How good would it feel to just lay down and get stretched for an hour? Well turns out that’s a real thing! it’s called Fascial (pronounced Fash-ul) Stretch Therapy ™. Mark my words, Fascial Stretch Therapy will be as widely recognized as RMT (registered massage) in 15 years. It’s seriously that effective.
Approx. read time: 3 min
You already know RMT stands for Registered Massage Therapy. We’ve all been conditioned to see it as a means to feeling better, rehabbing injuries and generally become more relaxed. These are all great things that make RMT a worthy household name.
But you’ve likely not yet heard of RMT’s distant (and more handsome) cousin, Fascial Stretch Therapy (FST). Fascial Stretch Therapy is table based stretching geared specifically towards fascia. Fascia is the connective tissue that connects muscles to other muscles, skin to bones, cell to organs and everything in between. Fascia was once disregarded as medical waste; research is continually being done to demonstrate how it’s absolutely integral to all movement.
So what does FST really look like?
Imagine you’re going to get a massage, except you don’t have to get naked and instead of getting a massage, you get a customized, gentle stretch that comes with much greater sustainability than typical manual therapies.
But what if you like the naked part? Then you’re weird… Get over it and keep reading.
Oh, and it’s pronounced “Fash-ul”, so please don’t confuse it with the word “facial”. I recently gave a free FST session away to be auctioned for the human society and the lady came in thinking I was going to stretch her face… I politely told her I’d give it a whirl and things got weird… I digress.
FST was started by Ann Frederick in 1995. My friend Rosa introduced me to FST in 2007 and I was hooked. Not long after they ran a course in Toronto and I jumped at the chance to enroll.
What’s the difference between FST and just doing some stretching? FST takes advantage of a few key principles that make it exponentially more effective.
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- Traction (these is a method to decompress a joint, works great on its own, works even better when adding a stretch to it)
- Oscillations (gentle circular movements, without oscillations, stretching is two dimensional, which is fine, except for that fact that we’re three dimensional beings)
- Timing stretching to your breathing (turns out breathing through stretches makes it much more effective)
- And the best part. It’s gentle. Feeling at ease or relaxed helps the parasympathetic nervous system calm the whole body. This is integral to making the FST treatment far more sustainable than tradition stretching.
I’ve seen at least 10 different RMTs, 3 of them were brilliantly skilled… But all of them would have been better with FST in their tool box. People are constantly in motion. Why treat them with a tool that involves no motion….
Curt angle did FST all summer before he won his gold metal in wrestling. He’s quoted saying “I could not have won this gold medal without you” to Ann Frederick, the founder of FST.
NBA hall of famer Charles Barkley has nothing but good things to say about it.
How about Karlos Dansby of the Arizona Cardinals, players on most NFL teams (especially the Raiders, and Steelers), 5 time Olympian Mark McCoy and the list goes on, and on, and on…
Now you know, but mark my words. You’ll see FST become known just like RMT, because it is. honestly. that. good…
Book an FST or find a FST practitioners local to you here.