This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're doing some advanced
self-administered release techniques. We're going to do active release, or pin
and stretch techniques. In this video we're going to do the rectus femoris, a
muscle that has a propensity towards over activity in those individuals with
an anterior pelvic tilt. Some of those individuals with an excessive forward
lean, some individuals with knees bow out. As well as those with knee dysfunction.
I'm going to have my friend Melissa come out, she's going to help me demonstrate this
exercise. Now what she's going to do is she's going to start with the trigger
point roll here. I do happen to like these trigger point rolls. You guys might
have noticed those foam rolls as you get better, they get softer. The trigger point
roll has a super hard core, which means as you soften up the foam it actually
gets harder, which is is quite nice. So I'm going to have Melissa go ahead and
get down on that, now she's going to search her entire rectus femoris from
hip to knee, and look for the most tender point.
This starts just like static release techniques right,
the only difference is this time once she finds that point of tenderness, we're
going to assume that that is a point of adhesion. That adhesion I want you to
roll off of by going just distal to that adhesion, or just closer to your knee. So
if this is the adhesion, and this was the foam roll, you're now coming here; and
what Melissa's going to do is, she's going to start bending her leg,
which tries to work on pulling that muscle tissue. Right, pulling that muscle
tissue through the adhesive tissue that's been bound up at that point.
So now we actually have a little bit of fascial glide happening. You do need to
use something that is long and flat alright, because we got to create a block
to that adhesion. I'm basically trying to get the muscle, right as the muscle
lengthens around her knee this way, it pulls the adhesion up to the foam roll,
and then the muscle fiber keeps going, pulling the adhesion away from that
fiber. Now if I wanted to be really mean to Melissa,
what I'm going to do is I'm going to decrease the surface area. But I don't
want to do that by decreasing the surface area widthwise, we still need
something that's going to block that adhesive point. So we need to decrease
the surface area this way. You guys have seen some other videos where I use a
softball, this would not be a case where the softball would work, because if we go
to a round object that adhesion is going to hit the round object, and then just go
around it. So we're going to go to something like a quad baller from
trigger point here, which as you guys can see much much smaller diameter. Alright
so this is going to be a lot more pressure per square inch, which might
help us get to some deeper adhesions
as well as probably being a little bit more painful for Melissa. I think she
found a spot, we're gonna assume that's the same spot that she found before.
She's going to go just distal to it, so that when she pulls the muscle around
her knee she's pulling the adhesion up to the quad baller, and then the muscle
fiber hopefully keeps pulling through, and we pull that scar tissue away and
increase extensibility.
Of course after doing this technique I would want to reassess, and hopefully we
see a reduction in her anterior pelvic tilt, or excessive forward lean, or knees
bow out, or some of that knee dysfunction that she came in with. How's
that feeling? Yeah so guys the protocol for this is 12
to 15 repetitions, you're doing 2 to 5 second holds at the top. It's actually a
very similar protocol to active stretching. I'm assuming that if you're
watching this video you've already seen the static release video for the
anterior thigh or rectus femoris. I would always start with static release
techniques, start toning down those trigger points, and then I'd switch to
something more intense, like these active release/pin and stretch techniques.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I look forward to hearing what outcomes
you guys got.