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Soft Tissue Prep for Performance Part 2: Muscle Energy Techniques
Muscle Energy Techniques (METs) are a simple way to enhance nearly any stretch that you can think of. Â The neurology at play is simple: Â After a brief static contraction, a muscle is momentarily inhibited and fatigued. Â The Contract Relax or Post Isometric Inhibition MET takes advantage of this neurologic phenomena by moving that inhibited muscle into a stretch during that phase.
These techniques are as gentle or as aggressive as you’d like them to be so they are appropriate at any point in your training/ recovery cycle. Â Here are a couple examples for pectoralis and upper trapezius.
With a little thought, you can use this technique to enhance nearly any stretch that you can think of. Â The idea is to contract a muscle to the point of mild fatigue before stretching it. Â This doesn’t take much. Â A 10-20% effort sustained for five seconds isometrically will do the job. Â Then relax the muscle momentarily before stretching it.
Here are a couple low-res examples for piriformis, pec and psoas (complete with dulcet tones of eminem and crashing barbells)
How to apply: Â Five sets will take you less than a minute and is enough return a shortened tissue to its normal length. Â Remember, one set equals 5 seconds of static contraction followed by a five second static stretch.
Soft Tissue Prep for Sport Performance Part I: Cross Fiber Friction
This is a 5 part series assembled to help members of the Old Country Iron Club out of Morgan Junction Crossfit. These folks are undertaking a demanding 3 week kettlebell snatch Caliber Cycle. This volume of overhead work requires proper technique and positioning. Your knowledge, your good intentions and even your flawless, pristine technique will be undermined if you have short, tight internal rotators. Without mobility in the latissimus dorsi, subscapularis and pectoralis muscles, that bell will not drift overhead into the necessary stable finishing position.
For many individuals, a personalized SMR (Self Myofascial Release) program will be necessary to maintain form and mobility as the volume and intensity of the program develops.
There is an abundance of videos out there on SMR techniques. Â Go ahead and do a couple searches and you’ll find plenty of useful moves but let’s face it, these videos are fish. If you give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day. . . You don’t need more SMR fish. What you need is to know how to SMR fish. You need to understand the underlying principles behind the multitude of videos out there and know when and how to apply the different techniques. That is exactly what this series is intended to do for you.
What most SMR videos have in common is that they use a combination of balls, bands and foam rollers to employ combination of 4 basic principles: Cross Fiber Friction, Post Isometric Relaxation, Pin and Stretch, and Antagonist Inhibition. I’m starting you out with an aggressive technique called cross fiber friction and will work toward pre-lift mobilizations from there.
This quick demonstration is on the pectoralis major, but remember to apply this technique wherever you need it. Be creative and responsive to what your body needs. If you come up with something that might be useful for others, please feel free to share in comments below. Remember to pay special attention in the following weeks to the internal rotators of your humerus pictured below.
Normatec MVP Pro: Its like being swallowed by a healing python
Sports medicine is all about time. Â Anyone can get you back onto the field eventually. Â The person that can shave days or weeks from your recovery time is a sports medicine doctor. Â A recent addition to our clinic that is saving our patients days and weeks is the NormaTec MVP Pro.
We hold our standards to those of the elite sports medicine clinics, and this is what is now being done for our nation’s olympians and pros. Â We are now able to push rehab harder and faster than before with the benefit of draining and decompressing the injured area after a demanding rehab session. Â The NormaTec works by manipulating your body’s circulatory system to reduce local inflammation and increase oxygen uptake in an injured tissue.
Venous return is a passive process. Â Your heart and arteries are big muscular vessels that actively push oxygen rich blood to your tissues. Â You veins are not quite so yoked and are dependent upon external pressures from your muscles to push the fluid through a system of one way valves. Â External compression makes this venous return system more efficient.
If your upstream organs such as the brain are dependent upon active muscular contraction for blood supply what happens when you stand with your knees locked in one spot for a half hour or more? Â Hilarious wedding montage videos happen that’s what.
NormaTec vasopneumatic compression facilitates rapid venous return with a patented pulsing compression system. Â This speeds venous return accelerating the recovery and healing process.
Athletes such as LeBron James, Kevin Garnett and others are now spending the half-time break of their games plugged into the same NormaTec unit that we provide for our patients here at Sports Medicine Northwest. Â We’ll keep holding the standard high over here. Â As always, if it’s good enough for Mark Wahlberg, it’s good enough for us.
Excellence Athlete Profile: Marissa “Roo” Luchau
Roo looks like a machine. Â She’s about as friendly and good-natured as they come but you wouldn’t guess that by looking at her on game day.
“Whatyoulookinat?”
