PASSIVACTIVE TECHNIQUE IN MYOFASCIAL DETACHMENT: LOWER LIMBS - 5TH PART - - MASSAGE-TECHNIQUES

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Passivactive technique in myofascial detachment: lower limbs

All the manual skills of this work are born in a "kinetic perspective, that is in relation to the fundamental active participation on the part of the athlete while the operator passively moves, stretches and rotates the muscle or the myofascial chain section involved in the detachment.

Technique I define passive for the minimal but essential contribution that is required of the athlete to obtain the necessary condition so that the viscoelastic change of the myofascial tissue (collagen) can begin. This is not only due to the physical mechanical action of manual skills, but also for the consequent effects to the response of the stimulation performed on the athlete's mechanoreceptors: corpuscles and organs of Golgi, Ruffini and Pacini.

This condition passive, according to Schleip's study, it is absolutely necessary since the mechanoreceptor corpuscles if not stimulated directly on the order of their owner - the athlete in question - are unable to influence the sympathetic system with the consequent variation in muscle tone, making the release work useless. As he has demonstrated to explain the dynamics of the plasticity of the fascia during myofascial manipulation, he evidence that using techniques on anesthetized and non-anesthetized parts of the body, in the former there was no change in muscle tone and viscoelasticity if not for a short time, while in the latter by treating the parts of the body activated by the person being massaged, these effects were well evident and of longer duration. Now, not going into too much detail and for which I repeat the reading of the aforementioned work by Schleip, it seems clear how important it is to respect this kinetic condition during myofascial detachment, even more so after the positive results I found on the field applying this modality during the last competitive seasons.

So based on my experiences I find that insert the passive technique with manual detachment and separation for adjacent muscles during massage-sport sessions, it is of great help to athletes to achieve good athletic performance. Valid help also for the operator who will have much less difficulty in detaching the adhesions given the lower incisiveness required by the technique, which is very appreciated by the athlete treated. We will deal exclusively with manual skills for the muscles and fascia, as for the ligaments in my opinion the best technique is always the deep friction, Deep Transverse Friction. There passive technique is very effective for those types of spindle-shaped or ribbon-like muscles with little belly and long tendons, which often suffer from

fascial restriction of torsions around the related bone structure, or being subject to a rotation-traction along their axis due to adhesions with adjacent muscles or with the fascia itself. In addition to working on the muscular part, it is also essential to treat the tendons to break the fibrous adhesions formed. As the photo above empirically shows, the red curtain and its covering sheath - the white retina - they are mobilized and rubbed precisely to avoid, break or release adhesions - crosslinks - so as to allow an optimal and mutual smoothness, also thanks to the lubrication induced by the effects of the localized massage. "Even before the onset of bothersome symptoms of tendonitis, collagen tends to degenerate, starting inflammation. The friction massage on the tendon-sheath carries out a preventive work on the appearance of inflammation due to overload of work or to the fibrousness of the sheath that surrounds it, as it stimulates the reproduction of collagen which replaces the degraded one, arranging itself in an orderly fashion. its specific manual techniques for the detachment of fibrous adhesions -muscle / fascia / sheath / tendon - it remains more and more an "excellent practice for the prevention of injuries, as well as of great benefit for the sportsman" (W.W. Lowe - massage therapist). Fig. 1 with a global musculoskeletal view allows to highlight some of these muscles and the myofascial chains to which they belong.