Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68008
SPORTS INJURIES Bodyworkers have probably been working with sports injuries since the first time a human picked up a ball. And they've gotten very good at treating them. Over the past 40 years, we've made strong strides. Attacking the problem from a lot of angles, many people in many disciplines have contributed their expertise. And the results are pretty impressive. Still, a nagging problem remains. Your clients get injured. The joint swells up and feels tender for some time. They stay off it and get some bodywork, and, after a while, it begins to feel better and they slowly resume normal workouts. Except it never quite gets back to normal. Sure, they can still play, but that elbow is always a little tighter than they'd like or that ankle has reduced range of motion (ROM). Over the years, the trouble spot gets worse, until the golf game they once enjoyed becomes an exercise in teeth-gritting endurance. At the Kinesionics Institute, we have been working for 35 years to create a suite of manual therapies, bolstered by some impressive nutritional remedies, energy practices, and directed exercise, to address and heal sports injuries, so weekend hikers can come home still standing on both feet and rise to hike again. It's best to apply these treatments as soon as possible after the injury, but many individuals are helped even after the injury has been stuck in a suboptimal condition for some time. PIONEERS Throughout the 20th century, many researchers have contributed to the understanding of the role of individual structural muscles and their interplay in the subject of injury rehabilitation. Physical therapists were instrumental in establishing kinesiology as an academic field, cresting with the publication of Henry Many individuals are helped even after the injury has been stuck in a suboptimal condition for some time. and Florence Kendall's pioneering book, Muscles: Testing and Function. Later kinesiologists were largely chiropractors, including George Goodheart, DC, a leading researcher of structure and muscle balance who did his seminal work in the 1960s. He took an intense interest in the work of the Kendalls, and, as a rare artist, made fantastic discoveries by looking at research from a different perspective and synthesizing the information in a novel way that advanced care to a new degree. As Goodheart began to increase the use of individual structural muscle assessment in his practice, he found some clients had specific muscles that could not maintain their primary mover position under certain circumstances. Goodheart would then often apply his newly discovered origin/insertion technique to the muscles, which quite often would neurologically activate the muscle, stabilize the joint, reduce pain, and improve function. This 44 massage & bodywork november/december 2008 important discovery—that specific directed manual therapy applied to an individual distressed muscle could improve joint function and initiate the healing of traumatic injury—planted a seed that continues to flower to this day. A cadre of younger researchers stood on the shoulders of these giants and advanced the field of injury rehabilitation into this century. "Monitoring individual muscles takes the guesswork out of bodywork," says Marge Bowen, licensed massage therapist and practicing kinesiologist in Salt Lake City, Utah, and president of Energy Kinesiology Association. MUSCLE STRESS INJURY AND STRAIN Successfully helping the body initiate and maintain healing requires a coordinated program that supports continuous healing in the tissues, gets the brain involved throughout the process, and keeps the healing momentum going until everything that was hurt becomes whole again. And that includes a lot. Cellular nutrition, connective tissue recovery, lymph supply, meridian energy, microcirculation, and nerve regulation all have to be completed and get back in sync. When a muscle is damaged, the harm can be in the form of full or partial tearing of the muscle fibers and tendons. This tearing can also damage small blood vessels, causing bleeding, bruising, and pain. Most sports injuries are sprains, which manifest with swelling, bruising or redness, pain at rest, pain when the specific muscle or joint is used, weakness of the muscle, or inability to use the muscle at all.