Roo’s training demands rival that of any professional athlete. Â Her coach lays out a meticulous program designed to peak several times per year for competition. Â Her current incarnation as a kettlebell Master of Sport and a two-time Crossfit Individual Regional Qualifier is not her first run as a competitor. Â The product of a rural Washington upbringing, she cut her teeth as a barrel racer in rodeo and LumberJill games before being recruited by the UW as a javelin thrower. Â At college, a nasty rugby tackle left Roo with several fractured ribs, a build-up of scar tissue and an episode of acute Frozen Shoulder. Â That injury put an end to her track and field career but it does not keep her from training at the highest level today.
Most people who compete like this are called professional athletes. Â They rely on a locker room full of physical therapists, trainers and equipment to help them recover after each rough training session. Â Roo has Sports Medicine Northwest. Â It is our duty and privilege to help her recover from one week’s training demands in time to greet the next week’s with renewed mobility, stability, power and focus.
Marissa had a big weekend. Â If you’ve been on Facebook anytime over the past 48 hours you probably already know that she shattered a world record on Saturday.
World Record for continuous #35 kettlebell jerks in one hour on Saturday morning 11:59am PST= 545 reps
World Record for continuous #35 kettlebell jerks in one hour one minute later at noon PST= 712 REPS!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
That may not have been the only world record set that day.  Hordes of friends, family and supporters showed up at Sports Medicine Northwest Health and Fitness to participate in the One Hour Long Cycle right along with her.  It was a hugely successful fundraiser for The Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance and it may have been the largest such event in history.
Graston Technique Speeds Tissue Healing Time
I’ve often been in the position of being my own medic. Â Two years ago I tore my right quadriceps in an unfortunate and unavoidable soccer birthday party incident. Â Last year I tore my right hamstring while sprinting. Â These were proper tears where you can feel the divot in the tissue and a large bruise forms below the injury site. Â I recovered from both of these tears quickly. Â I healed up and returned to my sport quickly because both times I used Graston Technique regime to speed recovery. Â During one of these early/ acute Graston sessions I remember thinking “Why on earth do people let me do this to them?” Â The answer is that it works. Â These histologic images demonstrate a dose response relationship where greater pressure stimulates a greater healing response.
Quick Summary: Â The black spots in the above images are Fibroblasts. Â Fibroblasts are the cells that lay down new tissue after you’ve been injured. Â Fibroblasts are good. Â The image on the right is the one taken from the tissue that received the highest dose of Graston Therapy thus Graston is good.
Below are histological images demonstrating drastically improved tissue alignment at a cellular level when torn tissues are treated with Graston Technique.
Graston Therapy MCL at four weeks. Notice the linear alignment and proliferation of cells near the incision.
Control MCL at 4 weeks. That swirling, disorganized cell alignment is not ready to bear a tensile load.
In a 2009 study out of the University of Indiana, Dr. Loghmani surgically severed the both MCL ligaments in a group of 39 mice. Â She used one side of the rodent as the control group and treated the other side with Graston Technique treatments 3 times per week for 4 weeks. Â The images above correlate to the findings that at four weeks post injury, the MCL ligaments treated with Graston Technique were 43.1% stronger, 39.7% stiffer, and could absorb 57.1% more energy before failure.
Barbell Overhead Sqaut + Banded Kettlebell = Shoulder Stability
KB Banded Barbell OHS-
Yep. I said it.
This is a great warm-up move because of its sports specificity and the fact that it challenges range of motion with stability.
Are you going to earn some sideways looks when you are strapping kbs and bands to the bar? Yeah. Yeah you are. You can just shrug that off with your nice, stable shoulders.
Person Food
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| AC Milan: wasted youth. |
This wantonly indulgent behavior isn’t even what I envy. Where they have it good is with big bags of nutrition simply labeled “CAT FOOD.” If AC Milan here needs to bump up his caloric intake to recover from doing 7 minutes of burpees or some cat equivalent, he hits the food bowl twice. Easy. I want that. If you know where I can get huge bags of balanced nutrition labeled “Man Food’ please send me that link. Until then, there is Viking Hash:
Behold.
1) 4 large sweet potatoes cubed
2) 1 yellow Onion
3) 1 shallot
4) 4 cloves garlic
Get the biggest wok you can find good and hot and add items 1-4 with some butter (optional)
Cook the following items separately and add them as they are ready.
1.5 lbs. ground Turkey lightly salted
One Pack of bacon (Bake in the oven, pour the grease into the potato/onion wok, chop into bits and add)
2 chopped turkey dogs (They were in the fridge so. . . )
1/2 lbs. ground beef
1.5 lbs. pulled pork shoulder (6 hours in the slow cooker. Add at the end.)
