About Stretch Therapy
Stretch therapy is a multi-disciplinary approach to stretching that incorporates more than just stretching
Our technique consists of evaluating your condition, vibrational therapy, soft-tissue release, assisted therapeutic stretching, strength training, and helping you recover.
You can expect our system of treatment to help relieve pain, restore optimal bodily function and increase flexibility. Our in-depth approach allows us to treat many forms of illness, as well as common conditions of muscle stiffness, soreness and fatigue.
Our Comprehensive Treatment
We've identified that stretch therapy is most effective in a six-stage approach. Each stage has an important role to play in releasing the maximal amount of muscular tension and promoting optimal bodily function.
In a nutshell, we evaluate your body to understand what we'll be working with, use vibration to soften muscle tissue, use soft-tissue release techniques to open up knotted or adhered areas, lengthen your muscles using assisted therapeutic stretching, balance your body by strengthening certain areas if necessary, and help your recovery by using topical analgesics and other recommended at-home therapies.
Six Steps of Treatment
1 - Evaluation
2 - Vibration Therapy
3 - Soft-Tissue Release
Evaluation
The first thing we do when working with a client is gain a firm understanding of what we will be working with and how stretch therapy might be able to help. Our initial conversation and evaluation lets us get acquainted with you, your body, your history and your preferences, before planning a course of treatment. We include a test of strength, flexibility, functionality and a postural analysis in this step. Once talking and testing is complete, we then begin a short physical exam to identify with the problematic areas first-hand. In the exam, we generally look for muscle tightness and other abnormalities to gain a better understanding of your condition and help plan an optimal path of recovery.
Vibration Therapy
Once we have an understanding of your condition and have planned a course of treatment, we begin preparing your muscle tissue for the upcoming therapeutic stretch. To do so, we use the most effective tool in the industry, known as the Deep Muscle Stimulator massage tool. It is a completely non-invasive, pain-free method of warming-up your muscles. It uses a special frequency of vibration that the machine has been built and balanced around. This frequency, identified under scientific research, has been found to be the most effective type of vibration to penetrate muscle tissue, relax it and release tension. The vibration also acts as a pump, drawing fresh blood into the area, cleaning your muscles from the inside-out, producing a natural heat that soothes and warms your muscles for the rest of the treatment session.
Soft-Tissue Release
Before stretching, it is also important to release muscle adhesions. We do this so that when we do stretch, it will not only be more comfortable, but it will also prevent injury. We use a variety of manual release techniques such as trigger point therapy, active release technique and Thai-Mashiatsu to do so. These techniques release the muscular adhesions that can lock muscles up during a stretch and cause strain to the muscle fibers, tendons, ligaments and joints. Attempting to stretch without releasing these adhesions could potentially result in injury.
Therapeutic Stretching
This is where it all comes together. We've evaluated your body, gained an understanding of what we will be working on, created a plan of treatment, warmed up your muscle tissue through vibrational therapy and conditioned it through soft-tissue release. Now we are ready to stretch. Using a variety of techniques that vary from very gentle stretching, to intensive myofascial release, we choose which is most appropriate for your given circumstances and apply it through assisted stretching. Once our stretch therapy session has concluded, you can enjoy the many health benefits, such as improved flexibility, increased blood flow and a release of feel-good hormones known as endorphins.
Muscle Balancing
In some cases, we may need to work with a form of strength training to help balance muscle groups so that they can function properly and in unison with one another during active movement. This can come in the form of hands-on assisted resistance-training, instructed band-training, weight-training, and/or functional-training. We use these methods to build strength and symmetry in your body to achieve a balanced posture that will compliment your newly found flexibility.
Recovery
As with working out, stretch therapy can sometimes take its toll on your muscles. They may need some time to recover. Following our more intensive stretch therapy sessions, we like to apply a topical salve to help treat immediate and delayed-onset muscular inflammation. This helps to prevent pain and assists in reducing recovery time. In addition to in-session remedies, we sometimes recommend following up with Epsom Salt bathing at home.
4 - Therapeutic Stretching
5 - Muscle Balancing
6 - Recovery