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