This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're going to do
vibration or percussive release techniques with my Hypervolt from Hyperice.
I'm going to have my friend Melissa come out, she's going to help me demonstrate.
Now if I'm doing gastrocnemius and soleus release as I am in this video, we're
going to assume that I already did an assessment, Melissa was complaining about
some plantar fasciitis. So we did our overhead squat assessment, she had
excessive forward lean, and then I wanted some way to be able to assess
improvement so I did a little goniometry, and she actually has a restriction in
dorsiflexion. These are great reasons to use a little bit of vibration release.
Now the vibration release techniques do work a little different than like let's
say foam rolling or our static manual release techniques. Rather than going for
deep trigger points and staying in one place we're going to use a slightly
different protocol here. Now you'll notice Melissa's body position, since I'm
working on her calf I have her laying face down and I actually have her ankles
off the end of the table, and the reason I like having the ankles off the end of
the table like this is because I can now control dorsiflexion with my thigh which
will control how much tension is in this tissue, which is kind of a nice benefit
to have as I'm going through this technique. To start off with I'm going to
use the flat round piece that comes with my hyperbole, and I find that it works
very well for the lower extremity and a little counterintuitive I'm actually
going to start on the higher frequency setting. So this is number three and the
reason being is I'm also going to start very superficial. So when I'm doing these
techniques initially I'm just using the weight of the hypervault itself, I don't
need to push any deeper, I'm just going to let the frequency do all the work.
Now you'll also notice that rather than staying in one place like I would with a
foam roll or finding like a trigger point and doing my static manual release
techniques in one spot, I'm also going to glide through the entirety of the tissue
for the muscle that I'm working on. Now I am going to pay attention to areas that I
think are a little bit more dense or maybe have a little bit higher tone, but
overall I'm just going to slowly work my way through her entire calf
complex. I kind of got a mowing the lawn pattern here going right now.
Now as I'm going through and I'm taking note a little counter-intuitively, the
reason I'm taking note is we then might go back with a smaller piece something
with less surface area so we increase the pressure a little bit. I'm going to
decrease the frequency and I'm going to be able to dig into the tissue a little
deeper for those more stubborn or denser areas, and that's definitely a dense area
right here for Melissa. Alright so steps 1 are just
superficially going over the tissue on the higher frequency settings, but
monitoring some parts where you think maybe they could use another pass or
maybe a little deeper work with a lower intensity, and in this case point to
your tool you might be thinking to yourself it doesn't matter whether skin
or clothes because we glide over the tissue. I actually find that thin
clothing is actually better, so Melissa's yoga pants here are absolutely perfect,
because there's some moisture in your skin you sometimes get a little caught
up on the skin, whereas you can glide really nicely over like basketball
shorts or yoga pants or even like these these prana pants that I'm wearing here,
which are kind of like that those gym pants that look a little bit more like
slacks. Alright so next step I'm going to go to this smaller piece which I
think hyperbole calls the bullet here, and as I mentioned a little counter-
intuitively I'm going to stay on the low setting. Now the high settings you'll
notice that you will be able to try this out yourselves, the high setting if
you even tried to dig in deeper into the tissue the machine's going to kick you
right back out because that frequency is so high. Or if you really press in you're
just going to cause a lot of pain and obviously a lot of pain is not going to
help us get releases. So I notice Melissa was a little bit more
tender or a little bit more dense in here, so I'm going to apply a little bit
more pressure. Notice I'm not like digging in, I'm not using all my muscles
to like get through and like penetrate bone, I'm just digging a little further
into the tissue until I get a little density, and then again I'm not
necessarily going to stay in one spot but I'm going to very slowly crawl through the
tissue as I feel it release. Now for my manual therapists the Hypervolt is
light enough that you can use one hand, and use this other hand to monitor
tissue density. So for example I felt like okay here I have an increase in
tissue density maybe I can even feel some hypertonic fascicles, or some
fascicles that are very guitar string like. I can use my thumb to
figure out where they are and then put the tool over them and work through them,
and then of course go back and monitor them again with my thumb.
Not necessarily essential to make this effective okay, so for those of you who
are not manual therapists or license manual therapists Hypervolt is still a
very effective tool, but I'm just going to work through the tissue here, and a little
smaller piece.
Now of course after I was finished with this I could reassess to see if this
technique was effective for what Melissa has going on with her movement
impairment, and then go on with my other techniques. So just because I did this
technique doesn't mean that I can't, again we talked about maybe foam rolling
first, maybe doing some lengthening techniques, those of you who do
other like dynamic release or pin and stretch techniques, you could absolutely
follow up with this. What probably is happening with these vibration or
percussive techniques, is we're working a little bit more towards these pacinian
corpuscles and these Ruffini endings and they're stimulated by vibration, and from
what we can tell, somehow neuromuscularly some of those endings
will help stimulate that inhibitory response very similar to the way we
expect like the Golgi tendon organ to act with autogenic inhibition. Stay tuned
for the close-up recap. All right I wanted you to see a little bit of what
this looks like as it passes through the tissue. So as I mentioned I'm going to go
ahead and start on the higher setting, alright so we'll start on setting
number two, and I'm just going to slowly work my way from the bottom of her calf.
Alright now that's to say we hit her Achillies tendon, that might not feel very good. I'm
just going to slowly work my way through your entire calf complex just kind of
one row at a time here. Notice a little extra tissue density, so maybe I slow
down right here a little bit. Take note for using that other tool
alright we'll go ahead and assume I just went through the entire calf complex, I'm
going to go ahead and turn this off real quick just by pressing that button a
couple more times. I'm going to pop out the the flat piece, go to more of the
bulleted piece. We noticed Melissa's tissue density
was a little higher right here, So now I'm going to go ahead and just put
this on one, and so it's a little lower frequency so I can get deeper into the
tissue. Alright so if this is totally superficial I'm just going to dig in maybe
an extra quarter to half inch, and then really slowly work my way through the
tissue as I feel it let go underneath the Hyperbole. Of course my
manual therapists, you could come in here and go okay I feel a little bit
more density in here I can put this right behind. A Hypervolts really easy
to control with one hand and I can kind of work my way through the tissue
slowly but surely go back through a monitor and see if those fascicles have
let go.
Now you guys have it vibration release using the hyper volt for the gastrocnemius and
soleus complex.