We had the honor to have NASCAR vet Bobby Labonte grace our clinic last week to get stretched before qualifying to race tomorrow at Phoenix International Raceway (PIR).

This was our first NASCAR “athlete” coming in to see if Fascial Stretch Therapy or FST could help his “game”. Since we had no clues, Bobby explained to us what kind of conditions he faces among which are more than 115 degree temps in the car for 4 hours and body water loss of an average of 7 lbs after a race!!

He said that many racers, himself included lose a tremendous amount of electrolytes resulting in a visible salt layer displayed on his racing suit. This is a big problem with racers and causes muscle cramps if the right electrolyte delivery system is not put into place. Bobby has an electric pump in his car that automatically supplies him with a pre-determined amount of electroytes right into his mouth during the race!

What we learned from the assisted stretch session is that race car drivers have a nervous system similar to cornerbacks in football–high in the “fast twitch” category–and a challenge for the practitioner to accurately and effectively manipulate the myofascia if you do not have years of experience “conditioning” the nervous system.

Nervous System Conditioning™ is a term that I have come up with that describes the preparation necessary for the Central & Peripheral Nervous System before assisted stretching commences. In the near future I will write a post on this if there is interest from readers.

Anyway Bobby said that he got a lot of benefits from his assisted stretch session and advice on electrolytes and we wish him the best of luck at the races!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 3:04 am and is filed under NASCAR stretches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.