Fireman was lying on the floor rolling his abs with a KB. Donnie jokingly told him he would put 135 pounds of  steel on him to roll his stomach out (this apparatus was affectionately called the X-Wife and is a drop cut piece of solid steel, 5 inches in diameter and 24 inches long). It was called the X-wife because it’s cold, emotionless and no one wanted to mess with it. So with the X-Wife on Levi’s stomach, he commenced to rolling it over his entire upper body. The results were instant and more dramatic than expected. So Donnie went next, then Joe, Josh and everyone else training that day. The rest is history.

Innovation does not occur without experimentation. So, the next area of experimentation with the x-wife and body tempering was along the thoracic and lumbar spine. Then the backs of the legs over the hamstrings. The chest and shoulders followed soon after. Finally, the last area tested at the time was the calves. The sensation of rolling the calves was extreme, but it worked in increasing pliability, flexibility, and power. At that time, those who were body tempering all but stopped stretching prior to training. If they missed a day rolling out it was made up on days where training was not scheduled. It never got to be too much. They were all getting stronger and feeling better and increasing their numbers on their lifts with no notable injuries. In October of that year, two NFL Centers came down to the Compound gym to train under Donnie’s instruction. They took body tempering back to their team and personal training facilities and began rolling out before games on Sunday and afterwards to aide in recovery.

Body Tempering quickly became the fastest way to feel good again after training and to prepare for strength training. Trigger points (tender points within the muscle or “knots”) and muscle adhesions could not hold up to the method like they could with less aggressive methods such as foam rolling. Body Tempering has evolved and has now begun to peak world-wide interest. It is utilized by NFL Super Bowl Champions, NCAA Football Champions, NCAA basketball champions, world record setting powerlifters, and National Crossfit games qualifiers.  Body Tempering is actually an old strength method recycled, and a much more efficient process than other forms of tempering. Tempering has been used throughout history to train to be able to toughen their bodies to the demands of their sport and absorb blows without having as much damage or sensitivity. It is amazing that such a method was devised by a powerlifter in Columbia, SC instead of a professional or university lab.