This is Brent of the brook Bush Institute, and in this video we're going to go over rectus
femoris and quadriceps vibration, or percussive release using the Hypervolt
from Hyperice. I'm going to have my friend Melissa come out, she's going to help me
demonstrate. Now this is a release technique so I'm going to assume we're
trying to increase mobility, and that that is based on assessment. So if we're
doing the quadriceps and rectus femoris, I'm going to assume that maybe she either has a
hip extension or knee flexion restriction, maybe on the overhead squat
assessment she had excessive forward lean, or knees bow out, or an anterior
pelvic tilt, but we have a good reason to do this and something to reassess to see
how effective this technique was. Now you'll notice that Melissa is in supine
on a table, that does have some advantages because I can actually have
Melissa scoot over just a little bit and then hang her leg off the table, and by
bending her knee like this I can actually put my knee against her shin and
control the amount of tension in her quad and rectus femoris. This is going to
come in handy because with my release techniques I want the tissue to push
back against the machine just a little bit, and putting a little stretch on the
tissue might actually help us get a release right, like you guys have noticed
like when you stretch you get that release of tissue. So a little
counterintuitive with our vibration release techniques is we actually start
on the higher settings, but we are going to start very superficial. So what I'm going to
do is I'm going to start down by Melissa's knee here, and you have to be careful
because some people are a little ticklish down here right, and I'm just
going to slowly glide through the tissue. A little different than our static manual
release techniques, or our foam rolling where we're going after a specific
trigger point, in this case I'm going to actually kind of
go through all of the muscle. I think you'll find that you get a good release
throughout the entirety of the muscle tissue, its a little less specific than
that trigger point release techniques, however as you're going through try to
make note of where the tissue feels a little denser, right it's a little harder
to push through. Maybe where you're getting some twitch responses, every
once in a while you will hit a trigger point you'll see fibers or fascicles
actually twitch. Or places where the the patient or client says that they're
more tender, all of those are going to be good places to go back to when I show
you guys how to use this technique, or modify this technique to get a little
deeper in the tissue and Melissa's kind of kicking back against me here, so I'm
guessing that this is a tender spot, I will make a mental note of that for
later.
As I'm going through you will notice I'm staying away from her kneecap,
I'm also staying away from her ASIS this thing does not feel good over bony
protuberances. If you're a little unsure of somebody's Anatomy you could always
put a thumb there, or put a thumb there and make sure you know you don't
go past your own thumb. You will notice I'm just using the
weight of the machine here, I don't need a lot of pressure and nice the Hypervolt
is light enough that I can use one hand. I could even be monitoring or
or trying to palpate tissue and see where she has the most restriction.
Is it mostly in her rectus femoris as opposed to the top
of her vastus lateralis. So we'll say that we've gone through her
whole muscle here and now maybe I want to get a little deeper into the tissue,
well I can try with this piece although this piece is pretty wide and flat, I
might want to go with something that has a little smaller surface area. The Hypervault
comes with these two pieces, this one's kind of forked like, so you could I
guess essentially go after to trigger points at once, it does come in handy.
This piece is what we're going to start with here, which I think Hypervolt calls
the bullet, and since I'm going to try to get a little deeper in the tissue, I
might also do this, take some tension out, alright now I can get a little deeper
without getting kicked back from that tissue. I'm also going to start at a lower
setting, so maybe I use two, see if Melissa can stand this. Not so well, let's see if
she stands the lower setting a little bit better, and so let's try this, is that
better? Okay so we're just going to use that lower setting, and as I mentioned I kind
of kept track that she had a tender point here, so maybe I'm going to slowly
glide through that tender point, alright wait for that tissue to give
way. You can notice that while I was really superficial with that flat piece,
I'm kind of digging in a little bit, don't press as hard as you possibly can
we're not trying to strike her femur, like that's definitely not the
goal, you're just digging in a little bit and then slowly working your way through
the tissue.
I got a little bit of a twitch response there, as that trigger point let go, and
and as we get higher into her quad and/or we're getting into like thicker
more dense muscle tissue, we could have Melissa sit up. Alright so now we're
shortening the rectus femoris even more, and maybe that allows us to get
even deeper into the tissue if we feel like we have a really deep trigger point,
and of course the nice thing is since this is a very safe technique you
can't really do much damage. If you do have an athlete who's coming in often
and you feel confident in their ability and want to do this effectively, let's
say I wanted to go grab a couple pieces of equipment to set her up with like
maybe her isolated activation techniques I can go, here you go make sure you work
on that area where you have those tender trigger points, and of course she can
feel those trigger points probably better than I can. If she was a
really advanced elite athlete, competition and recovery was really
really important to her, I might even suggest that she purchases one of these
for home because the quads are definitely an area that somebody can get
to on their own. I know personally I use this after every basketball game,
it's definitely convenient to kind of just be doing in the on the ride home
just be like going through my quads and making sure I get a little bit of that
help on the recovery side of things. How's that feel? Ticklish yeah this is
one area that Melissa is quite ticklish on. I know some people are a little bit
more ticklish to the vibration, and in a little different areas than others. Good,
how does that feel? Good, alright so go ahead and turn this off.
Alright and then I would follow up with reassessment, so if we're doing the
quad maybe I want to retest knee flexion, if we were doing this for hip extension
maybe I want to retest her hip extension, maybe I want to look back at her
overhead squat. Remember guys we're not just using a cool tool to do a cool
technique, we're trying to get some sort of effective outcome. So to quickly go
through all of the progressions we went through can you lay down real quick. We
had several positions. We had knee bent off the table and of course I could
control how much knee bend. I then went a little deeper or got a little less
tension in the tissue by putting her leg straight,
but notice she's still in a hip extended position or at least a hip neutral
position. I could then have her sit all the way up, I have different heads that I
can use for the Hypervolt right, I told you that I like the flat round
piece for lower extremity, but in particular I think I think it gives a
very consistent feel being that it's a solid piece and it has a
good surface area to it, and then once I was going after more like trigger points
and specific points of tissue density I switched to the bullet, although you
could probably also get away with using this tool which is kind of like this
this fork shaped tool. Start with assessment, follow-up with assessment. I
hope you really enjoy this Hypervolt from Hyperice, it's definitely a
game changer.