This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're going over more
advanced self-administered release techniques. In this particular video
we're going to go over vastus lateralis pin and stretch, or vastus lateralis
active release. I'm going to have my friend Melissa come out, she's going to
help me demonstrate. Now what Melissa is going to do is she's going to take one
of these trigger point rollers here, and she's going to roll up and down her
vastus lateralis, which is the area on the side of her thigh from her greater
trochanter. That big bump just lateral to your hip all the way down to your knee.
Can you find the most tender point?
Yeah all right, go ahead and get down on your elbow, make sure that your kind
of straightened out here, and people have a tendency to turn into little cashews
on this technique. Make sure that their form is still pretty good. Now if
this was a static release technique she'd be done. She would have
found the tender spot, she's in good form we would just wait for that release
technique to diminish in tenderness. And I'm going to assume that if you're
watching this video you've already done that static technique, but now we're
going to move on, we're going to progress. So I'm going to have her roll up just a
little bit this way. This is going to move that foam roll from on the trigger
point. Which we're also going to assume is the adhesive point, to just distal that
adhesive point. And now the fun part, I'm going to have Melissa flex her knee.
And what's that literally is doing, is it's taking her muscle fibers and
shearing them past the tissue that's being blocked by the foam roll. So we're
actually getting some fascial shear here, which we're hoping is breaking up some
of this adhesive tissue and improving extensibility. Now the protocol for this
is very similar to active stretching. She can do 2-5 second holds at the top here,
and we're going to do 10 to 15 repetitions. Once you've done 10 to 15
repetitions she can go ahead and move on to the other side, or potentially move on
to another adhesive point within the same muscle. Now if I wanted to progress
this even further I can't just go to a smaller object, you guys have seen other
videos where I've done static release techniques with a medicine ball or a
softball. We do want to decrease surface area, but we can't decrease surface area
in width. If we decrease this way, there's a chance that that adhesive tissue that
we were trying to block with the trigger point roll here, would then become well,
not a block, the adhesive tissue would just kind of go around something like a
softball. So we need something that's smaller in diameter this way, but not
this way, and that's where this guy comes in. This is a quad baller from trigger
point, and as you guys can see it's it's a dowel wrapped with some padding. It's
pretty tough, pretty small surface area, but it still has that width we need to
make sure we block that adhesive tissue.
Melissa is going to demonstrate and wince as she does this. Make sure you
guys aren't throwing this at clients, first time clients, people who've never
foam rolled before. These are advanced techniques. They do tend to be quite a
bit more tender than the static release techniques with like a soft foam roll. You
found it, good. Once she's found that spot, once again we're gonna go just distal to
that spot. So she's got to roll up just a little bit, make sure she's just off the
point and she's right here. So she's braced up against that adhesive tissue,
and then she can go ahead and flex her knee 10 to 15 times, 2 to 5 second holds,
nice slow tempo. A good point to make here guys is with all foam roll and
self-administered release techniques, the role or object doesn't move, you might
for these active release techniques, and static release techniques nothing
moves. But it's not the foam roll that rolls up and down, or the quad baller
that rolls up and down, and the trigger point roller that rolls up and down.
that's probably not going to do much to increase our extensibility. There's
really no good model to show that that would affect tissues in a way that would
be beneficial. This on the other hand, shearing fascial tissue that has the
potential to increase extensibility, increase performance by reducing
restrictions. Things that could be leaking some of the potential
performance we already have. I hope you guys enjoy this technique as much as you
can. It is fairly aggressive. You need to be careful who you give this to, but for
an advanced athlete like Melissa here, where we're trying to get every ounce
out of her performance, definitely worth a shot. I look forward to hearing from
you guys on the outcomes you got from this technique. Thank you.