Frequently Asked Questions

While some of the stretches may feel intense, Fascia Stretch Therapy is not painful. FST can relieve pain and improve movement without working directly on the areas that are injured or painful (counterintuitive, I know). One of my clients who had come in with back pain once said ‘you never touched my lower back but the pain is gone. 

  In many contexts, certain level of discomfort is needed for growth - whether that is to get stronger in the gym, or tolerate some discomfort during a massage. For any sort of stretching to yield long term results, the stretching SHOULD NOT be painful. There are cells in our body (Golgi tendons) that detect when we have stretched too far too suddenly. Often, people will stretch until it's painful and 'feels like it will rip'. This often leads to tension in the face and holding of the breath due to the intensity of the stretch and pain. This causes the tissue to spring back tighter when you release the stretch, meaning you gain nothing productive from this sort of stretching, when the purpose of doing it is to gain relief and improvements in mobility! 

During FST, we move into some deep stretches for your joints and muscles, depending on your tolerance, needs and familiarity, but we never force this. Instead of ‘no pain, no gain’, think ‘gain, because there is no pain’, when it comes to stretching and mobility. 

While FST is beneficial for people who have tightness that causes them pain or prevents performance, it can also benefit people who are hypermobile. 

Hypermobility means you have too much mobility in certain joints. In my experience, hypermobile clients are often in as much, if not more pain than those who are too tight. More mobility is not always better if you do not have strength and stability in those ranges. They will often desire a good stretch, as their body tightens other areas to compensate for the parts that have too much flexibility. Hypermobile clients often cannot gain lasting relief from traditional stretching and are often worse off for it, as their joints make it easy for them to stretch too far (which exacerbates the mobility in the joint and increases tightness in the compensating areas they are trying to stretch) or they find it difficult to feel a good stretch sensation with relief. 

FST can help by

 i) Stabilising the joints that are hypermobile, which is a root cause of their pain and tightness.

 ii) Stretching the areas that are actually tight, without taking it too far.

Stretching gets a bad rap. Studies that examine the effect of stretching on performance is often done with static stretching, which is the type of stretching that you hold for a longer period of time in an effort to calm the muscle down and gain more length through that muscle. 

Fascia stretch therapy does not use static stretching. It is dynamic, and can be sped up o slowed down to achieve a facilitative (increase nervous system activity that preps you for fight or flight) or relaxing (better for recovery, reducing stress, increasing rest/digest part of nervous system) effect. It also improves active mobility, which means whatever range we achieve through stretching, you can use it in activity to perform better. 

I have provided FST to weightlifters and powerlifters prior to their lifting in a comp, which assisted their warm up and movement prep. It did not make them weaker. For longer, restorative sessions, I recommend getting it done 1-2 days prior to your big competition event. 

FST can actually enhance performance (short term and long term) by

i) dynamically lubricating joints 

ii) activating target muscles and the nervous system 

iii) restoring the ability for your body to generate and absorb force more efficiently (i.e. lift heavier and be faster) 

iv) when combined with strength training, improve strength in deeper ranges of movement (e.g. deeper squat with heavier weight), and gain lasting mobility over time. 

  FST benefits anyone who is stuck in certain positions for long periods of time (e.g. desk workers, construction workers, athletes). It can help release tension, relieve pain (e.g. headaches, lower back pain), and restore balance across your body so that it is able to function and move better, and help it get 'unstuck' from the positions that are causing excess tightness and pain.