Daily Maestroism

DM #152

Saturday, October 22nd, 2016

DM #152: STOP KILLING YOUR PATIENTS. Plain and simple: You do NOT need to produce bruising in order for your IASTM/Graston/ASTYM/HawkGrips or RockBlades technique to be effective.
Just finished up a 3-day tour teaching @rocktape RockBlades and I can't say enough good things about the content. With all the pain science out there and the emphasis being placed on that field, it still boggles my mind that people can somehow try to justify using a tool to beat the crap out of their patients. Very rarely do I take a hard stance on a treatment, but doing that to your patients is just wrong. So knock it off. ?? If your patient is grimacing, crying, holding their breath, gripping the table, YOU'RE BEING TOO AGGRESSIVE! You're threatening that person's nervous system and causing that tissue to be tighter. Any “release” that you may feel or that the patient reported is pretty much simply because they didn't die. You absolutely do NOT need to be that aggressive to produce those positive results.
When we consider the physical toughness of fascia and the fact that it takes upwards of 2000 lbs to distort it, we begin to understand that it's not likely that we're breaking anything apart or deforming it. In all likelihood it is the nervous system that we have influenced, and convinced it to change the tone of tissue in that area. As far as mechanical effects go, it's likely that we're working at the fascial interfaces and improving gliding, NOT releasing or breaking apart the tissue.
Why does this matter? Because you don't need to be aggressive at all for these changes to occur. The nervous system is EXTREMELY sensitive, and as such, you needn't try to crush it in order to experience a change. Exactly the opposite.
I realize that some folks may not agree with/understand this DM, and I encourage discussion. When we start questioning how our treatments are working, our investigations may uncover concepts that cause us to change how we use those tools; and that's a good thing. Your patients deserve it.
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