LOTS of olive oil
1 head of broccoli (rubbed with olive oil, salt & pepper then oven roasted @ 400 for 9 minutes)
16 brussels sprouts (ditto)
A fist full of spinach at the end.
If you’re looking for caloric density, add all of the bacon and turkey grease and top it with an avocado and more olive oil. I wish I could just toss a big bag of this stuff over my shoulder and eat it from a shiny metal bowl on my kitchen floor.
You may never know the occult pleasures of getting wacked out of your gourd on catnip and cleaning your entire body with a coarse tongue but you CAN have this. Person food. Enjoy.
Salt in the wound Part II: "Welcome to the world. It’s salty and awful out here."
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| Right Hand (Experimental Group) day One: The Salt Soak Group |
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| Left Hand (Control Group) day One : The Neosporin Group |
I’ve been diligently salt soaking my right ring finger in super saturated salt water for over a week now. I soak the right hand 3x/day for 20 minute spells. This is easy to do. I simply walk about handling my business while carrying a mug of salt water that I have my right middle finger submerged in. I look like an unhygienic waiter. Due to inherent base line of salinity in the body, the salt soak has only a minimal burn.
RESULTS:
Just look at that hardened digit on the right! Tell me that scaly talon isn’t ready for ropes.
In the interests of full disclosure, I will admit that I contaminated these results. I gave up on the Neosporin and started salting both hands a few days ago. I made the early switch when the skin on The Experimental Group was healing tough, dry and resilient as opposed to the goopy mess of flesh which often opened and bled on the Neosporin hand.
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Cracking- The wound dries out quickly and is susceptible to cracking. For this reason, I recommend applying an unflavored chap stick to the tear a couple times per day and before workouts.
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Convenience- My walking mug trick worked for me, but this technique is intended for torn calluses in the palm of the hand as well. Unless you are a security guard at a junior college, you probably don’t have the time to sit with the palms of your hands in two saucers of salt water for an hour every day.
Salt In The Wound
Saturday Squall is when my coach pairs me off against a man who is a friend, an in-house rival, and a notorious chauvinistic womanizer. Squall for us is a a head-to-head competition designed to turn our enormous egos into fuel. It keeps us sharp. No one can mentally terrorize us like we can to each other. He has a habit of innocently asking me “how old are you?” before we compete. Out of respect for his chauvinistic privacy, I will refer to him as Shmryan “Shmollywood” Shmandrews. We have a well established rivalry where he wins some, and I look really muscular with my shirt off in others. Anyway, this past Saturday me and my fresh, unblemished skin walked into squall that turned out to be a hand tear buzzsaw:
SQUALL #2
75 DU’s
hand stand walk across gym
30 power snatches
“all good thus far”
3 rounds of 10 chest to bar pull-ups/ 12 wallballs
“C2B’s can be tough but my super-amazing gymnast tape job holds up great and my baby soft skin is still intact.”
3 Rope Climbs
“Dang.”
3 rope climbs isn’t really a problem. I did 11 touch and go last week, but after those C2B’s and the rushed tempo of no recovery between climbs, the three rope climbs became “a problem.”
I’d typically tape my legs, my shoes, my face, etc. for this sort of wod but the events were announced just before we began and I foolishly dove right into it rather than slow down the momentum of the moment for my adhesive ritual.
I had a fast tempo going with butterfly chest to bar pull-ups that gave me a big lead on Shmryan heading into the final 3 climbs but he is very tan and he was gaining on me fast. The first guy to touch the ceiling on the 3rd climb would win this squall.
I took off on the 3rd climb before he did. I had to. He is quite tan after all and a fast climber. I began that climb with enough energy in the tank to make it to the top but not quite enough to make a controlled descent back down. The result:
I get to the top before Shmryan does and reach for the ceiling and my hard earned victory. I miss- I miss a freaking wall! I fall part of the way back down the rope. His small strong hands and leathery skin are nipping at my heels. I struggle back up to the top, take another desperate grab at the ceiling and promtly fall 17′ to the ground, leaving a good amount of arm, leg, and hand skin on the rope. I’m not sure if I even touched the ceiling but the judges gave it to me. For the moment my burning lungs and gaping flesh command my attention. Squall #1 ended with a controversial missed rep by Mr. Shmandrews and my victory. Squall #2 ended with an equally murky conclusion. Until next time my mute, hairless, leathery friend.
That night I went to Foundations Crossfit’s holiday party and got some interesting hand recovery advice from trainer Adam Wenzel. Apparently, it is a commonly held belief in the gymnastics community that soaking hand tears in super-saturated salt water causes the skin to grow back strong and with the callus already in place. I had several nasty tears available to test this theory and that’s how I’ve spent the last few days. I chose the right hand as the salt dip hand and the left hand as the traditional neosporin/soap and water control hand. The right hand had the bigger and deeper tear so if it healed better than the left, this salt soak concept would be validated.
