KATRIENS VERSION
DO: Look for tension, hold for 2 minutes min., a 1:2 Inhale : Exhale, Get in Good Position and Tiptoe the Paincave
DON’T: Roll on Nerves, roll quickly, roll parallel to fibers, induce enough pain to make a pain face.
Search for adhesions and tension around:
Bony Points, Slabs of Meaty Muscle, and Your Organs. When You find tension, follow the line.
The 3 Techniques:
Press to Compress: Find Tension and Hold
Clunk or Shear: Slowly roll, pancaking the edge of the adhesion until there’s a “clunk”.
Gapping: Use as a fulcrum around hinge points to open up joint spaces.
THE ARTICLE
If You don't know by now a Lacrosse Ball solves everything.
Got the sniffles? Roll on a Lacrosse Ball.
Car won’t start? Put a Lacrosse Ball under the hood.
Can’t seem to pick what outfit to where for Your Dinner date? Make sure You hold a Lacrosse Ball and ask it for it's wisdom.
Needless to say You went out and splurged. Buying a State-of-the-Art, Top-of-the-Line, $3.99 Lacrosse Ball from your Local Sporting Goods Store.
But the real question is, do You know what to do with it?
In this Article I’m going to break down the Basic Staples of Fascial Release, The 3 places You need to start looking and the 3 Best Mobility techniques You can use to guarantee quick, effective release, whether You’re at home, at work or on the fly.
Heck if You’re on vacation this works too, but a relaxing Beach Massage sounds a lot better than rolling around on a hard, rubber ball on Your Hotel room Floor.
THE STAPLES
Everything You do has a Basic set of Operation Rules, Myofascial Release is no exception. Take a peek.
THE 3 PLACES TO LOOK
Without holding a Degree in Kinesiology or Picking up a Textbook on Anatomy it can be a bit overwhelming when someone tells You to Palpate the Origin of Your Sartorius. So instead of running You through a full Semester’s worth of Human Anatomy I’ve broken down Your Body into 3 separate Segments.
You can use these as Bering points as You hunt for lines of tension and look for Pain.
- Bony Points:
Hard projections of Bone like the point of Your Collar Bone or Your Sit Bone (Ischial Tuberosity for those of You who want to look it up). These are common points where lots of Connective Tissue ties in.
Explore around the Bone, careful not to roll onto it, and follow lines of tension when You find something.
“Chase the Pain”.
- Meaty Muscle:
Get onto thick slabs of Meat and gently, but consistently press into it. The more resistant it is to compression the more likely it will need Your attention.
These are often defined as “Knots”, but the spectrum of Intensity is vast.
Explore meaty regions from different angles and see what You start to find. This one is more Exploratory and can get You into some pretty weird positions.
There’s no One Way.
- Viscera:
This is Your Organs. All the Soft Tissue in the hard to reach areas that never get You attention.
Here You’re looking in the spaces that are “Up & Under” Your Bones like Your Ribcage. Or “Down & In” like Your Pelvis.
This is a region where You are more likely to feel “Sheets” of Tension like a tarp pulled tightly from multiple points along its edge.
The best place to start looking is lying on Your Back and pressing around Your Gut. Don’t be afraid to poke around, but tread lightly, this is a frequently neglected Territory.
THE 3 BEST METHODS TO GUARANTEE RELEASE
- Press to Compress
This has been a tactic well-known in the Realm of Mobility Practitioners but is often misunderstood when the general public hears about it.
The idea is finding a spot and staying on it.
Naudi Aguilar makes great use of this in his 10-week course. By remaining on a tight, dense or dehydrated strip of Fascial Tissue it allows the pressure to slowly reach into deeper and deeper Fascial Layers.
Muscle Fibers are structured similar to an electrical cable. Each nested cable is wrapped in its own sheet of Fascia. In order to reach the Fascia wrapping the innermost cable (i.e. the Fascia that would wrap each of the 4 copper cables in the photo below), You have to press through the 4 Fascial Layers preceding it.
