Fascial Stretch Therapy™ and The Almighty Squat
May 21st, 2011Posted by chris @ 3:08 am | No Comments
Chiefs, Emperors and Presidents as well as the rest of us have to squat. Activities of life, like our morning visit to the bathroom, retrieving objects off the floor, getting down to the level of our young kids and so on necessitate this functional movement.
In most cultures outside of Western ones, one may still see elderly people being able to squat. It appears that they were impervious to the hip and knee arthritis that plagues everyone else, not to mention hip replacement surgery.
What can we do to prevent us or our clients from losing the squat? What can be done for fit people to improve their squat? In this post, we will focus on the foot and ankle, working from the ground up, saving knees, hips, low back and the upper body for future posts.
Foot and ankle
By far, the most common limitation to the squat in today’s world of people that mostly work at desktops, is at the ankle. But let’s start with foot wear: most shoes, even for males, have a heel. We weren’t born with an elevated heel, which puts the foot into what professionals call ‘plantar-flexion’. This fixed position tends to shift the whole body forward onto the ball of the foot, the more so with higher heels. Besides increasing pressure into the joints of the ball of the foot, called ‘metarsal-phalangeal joints’, the entire back of the body from the plantar fascia on up through the
legs, hips, back and neck increase in tone and tension. And people wonder why they get knots in their muscles… .
Fortunately there has been a small, but growing movement away from heels, in dress and athletic shoes but for most people, this has been a lifetime issue therefore the body does not simple accept going barefoot all day without you knowing about it. The reason is all the compensations that have occurred over a long period of time. Compensations, like developing an anterior pelvic tilt, work for the short term to bring the body back to an acceptable alignment to deal with gravity and the mechanical forces of life. However, compensations become their own problems, as joints get mal-aligned and muscles get functional imbalances. The good news is, these compensations can be removed with Fascial Stretch Therapy (FST).
Fascial Stretch Therapy and the Ankle
The most common problem for trainers and therapists when assessing someone’s squat, is decreased dorsiflexion (or reduced bending to lower the body). Most often to blame is one of the muscles in the calf called the ‘soleus‘. Unlike its fraternal twin, the gastrocnemius, it only crosses over one joint, at the ankle. So it gets the blame for being tight and adhesed, locking the ankle and preventing a smooth, deep squat.
Recent evidence in dissection studies by Carla Stecco, MD show that the fascia of the lower leg is not only the most resistant to stretch, but also has criss-crossing patterns of spiraling connective tissue pathways that demand much more movement than just a traditional calf and achilles
stretch. Even the stretches specifically targeting the lateral (outside) and the medial (inside) soleus are not enough to get the full range of motion that traps the flexibility and strength potential in the ankles. One big reason is that traditional stretches do not decompress the joint and release impingment.
In FST, we use a weight bearing/closed kinetic chain method of assisted stretch that creates traction/decompression and widening at the talo-crural (ankle) joint, while simultaneously accesses the spiraling lines of fascia previously mentioned. In the process, any hypomobility of the fibula at the knee and/or ankle is also corrected. Additionally, lack of talus glide posteriorly is corrected as well. The result is a full range of motion perfect squat in just one treatment, if the restriction was relegated to lack of ankle dorsiflexion mobility.
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Part 2 in this series of The Almighty Squat will take us to the knee, a joint more complex than the simple hinge that it appears to be.
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The Stretch to Win Institute trains professionals in Fascial Stretch Therapy, a manually performed, table-based complete system that stands alone as a new service or integrates perfectly with your current services. Go to www.stwinstitute.com, call 480-394-9121 or email us at info@stretchtowin.com for more information.