PICS!
Here’s a pic of the poor digits immediatly after I removed the bandages when I got home on Saturday.
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| This poor bastard is my right hand. This is The Experimental Group= salt soak 3x/day |
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| left middle finger: the smaller tear of the two. I will refer to it as The Control Group= neosporin+soap and water This salt soak concept comes from Coach Sommer of Gymnasitic Bodies . It works like this:
Step 1) Make a super-saturated salt mix
Step 2)
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| 24 hours later. Sunday, Day 2. This photo is taken immediately after a 20 minute salt soak on The Experimental Group which is the miraculously normal looking digit on the right. |
The Ripping and The Tearing Part II: Tape It Like a Gymnast
The Ripping and the Tearing
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| This guy can relate too. If he had the for site to read this blog before traveling back in time, he may have kept his flawless Futrure-Austrian skin intact as well as saving the planet from a robo-apocalypse. |
The fact is that I rip my hands for a combination of reasons:
- Paper flesh/ futuristic cyborg strength etc. as described above
- Technique- I should let the bell skip to my proximal interphalangeal joint in the bottom of the swing, but I get all excited in competition and hold too tight.
- My taping techniques have all failed me. In the photo beneath, the tape that I used was little more than bloody streamers by the mid-way point of the event. I learned how to make a gymnastics grip from tape that is legal in all kb/crossfit events. It will be the subject of my next post. This post is about what I’ve done to harden up my hands.
Example:
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| Attempt #1 at The Lab |
One workout that tore me up pretty badly was in an IKFF competition at The Lab a few months back. It was a 5 minute demolition derby of #53 kettlebell snatch with unlimited hand switches. I got 118 reps and the stigmata pictured on the left.
War wounds like these are cute for a minute. They make nice FB profile updates, but it gets old pretty quick and I’m always on the lookout for a new technique that will keep my skin on my hands where it belongs.
I put two new techniques to the test this weekend at the Oregon Crossfit Winter Games. Keep an eye on the Old Country Iron Club blog for a full write-up. I hear it will be posted on Wednesday.
This turned out to be a perfect opportunity to compare the results as it turned out by random chance that event #1 at the OCFWG was the exact same event that opened my hands up just 3 months ago at The Lab. The only difference was that this time the snatches were preceded by a 2k row and 60 seconds of rest. Gross.
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| More Lab grossness |
The intervention:
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| Boom! This flawless future-Austrian skin is alive and well. |
The Perfect Ice Bath
There are those times when you train so vigorously that you know you will be worthless for the rest of the day and be sore for the next three. On those occasions I turn to the ice bath. This thing is magical. I step in feeling beaten down and bad, five minutes later I step out feeling well, still beaten down but good.
Everyone knows to ice an injury. I’m not breaking any paradigms there. When you apply ice to an inflamed tissue, vasoconstriction occurs and fluids are flushed out of the area. That is why an ice pack on a swollen ankle is helpful. Now imagine the effect of submerging your entire lower body to the lower back in ice water and chasing that inflammation 3-4 feet away from the source of pain.
Everyone has their own technique for coping with the raw physical discomfort of an ice bath. Here’s mine:
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| It doesn’t have to be like this. |
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| Well it doesn’t really have to be like this either, but this guy has the right idea. |
- If you’re inflamed enough to consider an ice bath you are probably exceeding your free radical tolerance too, so start off with some CoQ10 and vitamin C.
- I Keep 4-6 large water balloons filled and in my freezer at all times. My kids had a phase when they froze everything so I came upon this idea by accident. I like to use big birthday balloons or the grenade colored water balloons. You don’t want to skimp with those little hand held balloons.
- These are particularly useful when you are hitting the ice bath when you are still a hot, boiling mess from whatever terrible sport/wod/event you just took part in. The ice cube ice bath heats up as the cubes melt, but not the frozen balloon bath.
- Fill the tub half way and add a cup of Epsom Salts and 4 frozen water balloons with the balloon peeled off.
- Fill the rest of the way
- Add two trays of ice cubes
- Pull on a wool hat, a scarf, grab your phone, set a 5 minute timer
- Climb into the tub. If this is only for your legs, get a FIRM grip on your phone and pull up a mindless app. I recommend Plants vs. Zombies. I’ve actually let the timer run through 3 times trying to keep those pesky undead beasts off my lawn.
- If your arms are trashed too, as mine were this morning from a thorough Franning, then put the phone down. It’s time for full commitment.
- Grab one of those orbs of ice that’s floating around and give yourself a deep ice massage in the biceps and forearms.
- Step out of the tub 5 minutes later and feel WAY BETTER than you did 5 minutes ago.