0:00 This is Brent and in this video we're discussing how to refine our 0:04 self-administered release, or foam roll techniques. You could also look at it 0:08 another way, we'll take a little slanted view of this, where we're looking at the 0:12 six most common mistakes I see in the gym that are preventing people from 0:17 getting the most out of their foam roll techniques. I'm going to have my friend, 0:20 Leanne, come out. She's going to help me demonstrate some of these mistakes. Now, 0:25 first things first, Leanne, let's have you do a rectus femoris release. How many 0:30 of you have told a patient or a client to go ahead and foam roll the 0:36 front of their quads, and you've walked out to this. Some sort of al dente noodle 0:43 position, that is probably not exactly what you showed them, but it's kind of 0:48 funny, I don't see trainers or therapists spend as much time talking about form 0:53 here as we do in resistance training. We're great when it comes to resistance 0:57 training and exercise, and somehow we haven't thought to bring that same 1:02 queueing, that same discussion, to our self administered release techniques. So, if I 1:07 bring back my kinetic chain checkpoints, I want her head and shoulders back, hips 1:12 knees and feet all in alignment. I'm going to have her get her belly off the floor and 1:16 drawn-in for me, make sure her shoulder girdle is nice and stable, her head is 1:21 facing down so that her spine's in alignment. Her hips, knees, and 1:25 feet are in line. She should be relaxed here, obviously, because that's what we're 1:29 releasing. So just to kind of recap, that form that you know of, that you 1:35 apply to every exercise you do, bring it here too. Next thing I want to talk about 1:40 is what we're going after. We're going after the most tender point. 1:46 Trigger points and tender points are generally what self-administered release 1:50 targets. There's a lot of other talk about fascia, and different things that 1:55 happen within a muscle like scar tissue, but probably the biggest benefit we're 1:59 going to get is going after these trigger points. Now, trigger points have a 2:03 tendency to develop right where the nerve innervates the muscle, which 2:08 generally is in the middle of the muscle belly. However, there will be 2:13 tender points throughout the muscle. You generally have one big trigger point, and 2:18 then all of these phantom sites. They're not actual trigger points that need to be 2:23 released though. So if you start just going after every point, you're really 2:28 not going to get that big of a result. So I like to go and do something called 2:33 Search and Destroy. So, I'm going to have Leanne go from the top of her rectus 2:38 femoris, all the way to the bottom, nice and slow. She'll find the most tender 2:43 point, and when she's found that most tender point she's going to hold it. So 2:52 not going after those phantom sites, or the referral sites, we want to go after 2:57 that most tender point, and you'll even see that some of the other sites totally 3:01 disappear once we get a release here. Now, the next thing I see, we should be doing 3:07 static holds. I know the more popular thing to do, go ahead and demonstrate 3:12 this Leanne, is to roll back and forth. Rolling back and forth, there's no real 3:18 physiological model why that would work long-term. There's no real idea 3:24 of what that's doing to the muscle that would improve movement patterns over the 3:31 long haul. So, what we want to do is find the most tender point, hold it, it's this 3:37 holding that stimulates one of two things. Either we're getting ischemic 3:41 pressure and we're cutting off circulation very locally to try to drive 3:45 down activity in that area, or we're trying to get something called autogenic 3:50 inhibition. Now, autogenic inhibition happens with these slow adapting 3:56 receptors like your Golgi tendon organ, and the only reason that that slow 4:00 adaptation is important is to know that your muscle spindles are fast adapting. 4:05 So, by rolling back and forth, you're stimulating muscle spindles which is 4:08 going to increase activity and override autogenic inhibition, as opposed to 4:12 holding it, which is going to allow these slow adapting receptors to respond and 4:19 relax this overactive point within a muscle. 4:23 So, just to kind of recap here, we have her in good position, she's 4:28 on the most tender point, and now she's going to hold until she gets a release. 4:33 That should take somewhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. The next point 4:39 is something that we all kind of do especially when there's pain 4:43 involved, is we do this guarding thing. I know a lot of you guys have probably 4:48 heard of muscle guarding. Leanne's going to go into a 4:52 different technique here. We're going to do our calf roll. So, just to review, she's 4:56 going to go along the whole length of the muscle, search for that most tender 5:01 point, once she finds that most tender point she's going to hold it with 5:08 good posture. Alright, so one thing Leanne might do, is if this is really 5:14 painful for her, she might start clenching that muscle, start clenching her calf a 5:19 little bit to try to protect. I don't want that to happen though. I want to be 5:23 able to get pressure so that I stimulate those those receptors and get autogenic 5:27 inhibition. So, I can do one of two things. Either I can use reciprocal inhibition, 5:32 contract my antagonist and then relax. The way I would do that with the calf is 5:36 have Leanne dorsiflex, hold, and then relax. Did you have an increase in discomfort? 