IOL Strength and Conditioning

A couple of years ago at a Justin Price lecture, I heard him tell a group of exercise professionals if they took only one thing home from the workshop, it should be to have all their clients roll their feet over tennis balls or golf balls every morning and every night. I started the next day, and it’s a rare day when I don’t stall near a ball of some size to work self-myofascial massage on the bottoms of my feet.

At this year’s IDEA conference a presenter, Sue Hitzmann, did a long session on fascia, the connective tissue that gives our bodies form. She’s a massage therapist who studied the new science of neurofascial anatomy, and in teaching her practice to others, developed a self-treatment method she calls MELT. I’ll prepare an overview of her presentation later, but for now I want to focus on her foot treatment.

Her technique for the feet takes our simple tennis or golf ball foot rolling a step further, using a game plan rather than the all-purpose, all-direction roll we did before. She uses a ball nearer the size of a golf ball, and begins with a softer ball to introduce the action to the fascial system, and later moving to the harder round after the fascia begins to loosen.

Rather than rolling, Hitzmann suggests position point pressing, moving the ball around the foot in a systematic way — mid-arch, along each of the metatarsal knuckles, back to the insole, out to the outside of the foot and down to the base of the heel — each time pressing down, holding but not rolling.

Next, she instructs what she calls shearing, in which the ball is used as a prop to hold the foot at an angle, waiting as the fascia begins its release.

Finally, the ball is rolled underfoot, side to side under the knuckles and up and down the length of the foot, only instead of rolling with pressure as we’ve been doing, this technique is called “rinse and friction” and is done faster and with less pressure.

You’ll find this fascinating as you play with it, especially using the smaller ball and applying directed pressure under the metatarsal knuckles, where you’re likely hear or feel the joints shifting.

One day on my pass by the triggerpoint ball, I stumbled upon a fascial release magic trick, a combination of techniques that sort of cuts the corner between joint mobility and soft tissue work.

In addition to rolling a ball underfoot, ankle mobility is my second daily must-do. Well, this day, I was in a hurry and sort of jumbled the two together. (I wonder if this is how most new training ideas are unearthed; we think these are brilliant folks figuring out how to accomplish specific tasks, but instead they’re just busy folks in a hurry.)

The triggerpoint therapy ball I use is about the size of a tennis ball, slightly larger, a little more dense, with density that shifts during use. With the ball stable under my forefoot, I started a little ankle rocking, a joint mobility drill to drive movement into the ankle joint. The action looks a lot like this Mike Boyle ankle mobility drill, only instead of having the toes propped on the edge of the platform, the foot is on top of a tennis ball.

As I began to experiment with various ways of applying pressure, I noticed the subtleties: Rolling, friction and steady pressure are all different than rocking, and rocking with a semi-stiff knee versus a bent knee is quite dissimilar, too.

When you think of the fascial lines, remember to consider length. The long stretches of connective tissue are how a knot in one place can cause pain a distance away. If you’re attentive as you rock your ankle with a ball under the metatarsal knuckles with a straight knee, you feel the pressure moving up the back of your leg and behind the glute, and you may even catch a hint of it higher up your back.

Play around with this tomorrow and I think you’ll be convinced it’s one for the daily to-do list.

Another quick tip in closing: It involves the tennis ball peanut gizmo we got from Mike Boyle (who, I’m told, originally got it from Sue Falsone — Mike’s big on crediting sources, and now that I know where he got it, I have to go back and make some fixes on this one).  Turns out the taped-up peanut works really, really well on the lats, up the side of the underarm and down the top of the triceps. A regular ball rolls out from under, whereas the ball peanut stays steady. I think you’re going to like this one. Well, both actually.