Finish Strong by Richard Boergers and Angelo Gingerelli

Author:Richard Boergers and Angelo Gingerelli
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

SOFT TISSUE MOBILITY WORK

Some of you may have gone to a rehabilitation clinician for some help with soft tissue mobility and received either Active Release Therapy (ART), strain-counterstrain technique, cupping, pin and stretch, or instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization (IASTM) – also known as Graston technique. These treatments work by improving the mobility of the muscle and fascia. Remember, all the muscles are surrounded by fascia and the interaction of the two will result in your available range of motion. It is greatly important for muscles to remain at their optimal resting length so they can create optimal tension. Postural syndromes result in the muscles on one side of the body being long and weak while the muscles on the other side of the body are short and facilitated. Often, trigger points will develop within the muscles, which then makes them short – rendering them suboptimal. Trigger points will often also give off referred pain patterns. While explaining the specific referred pain patterns falls beyond the purview of this book, you should understand that simply fixing a problematic trigger point may eliminate some of the pain that you have in an adjacent area of the body. Many of the treatments that rehabilitation clinicians use are therefore focused on reducing trigger points in the muscle and making the fascia around the muscles more supple, to allow for smooth, unrestricted, optimal motion.

However, you don’t need to spend additional time and money seeking out the assistance of a rehabilitation clinician to mobilize your myofascia. Self-myofascial release can be performed easily and effectively to help maintain mobility. A 2015 systematic review8 (a research paper that summarizes all the research on a topic) on the effects of self-myofascial release shows that it is useful for making short-term improvements to muscle flexibility and reducing muscle soreness without having negative effects on performance. The paper went on to recommend performing 3 sets of 30-second holds for each muscle.

To do this, every athlete should as a minimum have a foam roller and a hard rubber ball for their home gym so that they can perform self-myofascial release. Many people use the foam roller in a rolling pin or back-and-forth manner, spanning the entire muscle. Our recommendation is to find the tight area where the trigger points exist and simply let the weight of the body press against the trigger point, allowing it to “reset”, thus making the muscle pliable again. Clinicians commonly do this technique with their hands and will hold for a minimum of about 30 seconds. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but you should feel a mushing sensation under that once taut area.

MYOFASCIAL TISSUES TO FOAM ROLL

As endurance athletes, we put our muscles and joints through the same repetitive motions for many miles and, over time, restrictions occur. Different sports place different demands on our muscles based on the movement patterns. Below, we’ve identified key muscles on which athletes should perform self-myofascial release. Running and cycling are lower extremity-dominant sports so targeting the muscles that surround the hip, knee, foot and ankle is recommended.

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