5:43 Chances are if there was an increase in discomfort, you were doing a little bit 5:46 of muscle guarding. The other thing you can do is make somebody very aware of 5:50 their muscle guarding by having them contract the muscle that you're working 5:53 with. So she could plantar flex in this case because we're doing calf, 5:56 and then relax. Either technique seems to work, you may have to try both to figure 6:03 out which one's the most effective for the patient or the client that you're 6:06 working with, but it is always worth checking to make sure that they aren't 6:10 muscle guarding, because if somebody is bound up and clenching, there's no way 6:15 they're going to get this release to happen, there's no way we're going to 6:17 get this long term effect. The next thing is pressure, foam rolls have a very large 6:24 area. I know this is a little physics, a little bit of math, and I know 6:28 not everybody likes math, but a really simple formula here is pressure equals 6:32 force times area. So, when we have an inverse relationship, 6:37 when the bottom number decreases, the number on the other side of the 6:47 equation increases. So the smaller the area is, the larger the pressure. Foam 6:53 rolls are very large as far as the amount of area. This is several 6:59 square inches. If this wasn't enough pressure for Leanne, she wasn't feeling 7:03 anything, I could certainly progress her release techniques. There's nothing 7:08 special about a foam roll. So, I could bring a medicine ball in. So now 7:17 we went from an area about this big, to an area about this big, just the top of the 7:22 medicine ball. If that wasn't enough pressure, we could go to something like a 7:28 softball. Now, this is this is a softee, or training softball, it has a little bit of 7:33 give to it. The the softballs that you actually play softball with are actually 7:37 so hard they're kind of mean, but I do like these a lot, they work quite well. 7:42 Alright, so now we've decreased the area to increase pressure. Similarly, if 7:48 something was too painful, you could go in the opposite direction. So, if you were 7:52 using a softball and somebody's clenching and they won't let go, they 7:55 keep guarding, you can't get them to stop guarding, go back to your medicine ball 7:58 and then back to a foam roll if you have to to get them to relax. If there's no 8:02 relaxation, there's no long-term benefit. The last thing I want to discuss is 8:08 probably the most important, and I have to thank my friend Perry of the company, 8:14 Stop Chasing Pain, for giving me this quote, his whole company is based around 8:19 education around this point, but we're not going after just painful spots, this 8:24 is actually, in a way, dangerous to start chasing pain around the body. 8:29 Unfortunately pain is only a clue, but not a really great indicator of what's 8:34 actually wrong. For example, Leanne's foam rolling her low back, let's say you 8:39 had low back pain, the problem with foam rolling the low back is it's not the 8:42 structures in the posterior aspect of the lumbar spine that are probably 8:47 causing pain. In fact, it's far more likely that it's the hip 8:51 flexors causing pain. So if she wants relief here, if we had done an assessment, 8:58 we would probably know that she'd be better off doing her rectus femoris ,TFL, 9:02 vastus lateralis, and adductors, as opposed to trying to foam roll her 9:06 lumbar spine, which actually in this position is kind of dangerous. Not only 9:10 are we not going to get a result, but it could push her lumbar vertebrae 9:15 anteriorly. There's not a lot to stop that and over time we could create a 9:19 whole different set of compensations and maybe even some damage to the 9:23 ligamentous structures in her lumbar spine. Every time we use a foam roll, we 9:29 should be basing it on some sort of dynamic movement assessment, and for 9:33 those of you qualified, probably some other goniometry or flexibility 9:38 assessments so that we're only targeting structures that are short and overactive. 9:43 Remember, foam rolling is going to reduce activity. If we start using it on muscles 9:48 that are already under active, it's only going to make our compensation patterns 9:54 worse. So, just to quickly go over what we just went over... make sure you watch 10:00 your position, go over the most tender point, hold statically, try to prevent 10:06 muscle guarding, use the appropriate amount of pressure by adjusting area, and 10:11 only go after those structures that are short and overactive, not just painful. 10:17 I hope you enjoyed this video, talk with you soon.
