This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and
in this video we're going over advanced
self-administered release techniques
specifically, biceps femoris dynamic
release or pin and stretch. I'm going to
have my friend Melissa come out. I'm
going to kind of explain the setup, this
is a bit of a tricky setup. If you guys
have ever tried to do release techniques
for the hamstrings sitting on the floor
with your legs stretched out in front of
you, you might have noticed it doesn't
work very well, it's very hard to find
any sort of tender point, it doesn't
really seem to help extensibility all
that much. If you get on a platform that
you can sit on with your legs dangling
it actually makes things a lot easier,
because now we have a relaxed biceps
femoris and we can use the weight of
your leg to create pressure, rather than
trying to sit up on the floor which
might even activate the biceps femoris
and make a release very hard to get. The
next thing we have to figure out is you
may have noticed that a foam roll
doesn't work very well, that as soon as
you put pressure with a foam roll you
just kind of flop either hamstring to
either side of the femur, and it's really
hard to get any sort of specific
pressure. So we need a little smaller
surface area so that we get more
pressure per square inch. Now last for
this particular technique, is we need a
smaller surface area to pin down the
adhesive tissue in my biceps femoris. But
I still need to maintain my
perpendicular width so that I can block
the adhesion, as I'm going to have her
move through this particular technique.
That's where these massage therapy balls
come in. They're very handy, they're
foam 5-inch balls, I suppose you could
use a medicine ball if you could find
the right size ball. But for
convenience these trigger point balls
are real nice. I'm going to have Melissa
go ahead, and she's going to look for a
tender point between her knee and her
ischium on the outside of her thigh.
Just look for the most tender
point you can roll back
forth kind of scoot on your butt, or you
can move the ball as she is, or a
combination of the two. When she finds an
adhesive point, I'm now going to ask her
to move just distal to, it that's closer
to her knee. So she's going to move just
like this, if this is the ball, this is
the adhesion, all right we're going to
move just off it; because what I wanted
to do with that ball is block the
adhesive tissue, because now I'm gonna
ask her to do the fun part. I'm going to
ask her to extend her knee which is
going to lengthen my biceps femoris,
and pull those muscles fibers through
the adhesive tissue, which we hope helps
her extensibility. So she's going to block,
extend her knee, hold for two to five
seconds, and then back down. If somebody
doesn't have this much extensibility you
could have them put their hands behind
them and lean back a little bit. All
right so we lengthen out the biceps
femoris by extending at the hip a little
bit, hold, she's going to do 10 to 15
repetitions with 2-5 second
holds at the end. The same sort of
protocol you use for active stretching
if I needed her to do both sides, I could have
her do 15 and 15, and then we're going to
move on. As far as where this fits in our
program, realize that these are
progressions from static release
techniques. I would like to start by
toning down what overactivity she has in
her biceps femoris, and probably a more
effective way to do that is with those
static trigger point releases. We need to
make sure that we're using these
techniques specific to improving
movement. So I don't want anybody chasing
pain just because their hamstrings
hurt, or because they feel like their
hamstrings are tight. Remember that
feelings aren't facts, we need to go back
to our movement assessment. If I'm using
this technique I'm thinking somebody's
feet turn out, their knees bow in, or
their knees bow out. They have an
inadequate forward lean or a posterior
pelvic tilt
on their overhead squat assessment. So
those are those five signs. If I was
looking at goniometery I'd be looking
at maybe my knee extension with hip
flexed, goniometery assessment internal
or external rotation of the hip. Internal
rotation being more, or a limit in internal
rotation being more indicative of biceps
femoris tightness. Muscle length tests, of
course we could do the hamstring length
test if we were looking specifically for
hamstring length. Big overarching concept
there guys is, this would be based on a
movement assessment, and it would follow
doing probably two to six weeks of
static release techniques for the same
muscle; before I used this progression in
some sort of home exercise program,
integrated warm-up, movement prep sort of
situation. So there you guys go, you're
going to look for the most tender spot
on the lateral back of the thigh,
the lateral portion of the posterior
thigh. Once you find that adhesive point
you're going to go just distal to that
point, make sure that that adhesive
tissue is now blocked behind this
trigger point massage therapy ball.
You're then going to extend the knee to
pull that biceps femoris through that
adhesive tissue for 10 to 15 repetitions,
with two to five second holds. I hope you
guys get great results, I look forward to
hearing about your outcomes.
you