What is soft-tissue injury?
Soft tissue injury covers injury to the muscles, ligaments, tendons, fascia, and nerves.
Some common words used to describe soft tissue injury include sprain, pulled muscle, torn ligament, hamstring injury, frozen shoulder, carpal tunnel syndrome and so on. Or simply back pain, neck pain…
Soft tissue injury may occur in different ways:
- Sudden overload
- lifting something too heavy or too suddenly
- spraining an ankle, knee or spine through jumping, running, or twisting awkwardly),
- Continuous tension with too little rest
- standing or sitting with bad or strained posture for too long
- gripping a fine instrument for too long
- Performing repetitive motions with too little rest in-between
- a typist typing continuously with too little rest in-between
- a cashier turning the body in the same direction to check-out items all day long
- a warehouse worker using the same side of his body continuously to load boxes.
In the first type of soft tissue injury, the soft tissue involved could be directly injured or torn. In the other cases, injury occurs due to prolonged or repetitive strain.
In all the types of soft tissue injury described above, the sufferer experiences a lack of oxygen supply to the soft tissues involved – and the body responds by depositing fibroblastic material to heal the injured tissue.
In the process of healing, scar tissue is sometimes formed. This scar tissue is the cause of prolonged pain long after the soft tissue has been healed and long after the activity that caused the injury has ceased.
What is Active Release Techniques®?
Active Release Techniques® is an original and patented method for treating soft-tissue injury.
Active Release Techniques has been used by professional athletes in the Olympics, the American National Football League, the World Track and Field Championships, the Thai soccer league and other international sports events. It has also been used by competitive figure skaters and baseball players.
During a typical treatment session, the Active Release Techniques® practitioner first watches the client in motion, then feels for injured soft-tissue with his fingers.
The Active Release Techniques® practitioner then applies a tension on the injured soft-tissue in a very specific direction while simultaneously moving the client’s body in a very specific direction. The directions of tension and movement are specific for the particular soft tissues being treated.
This treatment method is unique and cannot be found in other therapies. Some therapies may use either tension and/or movement of the client’s body. But they are not used simultaneously. And, they are not used in the specific directions used in Active Release Techniques®.
The aim of applying such tension and movement on the client’s body is to break up adhesions that may have developed from the scar tissue within.
Active Release Techniques® also aims to restore soft tissue structures that feel strained to their original and healthy conditions.
As an analogy, a healthy muscle should behave like a rubber band, but an overly tight muscle tends to behave more like a rope.
Active Release Techniques® seeks to restore the overly tight muscle to its original condition in its qualities of elasticity and resiliency. In other words, Active Release Techniques® seeks to make the muscle behave more like a rubber band than a rope.
Active Release Techniques® can therefore also be used to prevent soft tissue injury in cases where the soft tissue already feels tight and strained due to overuse.
Here, “oversue” refers to any activity that exceeds a person’s current specific level of fitness. For example, a person with strong muscles may be able to lift a 50kg load without overuse. But for a person with weak muscles, lifting 30 kg may amount to overuse.
What conditions are treatable with Active Release Techniques®?
Any soft tissue structures that may be causing pain or restriction could be treated. Active Release Techniques® can treat:
- sprains to the spine (including the lower back, upper back, and neck)
- sprains at the legs (including the ankles and feet), shoulders, and arms (including the upper arm, elbows, wrists, and hands).
Commonly known conditions that can be treated are Frozen Shoulder, back and knee soft tissue injuries, Plantar Fascitis, and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
Active Release Techniques® can also treat internal scarring caused by surgery, and as alluded to in the previous section, can be used by athletes to prevent injuries by treating structures in their bodies that have become tight through training and/or competition. Golfers, dancers, soccer, volleyball, and basketball players, are among the athletes who would benefit from regular Active Release Techniques® treatment.
In fact, anyone who sits in a peculiar posture all day long to work, eg an artist who has to hold a brush continually, or a musician who has to grip and hold an instrument continually, would likely benefit from Active Release Techniques® treatment.
What about orthopaedic injuries?
Active Release Techniques® does not directly treat orthopaedic injuries by working on bones or fractures. However, Active Release Techniques® can be used to treat soft tissue that has been injured as a result of the orthopaedic injury. Most prolonged pain that lingers long after fractures heal are likely to be from soft tissue that has been injured as a result of the fracture or dislocation.
One has to understand the role of soft tissue in holding up the skeleton to see why many orthopaedic problems may be caused by soft tissue that has lost its elasticity or has become weak through chronic tightness.
As an example, what holds up a spine? Soft tissue that includes all the ligaments, muscles, tendons, and fascia that envelope the spine. On its own, the spine has no power to maintain posture. It is the surrounding soft tissue that does all the work on the spine.
When soft tissue injury occured at the same time a person experienced an orthopaedic injury like a slipped vertebra (commonly known as slipped disc), Active Release Techniques® can be used to treat them, with the hope that they would also better maintain good posture and alleviate the pain experienced by the person.
How many Active Release Techniques® sessions do you need?
Soft tissue injury requires an average of five to 10 treatment sessions for Active Release Techniques® to be effective. However, there are people who have needed fewer sessions, and there may be people who need more.
Active Release Techniques® is not a miracle cure. There are many who have benefited from it, and some who have not.
Clothing to wear for treatment (This is important!)
Active Release Techniques® is normally done with the client fully clothed.
Female clients should refrain from wearing a skirt to treatment as Active Release Techniques® may require the person to move her legs in various directions in various positions.
Clients should also refrain from wearing thick material – such as denim or leather – that would hinder the practitioner from palpating (feeling) and treating the soft tissues adequately and effectively.
Clients may wear long pants or shorts of soft material such as cotton for the treatment of lower back, hip, and leg injuries. They may also wear sports pants – provided these are not made of nylon or crepe material as these are too slippery for adequate contact.
