By Mike Westerdal
Author
of Critical Bench
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At some point or another just
about every bodybuilder and athlete on the planet is bound
injure himself. Luckily, for most of us they're usually minor
and don't result in anything more than a slight inconvenience
for a few days.
Sometimes though-especially
if you're a powerlifter, strongman or competitive athlete-they
can stretch on for weeks or months and even bring your training
to halt. Some strength athletes though, have found lasting
relief for formerly debilitating injuries through a technique
known as Active Release Techniques (ART).
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ART is a soft-tissue chiropractic
technique that specifically targets the injured area. Feedback on
ART has so far been very positive. Because of the way it's administered
some people might say that ART therapy is a "massage,"
but make no mistake-it's not. ART therapy is a movement-based technique
that is actually patented.
It was developed in the early- to
mid-nineties by a Colorado Chiropractor P. Michael Leahy, DC, CCSP.
He developed the technique after observing that his patients' symptoms
were apparently related to changes in the soft tissue that he could
actually feel with his hand.
Based on that observation he began
tracking how the soft tissues (muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments
and nerves) responded to different types of treatments (soft tissue
work). From there he developed the ART program-which is made up
of more than 500 different specific moves to treat problems with
muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves, back pain, shoulder
pain, sciatica, knee problems, tennis elbow and more.
Nearly all of these are pains that
can be common among strength athletes like strongmen, powerlifters
and other competitive athletes.
A lot of these problems are caused
by soft tissue injuries that usually occur in one of two ways: acute
conditions (pulls, tears, strains, etc.); or accumulation of small
tears caused by doing the same movement over and over (micro-trauma).
When these things happen, they can cause the body to produce dense
scar tissue in the areas affected.
The scar tissue builds up and as it
does, the impact it has becomes more widespread. As a result, we
suffer from a reduced range of motion, a loss of strength and of
course, pain.
When these kinds of injuries occur
in a strength athlete-especially one who is competing-it can be
devastating because our tendency is to "work through the pain."
But what happens then is we overcompensate because of the pain and
wind up not only exacerbating the original injury but often times,
we end up with more than we had in the beginning.
So in these kinds of circumstances,
ART therapy can be ideal for the strength athlete. It starts with
a comprehensive evaluation by a certified therapist. The evaluation
takes about an hour.
Its purpose is to pinpoint the injury,
determine its severity and then establish the proper therapeutic
regimen. ART therapy works by treating the abnormal tissues (scar
tissue) by combining precisely-directed tension combined with very
specific movements from the patient. The big benefit here is that
the treatments can generally alleviate the problem after just a
few visits. That means no lengthy down times.
I've read about all kinds of strength
athletes-powerlifters and strongmen included, that have had tremendous
success alleviating persistent, chronic pains with ART therapy.
And in the majority of cases that I've seen, the treatment time
has been relatively short-from two to six weeks. After that, they've
jumped right back into competition-pain free.
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There have been
several scientific studies conducted to determine how effective
ART therapy actually is in treating injuries relating to the
overuse of muscles. Nearly all of the studies show that ART
therapy can be very effective in treating these types of injuries.
One study conducted at the University of California (San Diego)
showed a 71% success rate.
Other studies
obtained similar results with rates of success ranging from
70% to more than 90%. In these studies, most participants
said that the problem was eliminated after 3 to 7 sessions.
Now obviously,
a therapy like this is not going to be 100% successful for
every person who tries it. Some injuries are more severe than
others, are related to other problems or issues, or for some
other reason it just doesn't work.
But, with research
showing that in more than 70% of the cases studied, ART
therapy effectively eliminated the problem and enabled
these athletes to get back to training, I'd say that this
is one technique that is definitely worth investigating if
you've got an injury that is holding you back.
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CLICK HERE to learn more about Mike's
powerful bench program "Critical Bench"
About
The Author
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