Alright, so, have you ever wondered why foam rolling and stretching and ice all of a sudden seem to stop working for certain injuries? Well I’m going to tell you why. The short answer is that we’ve moved on from a situation where we have a tight muscle, to a situation where you have a muscle filled with adhesion. So how do we get from point A to point B? Well, let’s take a look at this video:
As explained in the second half of the video, you actually need mechanical pressure to break-down adhesion. That’s what I do in my office. The techniques are manual therapy, that is, by hand. Or by tools, to get in there and break-down the adhesion. It’s not super-comfortable, but it’s not the worst treatment in the world. I would say most people would compare it to a deep tissue massage that is really really specific, and very therapeutic. There are a lot of misconceptions about what I do. One person maybe thinks I use a chainsaw to take out adhesion, another person thinks I have like, a scraper. Nothing scary like that, it’s just manual therapy techniques, getting specifically into the affected areas of the muscle that have the adhesion…taking the correct contact and the correct lines of drive, to get rid of that adhesion. It takes a little while to break it down, you can’t do it instantaneously, it’s built-up over time, and you need to chip it down over time as well. So, I hope that answers your question as to why sometimes foam rolling works and sometimes why it doesn’t. Stay tuned for the next video where I show you a new foam rolling type of tool I’ve been using recently that works 10x better than standard foam rollers for some injuries.
