Muscle Medicine: The Revolutionary Approach to Maintaining, Strengthening, and Repairing Your Muscles and Joints (14 page)

THE MUSCLE MEDICINE PROGRAM

We’ve taken from our three-phase strategy what we think are the best techniques for you to do easily and effectively at home. Our stretches are active-isolated, and our strength exercises, a mix of body-weight and resistance work, are basically an at-home version of what you’d get working with a good personal trainer or physical therapist. (We called on one of our favorites, Toni McGinley of Manhattan’s Alta Fitness, to help us choose and modify them.) The self-treatment section requires a little more explanation.

A particularly effective self-treatment technique we like to use uniquely modifies concepts from a number of muscle therapies. This unique technique is called F.A.S.T.™, for Facilitated Active Stretch Technique.™ In simplest terms, you are using an external pressure—your fingers, a ball, a stick—to “pin” the muscle near a tight, restricted area. In a conventional stretch, most of the tension builds up at the end of the muscle at its junction with the tendon. When you pin a muscle, you replace the natural endpoint of the stretch with one you define. While maintaining this pin with external pressure, you take the muscle through a range of motion, putting the targeted muscle fibers under tension. This allows you to focus your stretch at the area of tightness or damage. You can effectively control which part of the muscle you stretch, which makes your stretch versatile and therapeutic rather than generalized. (For example, bring the back of your open hand toward your body as
if you’re signaling “stop” and bend your elbow. With the thumb of the other hand pointing in toward the body, apply pressure down and in on the meaty, top part of the forearm muscle. While maintaining thumb pressure, make a fist and curl it down, then straighten the elbow. You’ve just done a F.A.S.T.™ stretch to relieve the wrist extensor muscles that can tense up from too many hours at the keyboard.)

We’ll give you the precise how-to at the end of the “hot-spot” chapters, but here are the general F.A.S.T.™ principles:

1. By applying pressure at specific spots on the muscle, you pin the muscle just above or below the tight, restricted area.

2. As the muscle is actively taken through a movement, the altered “attachment point” allows you to focus the stretch at the most restricted part of the muscle, where it’s most needed. You reach more of the affected fibers.

3. Actively using the antagonist muscles to move the target muscle triggers a reflex that relaxes that muscle. And you’re generating physical heat that warms up and loosens the tissues.

4. If you are dealing with an injury, F.A.S.T.™ enables you to target the muscles and connective tissues around it without irritating the compromised tissue. Taking tension off this injured tissue by reducing the pulling forces from the surrounding muscles and connective tissues creates an environment of faster, better healing. Decreased tension on surrounding blood vessels also allows more blood flow to the area, which further promotes healing.

To simplify the job of knowing where to press down, we’ve provided descriptions with each treatment, dividing the muscle groups we’re working on into two or three zones when that’s necessary: inner, outer, and, if needed, middle. You start at one end of a zone and move up or down every couple of inches until you’ve covered the whole region. We’ll show you how to apply pressure on the muscle, using “angular” pressure while moving through and completing the movement. You won’t be bearing directly down on the muscle but rather angling your force either up or down. More specific directions accompany each muscle treatment in the “hot spot” chapters.

TREATMENT ZONES

We will demonstrate to you exactly where you should be applying angled pressure during treatment. Following the self-treatment instructions, place your hand or treatment tool on the areas described in the figures.

Example: The Infraspinatus.

ANGLED PRESSURE

Angled pressure, as introduced in our self-help section in chapers 8–14, is a key part of our self-treatment method. We recommend it whenever you are working with soft tissue. It will help you treat an area of the muscle, tendon, or ligament while controlling your pressure, and help you to work with the muscle fibers. It is performed by first pressing your thumb, fingers, or treatment tool straight into the muscle just deep enough to engage it (Fig. 1), and then by angling the applied force either against or with the movement of the muscle (depending on which direction will generate the tension needed to treat that muscle) (Fig. 2). Keep in mind that there is a learning curve with this. Be patient, as it may take several attempts to feel comfortable with the action.

Figure 1

Figure 2

We like to describe the self-treatment method as simple but not necessarily easy. Hands-on manual therapy always has a learning curve. As for the muscle medicine program in general, you might consider enlisting the assistance of a physical or muscle therapist to get started and to help you find your own comfort level. New York Giants All-Pro punter Jeff Feagles has. In addition to the world-class athletic training and medical care he receives with the Giants, he’s followed our plan, working his hamstrings with F.A.S.T.™, then moving through the dynamic stretches and the strength work that round out the program. During the 2008 season, his punts have soared higher than ever, earning him an invitation to the 2009 NFL Pro Bowl.

F.A.S.T.™ TREATMENT

Facilitated Active Stretch Technique, or F.A.S.T.™, is a form of dynamic or movement-based stretching that Dr. DeStefano has developed over the years for his patients. Using your hand or a tool such as a F.A.S.T. Stick,™ or other therapeutic stick, apply pressure around a restricted or damaged area, or on a series of points running up and down the muscle, while simultaneously putting the muscle through a range of motion. This allows you to achieve a more effective, precisely targeted stretch. It’s a highly effective way to make the structures around an injury relax and to promote healing. You can also use F.A.S.T.™ as part of a regular stretching routine to address muscles used during a workout, such as tight calf muscles after a run or tight biceps after weight lifting.

THE NECK