The Role Soft Tissue Work Plays in Recovery

The Role that “Soft Tissue Work” Plays in Success,

When you look at the cyclical nature of training whether it is for sport or personal fitness, you have to include the need for proper nutrition, rest and restoration. For the vast majority of people that train even at the highest levels of sport they often don’t complete the circle of key components along the way to maximize their training success. Some if not most active people will focus all their energy into the actual training and to a lesser but not forgot part nutrition. However, without the necessary focus on rest and restoration the other two aspects are often sacrificed or at least inhibited to the point that the training is simply a test in ones ability to swim against the stream.

I understand that there can be some confusion in the differentiation of rest and restoration as they seem to explain the same thing. However, we are looking at rest in terms of generalization. Sleeping is rest or restful but you may not be achieving full restoration as a product of your nightly slumber. I could also take a moment and lay quietly on the couch and this too may allow for some rest yet it may still not recover you from your activity. When we talk about restoration for the sake of this topic we are talking about the replenishing and recovery of the body systems that were taxed during the demands of your training. If you trained to a point of complete macronutrient depletion then you must make sure to recover the systems through diet and nutrition. If you have been competing at a high level of not only excitement but adrenaline then you must return your nervous system from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. If you have caused yourself a lot of physical trauma from repeated strain or physical stress you will have to unwind and release the tonus from the soft tissue of the body.

For the sake what we are looking at today in terms of restoration we really want to stop and focus on the idea of returning the nervous system to a restored existence following the trauma caused from the programmed training system that you follow. Your bodies are organisms of balance living between worlds of stop and go, requiring the proper balance of both to reach maximal potential If you continue to live a high stress life through work and family followed by a workout even though good for you mentally it’s taxing physically and the body beings to run its stores even lower. The sympathetic nervous system becomes dominate for the majority of the day, the very same system that dumps adrenaline into the veins to fight the tiger or hunt a bear. However, if there is no chance for this system to recover restoration and inevitably rest cannot take place. When the body stays sympathetic for too long of a period of time the system becomes disrupted not allowing for the proper rationing of nutrients and hormones creating a negative cascade effect to all other systems of the body.

However, there is hope with the addition of soft tissue work ranging from traditional massage to neuromuscular therapy. Using the previous techniques a board licensed therapist will be able to slow the cascading effect of stress and the negative effects that it has on not only your training gains but also your life gains. The regular incorporation of massage will lower the sympathetic state or fight and flight response you may be having to the world (even if you are not fully aware of this) to a parasympathetic state or a rest and digest state of existence. By bring order to the body and balance to the system the body can start to focus on its ability to prepare for the next stressor that it will have to deal with, and it will be able to deal with it efficiently because it has been properly restored.

Until next time
Derek Woodske, B.Sc, LMBT, NMT
NC License #09726

Performance Journal Two

02-01-2010

The Olympic Games have come and gone and for the most part this was one of the better games that I can remember. I say this in reference to come from behind victories and athletes laying it on the line to produce personal best performances and world records. I have become a big fan of a number of athletes from all countries not just my home country of Canada. In the 500m speed skating sprint, I was happy to see Canada win but over the course of the Games I have become a fan of Apolo Ohno and his ability to win and stay with his game plan even in the moments of chaos and confusion. I know that he certainly wanted to win an eighth metal and I wish that he had, but I understand the rules of speed skating and the contact followed by the fall during the final 500m race was a tough break. Other athletes that blew me away were Rochette, Von, and White. Let’s not forget the Canadian Hockey Teams! I am from the Kootenay Valley of British Columbia and there were a number of Kootenay Athletes on the Gold Medal Men’s Team. The Winter Olympics was a success in my book from the different athlete’s ability to adapt to less then desirable weather conditions to emotional stress and loss both on the field of play and off.
I know that there were a lot of people in the city of Vancouver and perhaps around the nation that wanted to use the Olympics as a point of attention to climb up on their political soap boxes to speak out against poverty and joblessness. I full heartedly agree that both topics are of the utter most importance throughout Canada and the United States. However, the celebration of sport and athletics has been a moment of solidarity of not only people, but Nations from around the world and it is the Olympics that bring together these people in the name of healthy competition even in the midst of great turmoil. I can understand the woes and fears of the current social collective in regards to economic down turn in North America, but the Olympic Games are not only an investment in world relations but future economic stimulus for the people of the host Country. It may not be tomorrow or next week that we see the benefits of putting Canada on display for the world but there will be benefit. People have to understand that we have been through the lows of economic progress before in North America and as a Continent we will come back; if anything people should see what others are capable of through the medium of sport. If you believe in yourself and the strength of those that are around you, you can overcome setbacks and heartbreak to achieve your goals. Imagine if you will, a whole country of people that share the same belief in their country and themselves as an Olympic Athlete perusing a goal, and in this case a medal. Getting up everyday with the belief that they are going to achieve greatness and even though life can step up with all that it has to offer in the way of adversity they continue to push forth the way Rochette has done this games uniting not only the heart of Her Country but of the World.

Performance Journal One

1-18-2001

Welcome to the website!

Let me be the first to thank you for stopping by and checking out my site, it has been sometime since my last online post. A number of years ago, three and a half I believe? I wrote an online blog that was geared towards the world of track and field and athletics. It started as a way to pass a couple hours a day back in 2003 while I was training fulltime for the hammer throw at the national and international level. The blog was a part of a larger website that I created called Gashead.org. For those of you that may not be familiar with this website, it was your typical muscle-head site with lots of training info and T&A for the viewers plus nutritional reviews and some cutting edge concepts taken from the headlines of the industry. What there wasn’t a lot of was bulls**t in by way of empty concepts or wasted energy towards the flavor of the day training. Simply, the website wanted to and succeeded at promoting the sport in its rawest and most honest form.

Like I have said in the past and I continue to promote to this day, there is no such thing as bad training thoughts just bad training actions. You have to open your mind and think about the ways to improve performance through the systematic and productive use of yourself and the resources available. If you are not sure of the answers that you are finding then find another source and compare to make sure that your time training will be best spent doing something productive. With that being said, you also have to ask yourself if your training is suffering due to the fact that you simply don’t have enough sack or guts to push through the barriers of your mind and your body. Are you simply looking for the straightest path from point A to B, without accepting the reality that change is a slow and at time stubborn process?

The most frustrating set backs that I witness with athletes and a citizen trainee in the human performance world is their simple lack of direction in their workouts. They simply don’t know why they are here, or what they are supposed to be doing. The gym is a place that they go, but why are they really going? What are the reasons that they are going for? And if they know the reasons, do they have any clue how to reach those goals or expectations? These are all areas that seem to elude the majority of fitness driven individuals. “Don’t think that you can go ask a trainer and they will make it all better because they also fall into that same majority.”

You have to set forth a plan for physical and performance change even if all you want to do is improve your overall health. You have to understand what is causing your poor health in the first place, how your forthcoming training is going to affect your goals and whether or not your goals are even attainable. For example, if you are 42 years old with a body fat level of 39% you might not want to start with a goal of back squatting 500lbs in the next six months. However, you can set goals that put you on track to achieve that goal over the next 36 months as long as you are structurally healthy and you don’t come from a chlorinated genetic pool.

Until next time…