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HOW TO EVALUATE A NEW TECHNIQUE When a new technique or idea appears, I recommend evaluating its fundamental underlying mechanism and comparing it with what is known about human anatomy and physiology. After all, structure and function are pretty constant. Of course, we do not understand fully how the human body works, so if we are unsure how to evaluate the new approach, then perhaps we can give the technique a chance to prove itself with time—perhaps by waiting a few years. If the new technique is still around, then most likely there is some value to it. If it disappears, then perhaps it had no value, or perhaps it simply was not marketed well. MARKETING A TECHNIQUE Unfortunately, much of the success or demise of a technique is based on the ability of its proponents to effectively market it. The downside of marketing, though, is that it often involves excessive hyperbole that makes unrealistic claims to sell the technique, often stating that the new technique is the cure to most everything. The greater the claims are for a technique, the warier we should become. One of my favorite sayings is "Follow the person who seeks truth; beware of the person who has found it." No one technique works for every client, under every circumstance; if it did, we would all be doing that one technique, and no one would do anything else. My recommendation is to learn as many techniques as possible, take the skill sets of these techniques that resonate with us, and place them into our toolbox of possible approaches. Then, when a client presents, we have more choices to mix and match for effective assessment and treatment. NEGATIVE IDEOLOGIES There are other new ideologies that might be described as negative ideologies. These ideologies espouse an argument that negates the value of a particular method of treatment, often negating what has been held as classical wisdom in the field. Unfortunately, these new negative ideologies often use the same excessive hyperbole to negate a treatment method as proponents use to advance it. Of course, if the logic of the negative ideology is accurate, any classically held treatment approach deserves to be discredited, and this new negative ideology serves a valuable purpose to our field. But what if the negative ideology is wrong? Or perhaps overstates its case? What is disconcerting then is that a negative ideology often convinces therapists to stop practicing techniques that do have value, thereby denying their clients what would have been effective treatment modalities. CERTAIN MUSCLES CANNOT BE STRETCHED? One such negative ideology that is presently becoming popular is that there are certain muscles that cannot be stretched. This ideology begins from a very reasonable concept, which is that there is a limit to how effectively some muscles can be lengthened and stretched. Based on joint mechanics, some muscles cannot be stretched as well as others; this is true. Perhaps the starkest example is the brachialis muscle (Image 1). The brachialis crosses only the elbow joint, and as a flexor of the elbow joint, it would be stretched with elbow joint extension. However, anatomic position, which might be considered to be resting length of the brachialis, already has the elbow joint in full extension. There is a bony lock of the olecranon process of the ulna meeting the olecranon fossa of the 60 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k m a y / j u n e 2 0 2 0 Deltoid (cut) Brachialis Coracobrachialis The right brachialis muscle. Illustrations permission Dr. Joe Muscolino. The Muscle and Bone Palpation Manual, with Trigger Points, Referral Patterns, and Stretching, 2nd Edition ( Elsevier, 2016) or Kinesiology, The Skeletal System and Muscle Function, 3rd Edition ( Elsevier, 2017). 1