Flexible Times Newsletter — Summer Issue 2

Dear Stretch to Win Family,

We sincerely hope all is well with you and your loved ones!

Welcome to our Summer issue which is designed just for you, the FST^TM Practitioner. The $22 billion dollar stretch industry continues to exponentially grow as many of you have seen with franchises popping up all over the world.

One of our many goals is to continually reward your investment in us with confidential, timely, and important news to keep you at the top of the Stretch Wave!

We hope you enjoy this issue with more news about the Institute, the stretch industry, a new Stretch and Flexibility Coach certification, a video from Nick about his inspiring journey to become a Level 3 FST Specialist, a video from us about stretching cadavers, and a legal update.

P.S. This newsletter is for currently certified FST Practitioners ONLY due to privileged information. Please do NOT share, thank you!

All Our Love,
Ann and Chris Frederick
Directors of Stretch to Win^®
Creators of Fascia Stretch Therapy™

Setting the Gold Standard for the Stretching Industry

A number of our Institute graduates have been telling us that they are getting new clients from an unexpected source – other businesses that offer stretching services. While some of those clients reportedly stated that they were just not satisfied with a particular stretch service they had tried, others disturbingly reported being injured.

If not happening already, it’s only a matter of time that a lawsuit will arise and put stretching ‘on the stand’. So we have already taken steps to protect your investment in your training with us, in case assisted stretching comes under more scrutiny with the possibility of becoming state or province regulated.

We are applying for national accreditation by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA). The NCCA is a nationally recognized third party agency that accredits certification programs which are able to meet and comply with its standards.

The mission of NCCA is to help ensure the health, welfare, and safety of the public through the accreditation of certification programs that assess professional competence. Its purpose is to provide the public and other stakeholders the means by which to identify certification programs that serve their competency assurance needs in a profession.

This application is a long, expensive and arduous process but we are doing this for the long term to achieve our mission of spreading the great work of FST to as many as possible!

We’ll keep you posted on when we reach that significant milestone.

NASM Stretching and Flexibility Coach – A New Certification

Many of you know that Chris Frederick was selected a few years ago by the National Academy of Sports Medicine to be a contributing author in their new “NASM Essentials of Corrective Exercise Training” 2nd edition. Since then, both Ann and Chris have been contracted by NASM to be their SME (subject matter experts) in stretching and flexibility. The result of that partnership is a new NASM certification training called the “Stretching and Flexibility Coach” that will launch on or close to June 22nd, 2021.

Ann and Chris are super excited about this joint venture for the following reasons:

• NASM is largely considered one of the best personal training educational institutions in the world.
• Public recognition of the Fredericks and Stretch to Win as SMEs will help globalize our brand longevity, credibility, and respect in an industry with multiple stakeholders.
• Our mission is to broadly elevate the practice of assisted stretching to a higher standard of safety and effectiveness and this product will establish that at a basic level.
• The projects with NASM have proven to be richly rewarding due to a shared belief in the essential necessity and value of stretching in the total health and wellness paradigm.

This product will now compete with other strapless, assisted stretching techniques on tables that are protocol-based with a limited number of stretches. However, it will differ from others by using fascial concepts with basic assessments and stretching derived from several fundamental Stretch to Win principles.

The Stretching and Flexibility Coach will know about Stretch to Win graduates by also being taught to refer clients to FST practitioners when client problems and challenges fall out of their scope of training. FST practitioners will be viewed by the Coach as far more advanced in their training, capable of deriving therapeutic benefits from FST as opposed to protocol-based fitness-based stretching.

Nick – From ‘Gritty’, Hardcore Personal Trainer to Level 3 FST Specialist

Enjoy this inspiring story from Nick Samarco, who recently completed his Specialist certification. Beyond acquiring advanced skills of FST, he describes a remarkable personal journey of transformation in discovering his inner truth and life quest.

Stretching Cadavers

Some years ago, we took our third dissection class with Tom Myers and Todd Garcia and it was a very special class - the first unembalmed cadaver, and our group was chosen to dissect it! This was a 5-day workshop and midway, while Tom was lecturing while standing over our cadaver, Chris asked Tom if we could do an experiment. Chris asked Tom to palpate the psoas fibers and let Chris know when and if Tom could feel any movement there while Chris avoided hip extension and just stretched the quads. When Tom did indeed feel the force of the stretch transmit to the psoas, the idea for us to stretch cadavers was born. This coming August, we will go to Boulder and work with Todd Garcia to put the unembalmed cadaver through FST movement patterns to see what we feel and verify exactly what tissues are passively resisting the movement. We hope to live stream this event, so stay tuned and we'll keep you posted!

Legal Update

Listen to Ann and Chris update you on the final outcome of the case SRT vs STW.

CONTENT IS PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL - PLEASE DO NOT SHARE