Dianne Rockefeller

LMT, MAS, NASM-CPT, COMT, CMT, CKTP, CCT

Dominion Performance and Sports Therapy

Most clients who come to see me attribute a painful shoulder, neck or back to tired muscles or stiff joints. But these symptoms can also be caused by a part of your body you probably haven’t heard of…the fascia. Until recently, this complex network of tissue throughout our bodies received very little attention despite it’s leading role in every move we make, as well as being our body’s largest organ (yes, it’s larger than the skin).

What is fascia?

Fascia is a thin covering of connective tissue that surrounds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place within our body. This complex tissue does way more than provide internal organization and structure; it also contains nerves that are almost as sensitive as your skin. When fascia is stressed, it tightens up within our body. The muscle tightness you’re feeling is more likely being caused by your fascia.

Although fascia can look like a sheet of tissue, it’s actually made up of multiple layers with liquid in between called hyaluronan. Fascia is designed to stretch and glide as your body moves. Healthy fascia is smooth, slippery and flexible and allows body movement free from any restrictions.

Fascia-Related Pain and Muscle Tightness

When certain things occur within your body, it can cause fascia to thicken and become sticky. When this happens it can cause fascia to dry up and tighten around muscles causing limited mobility, pain, and knots (adhesions) to develop. Factors that can cause fascia to become dysfunctional are:

• Lifestyle of limited movements and physical activity, such as sitting for hours at a desk day after day
• Repetitive movements that overwork one part of your body, like with your arms when working on a computer
• Trauma of a surgery or an injury

For some people, pain adhesions can worsen over time causing the fascia to contort or compress the muscle it surrounds. This can result in hard, tender area in the muscle called trigger points. These trigger points can cause pain to occur:

• During regular movements or in sports activities
• When pressure is applied to an area on the body
• In seemingly unrelated parts of the body called “referred pain”

How to Keep Fascia Healthy?

Keeping your fascia healthy has many more benefits than you can imagine. Besides being able to move more easily, having better range of motion, you will find that you experience less pain and discomfort too. Things you can do to prevent fascia problems are:

• Move more and in a variety of ways. In addition to exercising, change up your routine and avoid doing the same workout every day.
• Have a desk or office job? Take a few minutes every hour to stand up and move around the office. Consider taking the stairs vs. the elevator, walk around your office when on a conference call. Be active throughout your day.
• Try to maintain good posture. Posture is important because it’s the position from where all movement starts. Slumping over your desk staring at a screen or on the phone can cause fascia to tighten. Try to maintain good posture whether sitting or standing.
• Get Sleep. Maintaining proper rest is priceless and cost you nothing.
• Stay Well Hydrated. Drink water throughout your day…don’t wait until your thirsty.
• Practice relaxation methods such as Breathing Exercises. Your body is built around your breath! Again, this costs you nothing.

Types of Fascia Pain Conditions

• Plantar Fasciitis
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
• Frozen Shoulder
• Myofascial Pain Syndrome

How to Treat Fascia Pain?

Apart from the obvious unpleasant pain, fascia system dysfunction can get in the way of doing sports or other physical activities. Pain is a message from your body that something is wrong. Stress trauma and overuse/underuse, and repetitive movements can alter your fascia system’s integrity. While it is not certain what caused it, one thing for sure is that relief is possible with the right treatment.

Every previous injury you’ve experienced in your life is like malware in your body’s fascia system. Like malware glitches can slow down the performance of a computer, previous trauma impacts the nervous and fascia systems to create “energy leakages” that influence overall body performance. The body is an interrelated system and every action causes a reaction.

At Dominion Performance and Sports Therapy, I offer a manual therapeutic soft tissue approach that doesn’t involve steroid shots, dry needling, acupuncture, or pain. Starting with a complex biomechanical screening used to assess your body, I’m able to identify and explain the root drivers for your discomfort. Then, show before and after a treatment screenings that provide the data backed results.

Cheers,  DRock

Looking for the most advanced technology to improve your sports performance?  You already own it. Now, take good care of it!

Vibram Fivefingers | You Are The Technology from FIREPIT PICTURES on Vimeo.

One of the best advertising slogans I have ever heard of is the Vibram’s Five Finger shoes slogan “You are the Technology”.  These words are so true.  No need for custom orthotics or the latest greatest shock absorbing athletic shoes.  Let your feet do the job they were designed to do.

Feet are the foundation of our movement and first thing that hits the ground. The body has to react to what your feet senses whether you are walking, running, weight lifting, playing sports, or even cycling. They must be flexible and strong enough to absorb foot strike impact as well as instantly become a rigid lever in order to propel your entire body weight off the ground.

With 26 bones, 33 joints and over 100 muscles, ligaments and tendons…your feet are incredibly complex! Everything in our body functions as a part of an integrated system. Take away the ability of one variable and you will impact other parts of your body.

