Written By Derrin Kluth, Reg. PT, DPT, RMT

So far, I have written these blog posts in a way that is meant to be educational in a manner that hopefully teaches the reader some bits of knowledge that they did not have before – what Fascial therapies are, how they work, what to do to use them, how some symptom is caused, etc. This time I’d like to change the pace a bit and tell a little story of my recent trip and the aftermath, and how I use the things I’ve talked about in prior posts to help me in my own life. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” goes the old saying, but sometimes a story is worth its own thousand words too. Hopefully you, the reader, will have some inspiration and clarification as to how you can utilize the same information in your own life as well!

Hiking & Myofascial Release — Hiking throughout the week vs. sitting on planes creates opportunity for symptom aggravation

I recently returned from a multi-week trip, and like many travellers this trip necessitated a lot of things that I wasn’t used to in my daily life – sitting in cramped airports, planes, and buses punctuated with longer bouts of standing and walking. All of this during more days of the week than I am used to during my normal routine. I hike fairly regularly in my normal routine so the walking had less of an effect on me than the sitting and afterwards, when I thought about what began to cause the aggravation of symptoms, these things were the most likely culprits. Especially when added all together over the totality of the entire trip. The first symptom I felt right when we returned home was that a trigger point in the area of my right lower shoulder blade began to act up. Knowing what I know and doing what I do, I have become well acquainted with this area over the years as it is the site of impact where when I was younger I fell onto a wooden fence after slipping while climbing a wall (it’s a long story). It was likely aggravated by the extended sitting position as I’m a tall man (about 6 foot and 4 inches) and like everyone else when they are tired I was not always aware of my sitting posture when I was slouched forward in the small seats of the airport and airplane over the hours of delays we experienced the day we flew back.

Flight delays in uncomfortable seats is a recipe for prolonged dysfunctional postures

The good thing is that having spent years treating this area, I knew exactly what I had to do to calm it down and return it to normal relatively quickly. First I got out my exercise ball and laid on it in such a way that it contacted the aggravated area while I did a gentle unwinding of my head, right arm, and trunk for about 10 minutes. Then I waited half an hour or so before I went on to the next step – taking the small soft rubber ball and laying on the floor face up with the ball in contact with the most central part of what I felt as the aggravated area. After about 10 minutes of that, I moved onto my (relatively softer compared to the floor) couch and released the deepest parts of the aggravated trigger points with the theracane while lying face up for about 15 minutes. After that, there was some minor soreness (like a bruise or after a workout) for a few hours but by bedtime all symptoms were gone there and I haven’t felt them since. However, as is sometimes the case after an event that is a significant interruption to our normal routine, the guarding part of my brain wasn’t done with some older trigger point areas yet. After waking up the next morning and gong to my desk, I noticed that I had some minor stiffness felt mostly in the sides of both hips but if I focused I could feel the connection from here to my sacroiliac joints in the back of my hips and further into my tailbone. This was the site of a football injury I received way back in high school. It too was probably aggravated mostly by the slouched low back and pelvis of a tall man in a cramped small seat over a long period of time.

Shoulder release — A shoulder release with the soft rubber ball can be done in standing but it allows for more relaxation to do this release laying on your back

But again, having spent time treating these areas extensively over the past 15 years, I knew that if I placed the small rubber ball first under my tailbone for 10 minutes and then under the saddle area between the ischial tuberosities (or the “sit bones” as some call them) for another 10 minutes, my symptoms would improve. And within a half hour, those symptoms were gone as I “nipped them in the bud” to prevent them from progressing to anything more. And with this one I didn’t even have to spend the mental effort focusing to relax– because the trigger points weren’t yet activated enough I was able to control them with the intervention while I was doing work at my desk! This comes over time with practice but it’s worth pointing out that as I got better at doing the releases my body responds much more readily to them than it did when I first started using these techniques on myself.

All was well until the guarding patterns tried one final time to get me later that day – I was a little tired from not yet making the minor adjustment from Central Standard Time to Eastern Standard Time, so that evening I laid down for a little nap on the couch. When I woke up, I felt some minor stiffness turning into soreness starting in my low back area. I first had these symptoms in my late teenage years with a minor weight lifting accident doing a squat, and it had gotten a bit worse over my early twenties mostly from years of using a bad mattress that didn’t provide the support I probably required. I actually had been a bit surprised that I hadn’t had any problems over the trip because we slept in four different beds and many times I would have to do some Fascial Release techniques the morning after the first night in a new bed to return these symptoms to normal. But now it seems the adjustment back to my couch was what tipped the scales. As you can probably guess by now I wasn’t too worried though, as these symptoms too are now familiar to me and I knew what to do to get them back under control. In fact, I had a theracane tool nearby hanging off the couch as it’s my favorite place to do theracane releases, so it worked out well! I spent 10 minutes while face up on the left side of my low back, and 10 more on the right. And as I knew from experience, these symptoms were also linked to trigger points in the “front of the back” deep in the abdominal area, so I flipped over into a face-down position and used the theracane for 10 minutes each on the left and then right psoas muscles just in front of where I felt my back pain. I got up afterwards without symptoms and haven’t felt anything there since.

The last little bit of my body’s return to normal happened a couple of days after the low back pain incident when I was visiting a friend and we walked for a few kilometers outside on the sidewalks in town. When I got back home, I began to notice some foot pain on the outside of my right foot. As I said before, I usually hike so this normally wouldn’t be a problem, but I had done significantly more and longer hiking, standing, and walking over the trip than normal so this was probably the cumulative effect of that. In addition, I used my hiking shoes over the entire trip so they helped support my foot in the best way so as to not have symptoms then. When I was walking with my friend I was using my street shoes which provide significantly less support and the readjustment probably triggered an old trigger point here a bit.

Foot pain — Switching back to casual footwear after days of hiking, prolong standing and walking in supportive footwear can aggravate old trigger points.

This area was the site of an incident where I minorly fractured the long bone on the outside of my foot when a cow stepped on it while I was barefoot in my early teen years (another long story – always wear protective boots when you are around livestock!). But as you can surmise, by now I was an old hand at treating my foot. I will admit I cheated a bit and used my hands to do the release for about 10 minutes – most people don’t have the hand strength I’ve developed doing my job over the years so they find it hard to hold their hands longer than a minute or two. The hands can be the best tools as they can be adjusted most easily to provide the correct pressure and direction of force vs the balls and other tools like the theracane. This means they can take longer and require practice to use most effectively; but a person could spend a couple of bouts of 10 minutes with the theracane treating the same symptoms as I had and get the same results I did. Anyway, after a few hours of minor bruising-like soreness, no symptoms and none since as I’d once more brought it back to normal before it could be sensitized into anything more than that. As I write this it occurs to me I’ve felt some tightness on the outside of my right calf since then that I should probably and will probably address soon with the theracane in a preventative way, but you get the idea by now.

I hope that with this series of anecdotes I’ve given the reader some more relatable ideas and clarifications for how to utilize the methods and techniques learned during a Myofascial Release therapeutic session in their own life and take some control over their experienced symptoms! It of course takes some practice and in the beginning some bravery to do these techniques instead of popping a pill, using a vibrating massage tool, a hot pack, or an electric pain relief machine. But with that practice becoming mastery, many are amazed at how much control they can get back over their life by learning the slow, steady, and lasting way instead of the quick, flashy methods that ultimately don’t last. If you relate to this story or know someone who would, it’s likely that finding an experienced Fascial Therapist near you and visiting for a course of treatment may help you be able to tell some of your own stories similar to what I just have! We would love to help make that a reality.