Active Release Techniques® (ART)
Physiotherapy / Occupational Therapy
Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine
Chapter 14: Acknowledgements and Thanks
Chapter 15: Publications from Kinetic Health
Exercise Disclaimer...Please read!
Exercise is not without its risks, and this or any other exercise program may result in injury. Risks include but are not limited to: aggravation of a pre-existing condition, risk of injury, or adverse effects of over-exertion such as muscle strain, abnormal blood pressure, fainting, disorders of heartbeat, and in very rare instances, of heart attack.
To reduce the risk of injury in your case, consult your doctor before beginning this exercise program. The instruction and advice presented here are in no way intended as a substitute for medical consultation. The authors and publisher disclaim any liability from and in connection with this program.
The exercises in this book are provided for educational purposes only, and are not to be interpreted as a recommendation for a specific treatment plan, product, or course of action, or as a substitute for professional supervision or advice. To reduce the risk of injury in your case, consult your doctor before beginning this or any exercise program.
The authors, publishers, and technical experts use reasonable effort to include accurate and up-to-date information in its information sources; however, all information appearing is general in nature. Kinetic Health, the authors, publishers, and practitioners do not assume liability or give any warranty of any kind for the information and data contained or omitted from this document or for any action or inaction made in reliance thereon. Information presented in this book and associated web sites may be changed at any time. Specific advice should be obtained in respect of specific situations.
Any programs involving weights, intense workouts and apparatus may put strong physical demands on any child who is still growing – supervision is obligatory in such cases. If you have or have had asthma, growth condition, heart condition, or have experienced chest pains or dizziness in the last month we strongly advise you NOT to try any of our workouts. This book is NOT a medical facility and no information contained in our book should be used to prevent, treat or diagnose medical conditions of any kind. As with any exercise program, if at any point during your workout you begin to feel faint, dizzy, or have physical discomfort, you should stop immediately and consult a physician.
Foreword by Dr. Brian Abelson
All too often, we find our patients and athletes jumping into the advanced, intensive stages of exercise before establishing needed ground work. This rushed approach leads to more injuries and an accompanying lack of performance.
The Release Your Kinetic Chain series of exercise books takes a functional approach to exercise. With this approach, we give you step-by-step recommendations to help you move through the rehabilitation phase of an exercise program to prepare you for the performance phase.
This book (and its sister books) have two basic objectives:
The first objective is to help you rehabilitate your body after an injury (or long period of inactivity) and prepare it for more intensive exercise programs.
The second objective is to help you prepare your body so that it is ready for sport or athletic performance training.
Rehabilitating an Injury...do this first!
There are some basic concepts that you need to understand in order to be successful with our program. First of all, when you are rehabilitating an injury, we will always have you work in a completely pain-free zone. That’s right...at this phase, the concept of no pain, no gain is completely wrong! Our primary objective with rehabilitation is to increase muscular endurance and neurological motor control. With rehabilitation routines, we always work within a pain-free zone...essentially a zone of safety where you can bring your injured areas back to normal activity.
Our family of exercise books focuses on exercise routines that help you to rehabilitate your body from previous injuries, and bring it up to speed for the next phase of performance training. Your injury could be as minor as an ankle sprain, or more substantial such as recovery from a surgery! In all cases, it is critical that you take your body through the rehabilitative exercise phase before jumping into the performance phase!
You will find that the Beginner and Intermediate routines expect you to work within this pain-free rehabilitative zone. The Advanced routines will help to transition you into the Performance or Athletic arenas.
Increasing Your Performance...wait to do this!
Only after you have established good muscle endurance and motor control (neurological control) should you focus upon increasing your strength or speed.
Increasing strength should only come after good neuromuscular endurance has been established. If you try to increase strength too quickly, you will discover that you have found the best formula for developing ongoing injuries.
In this book, we provide proven exercise routines that gradually build your strength and endurance to the point where you will be ready to begin performance training.
Why you need these books
The training programs in these books are very different from the body-building type of programs you will find in most gyms. The purpose of most body-building programs is to increase the size of individual body parts – that is, to develop a state of muscle hypertrophy. Body-building often trains the body, not as a set of linked kinetic chains, but as a series of unconnected segments.
This type of training can be a major mistake when you are trying to rehabilitate an injury or when you are trying to improve your sports performance. Often these body-building programs create muscle imbalances, cause even more injuries in unprepared tissues, and result in an overall decrease in performance. This is a huge price to pay, even if your initial goal was to simply increase muscle size by isolating and growing specific muscle groups.
Instead, the exercise programs in the Release Your Kinetic Chain book series use step-by-step