How often is soreness caused in your clinic? If your answer is daily, several times a week or for most patients, you're using too much force.
Check here for Myths of Manual Therapy Part 1. The gist of that post and embedded Sway is that it takes thousands of pounds of force to stretch fascia just 1%. We all want to make more than 1% change in our patient's mobility.
Another study has shown it takes thousands of pounds of force to finally rupture the smallest ligaments of the shoulder after the skin, muscles and capsule were removed. Let's just say, you're not coming close to doing any kind of fascia or capsular deformation with you best and most aggressive effort.
So, your patients should NOT be sore regularly; sometimes it's unavoidable. DOMs is ok, patients performing strengthening and conditioning should be challenged. However, do you know who else should not be sore?
I just finished teaching an amazing Modern Manual Therapy seminar in Toronto, ON hosted by Mobo Physio. One of my regular blog readers, said that he is trying to go lighter with his manual therapy treatments, and still getting good results. However, he stated his hands are sore by the end of the day. Do you know who used to have very sore hands by the end of the week in his early 20s, middle of the week in mid 20s and beginning of the week in late
20s? ME! I'm 40 now, and the only time I'm sore is DOMS, it's certainly not from treating patients.
If you can't put something into place, break up scar tissue, or deform joint capsules, you should not be using excessive force for both the patient's sake and yours. Neither should be sore regularly, at least from manual therapy.
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Interested in live cases where I apply this approach and integrate it with pain science, manual therapy, repeated motions, IASTM, with emphasis on patient education? Check out Modern Manual Therapy!
Keeping it Eclectic...
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