Good footwork allows athletes the ability to control their center of gravity. Without proper footwork, they cannot fully achieved agility either. Better footwork and improved position also significantly decreases loads in other areas placed upon the body and reduces injury risks in athletes. Ever pay attention to sports announcers? The U.S. Open tennis announcers were constantly commenting about things like "great footwork" and "moving their feet" to get into position.

Keep your feet strong and let them move. If you do, you’ll not only move and perform better, but you’ll have fewer injuries to “boot”!

Cheers, DRock

Throughout history, great discoveries have been met with resistance long before they were ever accepted.  Today we accept that the world is round without the slightest doubt.  Yet, if you asked anyone in the fifteenth century they would have told you that it was undoubtedly flat.

In an age where sports performance and medical professionals have come to rely heavily on high-tech equipment to decipher what is wrong with their athletes, we must understand that there is a big difference between knowing and understanding.  While not designed to replace these screening and assessment procedures, one must recognize that you must first understand what is occurring within the body to produce the said ‘asymmetries’ before you can ever accurately treat an athlete.  Even then, one should never assume that the obvious is true because the brain is constantly recalibrating 24/7 due to things like gravity and time.

Additionally, if a dysfunction is improperly assessed for long enough, the dysfunction can become worse and can result in significant injury to an athlete.  Like a time bomb ticking ready to explode when the perfect storm of stress/trauma presents itself at the correct angle, amount of force, and time. For instance, when an athlete’s quadriceps tendon tears in a game when the player pushes off and changes direction in a basketball game.

Why should it surprise us that we can rely on the body’s own inner guidance to facilitate a positive response through the manual use of our hands?  In my mind, this is healthcare in its most uncomplicated form. A collaborative effort between two people and then enabling the body to do what it was meant to do…recover and heal.  Sometimes we are so caught up in the world of high tech ‘data’ that we forget what a highly skilled manual therapist can possess.  They have an ability to assess dysfunction in ways that are just not possible with conventional medical screening equipment and their evaluations are a valuable adjuvant to any high tech medical data.

Whether working with patients who have undergone many surgeries and treatments that have physically changed their bodies or working with elite athletes, we are all human beings. Although not everyone might have a 100 million dollar contract, everyone’s human nervous system DOES work the same way. No exceptions.

Last time I checked, the brain is an incomparable guide if you understand and will take the time to carefully listen to it.  And therein lies the rub…

What that statement above all boils down to is that we are in a constant battle with the effects of time and gravity every day.  So whatever training, strength and conditioning or fitness program you ascribe to unless it in some way addresses weakness, stiffness, and alignment then you won’t get the long-term results you desire.

Example of an Injury Scenario:

• Athlete’s hamstrings become tight and painful
• Athlete gets treated for their symptoms, limited Range of Motion (ROM) and pain reduces
• Athlete’s hamstring condition continues to erode and then gets worse during training and the season despite treatment regimen
• Athlete is put on Injured List and rests a few games
• Athlete’s symptoms and pain subsides during the rest period and modified training
• Athlete returns to their sport & full-time training
• Athlete’s hamstrings become tight and painful again

Obviously, if you stop doing certain movements that hurt, then that associated movement pain will go away.  However, if the pain returns once you return to sport or regular activities, then this is a clear sign that something isn’t right.  The design of our body is not flawed.  It is what we do or don’t do that causes pain and discomfort.

Before you randomly determine that something is basically wrong with your shoulder, back or knee or worse decide that you are predisposed to ‘fall apart’ after a certain age, let’s consider the opposite.  Something you are doing or not doing is making your shoulder, back or knee hurt.  Before you are so quick to cut, replace, and generally cut out a body part as obsolete, consider the contrary…your strength, range of motion, and postural alignment have eroded over time which is not allowing your shoulder, back or knee to function properly.

Our necks, shoulders, wrists, backs, hips, knees and feet are not randomly thrown together.  They are parts of a very sophisticated interrelated system that is very well designed. If we are really prone to having shoulder pain, bad backs or knees, and weak ankles…then how did humans ever evolve in the first place?

So what went wrong? To poorly paraphrase Mr. Shakespeare…”the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the design of our bodies, but it lies within us.”

Any intrusion to the human body, such as injuries and surgeries, upsets the body’s natural neurological processes and also leaves residual trauma and scar tissue behind.  This remaining scar tissue from surgeries, injuries, and continued repetitive motion negatively impacts neuromuscular motor control.  Many times surgeries and injuries healing outcomes are positive.  However, even when an outcome is considered good, it often leaves an athlete with a new set of problems later down the road.

It’s simple.  If you aren’t doing the exercises with the correct alignment, then you won’t get the maximum benefits.  The key to health and fitness is postural alignment.  There’s more to it than just do it.

Cheers,  DRock