This is done with slow, consistent pressure and time.
All this compression creates a pressure gradient that’s similar to squeezing a sponge. When You release the pressure from the Lacrosse Ball, all the surrounding water comes rushing in to rehydrate the Fascial tissue.
- Clunk or Shear
I first learned about this from Elisha Celeste, Founder of Mobility Mastery and Kinetix. Kinetix is an integrative and experiential approach to pain release combining Physical Manipulation, Psychological Exploration and usually a Partner's Foot.
I know, it sounds like the trials before going to Burning Man.
But all jokes aside, Elisha's methods are functional, results-oriented and scientifically backed. She also has a fantastic video series called Fast Fascia Facts, which I highly recommend for anyone looking to get a a speedy update on Fascia without all the scientific terminology.
While Elisha’s Kinetix Method does explore the psychological underpinnings that drive physiological pain, one of her most renowned methods is called “Clunking”
By pinning a muscle or strip of connective tissue between Your Bones and the Lacrosse Ball, (or any other hard object),You can “smear” apart the fibers in a pancake-rolling like fashion. As You do this You’ll reach the outer limits of the adhesion or “knot” and it will fall away from the point of pressure resulting in a “Clunk”.
(Check out this video at the 10:00 min mark for Your Leg and this video at the 7:30 min mark for Your arm. It will give You an idea of what You’re looking for.)
The “Clunk is the process of shearing Your Fascial Adhesion from whatever other piece of Fascia it’s sticking to. This activates specialized cells called Fasciacytes that exist in thin lines between layers of adjacent Fascial Membranes.
Fasciacytes are lthe Coastline before giving way to the vast Sea of Collagen and Ground Substance that make up whatever strip of Fascia You’re working on.
Unlike Fibroblasts, the role of Fasciacytes is to produce Hyaluronon for Your Ground Substance. Hyaluronon is a molecular fern frond that pulls in and holds onto water within Your Fascial Tissue. By shearing Your Fascia You're activating Fasciacytes to produce Hyaluronon, bringing in and binding more water to Your Fascial Tissue and allowing Your Fascia to stay hydrated, pliable and oh so plump.
Pro Tip: If You can slow Your “clunk” down to a “squish” You increase the shear time generating a greater dose of Fasciacyte activation, increasing the effectiveness of the mobilization.
- Gapping
In Kelly Starrett’s book Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury and Optimizing Athletic Performance, he highlights the idea of gapping to restore Flexion Range of Motion, particularly at the Elbow and the Knee.
By taking an object and nesting it in the crook of Your elbow or backside of Your Knee You create a fulcrum that Your limb has to move around upon compression. (think flexing Your arm to have Your Forearm touch Your Bicep, or Calf touch Your Hamstring).
Moving around this point creates a gaping force in the joint capsule that then allows fluid to enter and flush out any metabolic by-products that have been accumulating. This is a quick method to not only restore Range of Motion but to also rehydrate tissues around the joint capsule and clean out any leftover debris.
In Becoming a Supple Leopard, Kelly favors using a towel, but a lacrosse ball works just as well. Likewise, the idea is to create a gaping force around a joint. While it’s most effective on hinging joints like Your Knee or Elbow, I’ve had some pretty good success “hinging” My Vertebrae or placing a Ball in front of My Anterior Deltoid and doing a Classic Shoulder Stretch to mobilize the backside of My Scapula-Shoulder complex.
Play around. You might just find something that works.
SUMMARY
So now that You know the Basic Do’s and Don’ts of Mobility, Where to look, what to do when You find something and how to use a Lacrosse Ball to cover every angle of Your Body You're probably itching to lay down on a cold tile floor and submit Yourself to a half-hour,Lacrosse Ball torture session.
So tell Me what You think! How did it go? Have you tried these techniques before? What else would You like to learn about? Get in touch through the intake form below or reach out through Social Media, I’d love to hear how it went for You.
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Functional Patterns 10-week course
Mobility Mastery's - Fast Fascia Facts
