Active Release Technique
What is Active Release Techniques (ART) to Individuals, Athletes, and Patients?
ART is a patented, state of the art soft tissue system/movement based massage technique that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves. Headaches, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, shin splints, shoulder pain, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, knee problems, and tennis elbow are just a few of the many conditions that can be resolved quickly and permanently with ART. These conditions all have one important thing in common: they are often a result of overused muscles.
- How do overuse conditions occur?
- Over-used muscles (and other soft tissues) change in three important ways:
- acute conditions (pulls, tears, collisions, etc),
- accumulation of small tears (micro-trauma)
- not getting enough oxygen (hypoxia)
Each of these factors can cause your body to produce tough, dense scar tissue in the affected area. This scar tissue binds up and ties down tissues that need to move freely. As scar tissue builds up, muscles become shorter and weaker, tension on tendons causes tendonitis, and nerves can become trapped. This can cause reduced range of motion, loss of strength, and pain. If a nerve is trapped you may also feel tingling, numbness, and weakness
What is an ART treatment like?
Every ART session is actually a combination of examination and treatment. The ART provider uses his or her hands to evaluate the texture, tightness and movement of muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments and nerves. Abnormal tissues are treated by combining precisely directed tension with very specific patient movements.
These treatment protocols – over 500 specific moves – are unique to ART. They allow providers to identify and correct the specific problems that are affecting each individual patient. ART is not a cookie-cutter approach.
Graston Technique
Graston Technique® is an innovative, patented form of instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization that enables clinicians to effectively break down scar tissue and fascial restrictions. The technique utilizes specially designed stainless steel instruments to specifically detect and effectively treat areas exhibiting soft tissue fibrosis or chronic inflammation.
Graston Technique® is successful in effectively treating all soft tissue conditions, whether they are chronic or acute and post surgical. The Graston Technique® offers many advantages to the patient such as:
- Decreases overall time of treatment
- Fosters faster rehabilitation/recovery
- Reduces need for anti-inflammatory medication
- Resolves chronic conditions thought to be permanent
Dry Needling
What is Dry Needling?
Dry Needling is a general term for a therapeutic treatment procedure that involves multiple advances of a filament needle into the muscle in the area of the body which produces pain and typically contains a ‘Trigger Point’. Most patients will not even feel the needle penetrate the skin, but once it has and is advanced into the muscle, the feeling of discomfort can vary drastically from patient to patient. Usually a healthy muscle feels very little discomfort with insertion of the needle; however, if the muscle is sensitive and shortened or has active trigger points within it, the subject may feel a sensation much like a muscle cramp — which is often referred to as a ‘twitch response’. The twitch response also has a biochemical characteristic to it which likely affects the reaction of the muscle, symptoms, and response of the tissue. Typically positive results are apparent within 2-4 treatment sessions but can vary depending on the cause and duration of the symptoms and overall health of the patient. Dry needling is an effective treatment for acute and chronic pain, rehabilitation from injury, and even pain and injury prevention, with very few side effects.
Stretch to Win
What is Dynamic Stretching – FST
Dynamic exercise techniques that most closely represent the movements and loads that will be required of your body on the court, field, course, track, or mat or in the water. After you complete a simple self-evaluation, a special science-based stretching matrix enables you to tailor a program specifically for your body, your sport, your position, or your event.
FST is a form of table-based assisted stretching that focuses on the fascia and joint capsule to achieve optimal strength, flexibility, pain relief and performance. It is a pain-free method of stretching, typically performed on a massage table, that can provide almost instant results.
Here are some of the main benefits of FST:
Pain Reduction
Problems with your fascia can cause you actual physical pain. The tightness in your fascia can encourage unnatural motions or postures that increase your odds of minor injuries and unwanted pressure on your nervous system. Those minor injuries, in turn, can encourage even more unnatural motions.
FST can help reduce those pains by releasing tension in your fascia. The natural increase in flexibility will help end those unnatural motions and relieve underlying stresses in your body.
Improve Circulation
Lingering tightness or tension anywhere in your body decreases circulation. By reducing tightness and tension, FST improves blood flow.
Improved blood flow has a couple of beneficial knock-on effects.
It helps speed up recovery from exercise by allowing more blood to reach your muscles faster, which improves toxin removal. It improves overall energy by allowing more oxygen to reach your muscles and organs. That additional oxygen can also improve your mental clarity.
Electrical Stimulation
During e-stim treatment, a therapist secures electrode pads to your skin. A dial is then turned or a button is pressed on an electrical muscle stimulation device, a console that’s either plugged into the wall or battery-operated. This machine generates electric impulses that stimulate your skeletal muscles to contract. An e-stim device has various settings, meaning the contractions may be barely noticeable or they may feel, and look, like involuntary muscle twitches.
The primary purpose of e-stim therapy is to simulate what happens in the body when you voluntarily contract and release a muscle many times in a row. This process strengthens and repairs tissue, particularly muscles which have become shortened, weakened, or atrophied due to injury or disease.
Compression Boot Therapy
Dynamic air compression effectively mimics the muscle pump of the legs and arms, enhancing the movement of fluid and metabolites out of the limbs after an intense workout. Studies show it can help relieve muscle aches and/or pain and temporarily increase circulation resulting in increased flexibility and range of motion, injury prevention, and accelerated recovery time.
Kinesio Taping
Kinesiotape is a flexible, latex-free, state-of-the-art tape that is applied to soft tissues to promote stability and selectively facilitate or inhibit muscle firing. Application of this tape by a trained professional also increases lymphatic drainage, improves proprioception and increases neuromuscular efficiency so an athlete may return from injury faster and even reduce their predisposition to injury. Specific techniques of kinesiotaping may also be administered to significantly reduce bruising and swelling associated with acute injuries.