Image credit: doug krutil
Static & dynamic stretches increase the length of your muscles. But what do you do about the quality of your muscles? Trigger points, adhesions, scar tissue, … All this stuff adds up in your muscles and can cause pain.
ARTs can break those down for you. But regular visits are expensive. Worse, I can’t find an ART in Belgium and chances are you can’t neither. Luckily you can do soft tissue work yourself. Here’s how.
Benefits of Soft Tissue Work. First time this will hurt a lot. But the pain is worth it in the long-term, and it gets less painful anyway. Benefits:
- Increased Flexibility. The Iliotibial Band (ITB) is often tight. Stretching doesn’t work well as it’s fascia, not muscle. It needs soft tissue work.
- Improved Posture. Improving your thoracic mobility - especially thoracic extension - can fix slouching shoulders.
- Less Injuries. Through increased muscle quality, flexibility and posture. Working on your ITB & calves can get rid of knee pain for example.
What You Need for Soft Tissue Work. The best way remains getting it done by an ART. Alternative ways:
- Foam Roller. Cheap rollers get distorted fast. Get a paperboard roller or PVC pipe. Or invest in the Foam Roller Plus: the PVC pipe on the inside makes it last 5x longer than regular foam rollers.
- Tennis Ball. You’ll reach smaller muscles more easily with a tennis or lacrosse ball than with a foam roller. They also provide more pressure.
- Thera-Cane. More precision, increased leverage and no need to lie on the floor to work on trigger points. Check this one.
How to Do Soft Tissue Work. Here are some books & free guides on how to use foam rollers or tennis balls for soft tissue work.
- Free PDF 1 & Free PDF 2. Free guides on how to use foam rollers. (right click - download as. View with Acrobat Reader).
- Tennis Ball: a Tool You Never Knew You Had by Lauren. 3 part article with pictures & instructions on using tennis balls for soft tissue work.
- Feel Better for 10 Bucks by Eric Cressey & Mike Robertson. First article I read on soft tissue work. Has pictures & instruction on foam roller use.
- Soft Tissue Work for Tough Guys by Tony Gentilcore. Pictures, videos & instructions on how to use a tennis bal for soft tissue work.
- Trigger Point Therapy Handbook by Clair Davies. Lists all possible trigger points, how they can cause pain, and how to assess them.
- Maximum Strength by Eric Cressey. Includes 10 pages with pictures & instructions on soft tissue work using a foam roller/tennis ball.
Check out the video below by Eric Cressey.
Soft Tissue Work Routine. Work on the following muscles as warm-up. 2-3 strokes per muscle before your dynamic stretching. Takes 10mins.
- Feet: tennis ball
- Calves: foam roller
- ITB/TFL: foam roller
- Quads/hip flexors: foam roller
- Adductors: foam roller
- Hamstrings: foam roller
- Glutes/piriformis: tennis ball
- Thoracic extension: foam roller
- Lats: foam roller
- Pecs: foam roller
- Infraspinatus: tennis ball
Soft Tissue Work Techniques. Spend extra time on the most painful spots. It will hurt, but the only way to get used to it is to work through the pain.
- Work All Sides. Calves: curl your toes up, out, then rotate in & out. Infraspinatus: externally & internally rotate your upper-arm. Etc.
- Work Small Areas. Quads/hip flexors: work your quads first, then move up to your hip flexors. Same thing for your hamstrings.
- Increase Pressure. Start with 1 leg on the floor. Switch to legs crossed or on top of eachother after a few weeks.
- Avoid Neck & Lower Back. Work all muscles except these 2. You don’t want to injure your spine.
Whatever your level of experience, if you never did soft tissue work, try it. This is like stretching, you need this to be healthy. Try it for a few weeks. You’ll feel better and will get addicted to soft tissue work.
This is good stuff. The integration of soft tissue work into my program has been a life saver for injury prevention, and it just makes me feel better. For the lower legs and calves I’d like to throw a shout out to The Stick. It’s the best tool I’ve found for the lower leg down to the ankle. I also use the other tools listed above, taken together I’m covered head to toe. You can basically give yourself a light massage every day, it’s great.
When (and how often per week) do you usually do soft-tissue work? You mention as warmup before dynamic stretching.
I’m doing the ‘old’ 5×5 adding a post-workout run of 3-5 miles (5-8 kilometers) done at an 8:00 pace/mile (~5:00 pace/kilometer). When I add my afterworkout stretching, I’m over an hour for my 3x/week workouts. Think doing soft-tissue work on my ‘off’ days may work best for me (time-wise).
Nice article, but actually stretching doesnt increase the lenth of the muscles, but the flexibility
Increasing the length would mean the attachments changed place! [/wiseguy]
@Mase
All my workouts start with foam rolling and dynamic stretching. Currently 4x workouts per week.
@Jorick
Héhé. It’s “length” not lenth. [/morewiseguy]
Great article. Taking some tips from massage therapy as well as physical therapy and the athletic training world.
A good personal compass for someone who may not be familiar with the importance of soft tissue.
Your subject matter also touches indirectly on myofascial release as well.
Thanks
Oh I so needed this article! I’ll incorporate these into my workouts at once!
Mehdi,
With your reference to the IT band, you may want to mention the origination of the IT band and the participation of the Tensor Fascia Latae and the Gluteus Maximus in the IT band’s movement and flexibility. While the IT band is not a tendon, it definitely is tendon-like by being more fibrous than other fascia in the body.
And while it is difficult to stretch the IT band, I think a combination of your suggestions and static/dynamic hip abductor stretches would be ideal. (In my humble opinion)
I agree, excellent post. I always thought I would need a massage therapist but actually a workout buddy is possibly good enough. Injury prevention alone makes this worth its weight in gold.
i am very lucky, i just did a quick search and found an ART certified physician that is 4 miles away from my apartment. i might be able to have my insurance cover my visits so its all good. check out her credentials, she has a sweet resume
http://www.taylormadehealthcare.com/thea.html