I'd stick with ART or other qualified manual therapy. Rolfing for instance. I wouldn't touch Graston or ASTYM with a forty foot pole. Someone coming at soft tissue with "instruments" is a recipe for fucked upedness, imo.

astym worked very well for my bicep tendonitis. it's alot less aggressive than most graston practioners....who just hammer on one spot destroying good tissue as well as fibrotic tissue. just depends on the practicioner....but my PT was not aggressive at all...just got in to activate the fibrotic tissue and out...sessions were quite short. as soon as i got up, i would hit up some 30-60 second static stretches and call it good.

Fair enough, Pity. I was lumping that under "with instruments" but I was only familiar with Graston. But did you compare that to any hands on technique? And especially ART? And what about TP's. Fibrotic (scarred) tissue is part of it but not the whole story.

graston actually tooled the tools for astym.... :) the only part i ever got bruised on was my tricep...afterwards it felt very comparable to a regular deep tissue massage. the legs were a different story...i stood up and felt like i weighed 2 pounds...it was a cool feeling. some of the professional level athletes they have used it on have run faster 40's and squatted more after getting the treatment.

i have not looked up if there is an ART center around here...i'd like to see how expensive it is...

all in all it was a very cool experience...there are 3 tools...and then you just use cocoa butter or some type of massage lotion, make about 2 passes in each spot you need to hit with each tool. so since i had shoulder problems, we did all 3 traps, rhoms, delts, bicep tendon, triceps, RC, both sides of the forearms, the hands, and on the lower body, calves, dig around the shinbone, hams, quads, adductors, the attachment points of the it band, tfl, and a little glute med. he said he had seen some pictures of people who had gotten graston...and they only focused on the symptomatic area, and just hammered on it....but didn't do the whole kinetic chain of the symptomatic area. those would be people to stay away from.....but it's not really evasive at all. not painful. adductors are tickleish tho :)

I didn't know that.

Based on what you are saying I think you should definitely try ART and even better would be an ART who also uses Gastron.

I'm not discounting the sincerity of your pt here only the logic. And if he has never been trained in ART I can understand it. There is no reason to skip right to metal instruments as opposed to using the hands first and most pracs who use both save Graston for those cases that are REALLY tough where the tissues are so hard they are resistant to being released by hand. And with that comes the idea that Graston is for those cases needing MORE pressure that goes deeper and deeper.

The guy that developed Graston was trying to do manual release therapy on himself. If you've ever tried a lot of self tp release (as an example) you know that some areas are impossible to get to and the lack of leverage means that it just wheres out your hands...especially if you have to do work over large areas. Which is why we have Theracane and such.

So this guy developed these metal instruments to SAVE his hands. Now since then the whole thing has been branded and many now think there is an advantage to it but nobody that is versed in both thinks that there is better than ART and they tend to always use ART as their primary therapy.

ART is more expensive to get certified on. Not that Graston isn't pretty damn expensive but ART is way expensive. You have to wonder how many choose based on the money.

ART has a network of providers so that you can check on your pt's cert. I'm not sure that Graston has that as yet..they were supposed to be working on it.

Manual release doesn't ruin the hands if it is done right so the argument that PT's need to use instruments doesn't hold water. It usually just means they apply more pressure than is really needed and don't know how to use their hands to advantage.

Like you say..your guy didn't apply much pressure..so why instruments? The HAND and touch is always going to be a better tool.

he had done manual therapy while i was doing rehab....and i had a few deep tissue massages in that time too. both helped out. but it kept coming back and coming back. so after he spent a week getting certified, he told me about it so i guinea pigged :) and it worked. the tools for astym are plastic...to be honest, the metal ones freaked me out a bit too. the chiro i used to go to is certified for graston...but $60 a pop, and no insurance coverage.....and the astym was covered...so i didn't pay much.

my pt still uses manual therapy....astym is just another tool in the toolbox.

it's a really interesting experience...hard to describe....you can feel it working, and you can see the blood immediately rise to those tissues. the only really weird feeling was on the SC joint...he picked around with the little tool...made some noise :)

Dear god

I have so much "googling" to do its not funny.

I just want to squat deeper cant I just stretch ; ).

J/K fellas this is interesting convo.

I got basic info on ART and Rolfing at GUS. Just do a search.

I haven't gotten to Graston yet but you can find info through the links I provide anyway.

Look under the category Massage and Manual Therapy or something like that.

Thx E thats the first place I was headed. : )

DE Bench Day

Worked close grip 3 boards today went ok but just couldnt stay tight for reps.Missed a couple reps cos I came loose, frustrating!! moved to speedy bench next and that went well.Finished with tris and lats, pretty good day all up, lats and upper back were smoked from rack pullups.

DE Bench Day 12/9/09

CG 3 Board
1x2 90kg
1x2 100kg
1x1 107.5kg
1x1 107.5kg

CG 2 Board
2x4 90kg

Speedy Bench (Wider Grips)
8x3 50-55kg

EZ Bar JMs
4x10 25kg

Rack Pullups
4x6 BW+5-10kg
1x8 BW 3 sec static hold each rep