Your Experience with A.R.T.

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43

[quote]pushharder wrote:
IronDude17 wrote:

As for the pain, I was expected some torture based on what is available to read as far as testimonials go but man it felt good to have pressure…

For me there was real, live, honest to gosh, genuine pain.[/quote]

Depends how bad it is. I had a 12 year old injury to my subscapularis that was one nasty adhesion. He put his bodyweight, all 235 or so into it and it might have been one of the most painful things I have ever experienced.

In my office I do lite ART, for those with an average pain tolerance, and full fix ART for the hardcore guys. There are very few hardcore guys, btw. Most people want a slow fix if they have insurance, believe it or not.

Part of the reason is that they can’t take it. I’m also glad it goes that way, because at 45 I might be done doing it after 10 years. Your body won’t hold up if you bring it as hard as possible all the time.

On the other side, people often don’t need “hard” work. and average non weight trained sized man or woman isn’t that hard to work on. If you deadlift 500 pounds, it’s not that hard to pick up cat litter, bags of cement, etc. And if you ahve good technique along with good strength in your hands, you’ll get it done.

Also, why ART promises a quick fix and delivers, remember we live in the real world. this means we will have poor seats, bad posture, old injuries, repetitive stress jobs and other things that will hurt us. The old football ACL injury. You’re nuts if you don’t think you hurt soft tissue when you shredded your ACL.

Any runner, triathlete, weight trainer will get problems and probably should seek out a practitioner monthly, every few months and whatever. Those tiny little aches can often grow into huge problems as they progress.

Also, where you feel the pain isn’t always the problem. There coudl be multiple linked areas all bound up causing symptoms removed fromt he big boy. and the pain area might be the problem.

One problem with ART are the Mike Leahy drones. Mike says to look for this and all of a sudden every has a psoas issue when they have knee pain and the numbnuts won’t even check a quad. I actually saw this at an Ironman race. These 2-3 goofs were trying to help this guy with his knee. I asked them if they checked the quads. They told me it was a psoas issue, so no they didn’t.

Whatever.

44

A.R.T. has kept me lifting without a doubt.

I had longtime nagging issues in numerous areas and art helped all of them to some degree. If you find a good one, they are gold. One of the guys I see is also a D.C., so if he feels the need I may also get an adjustment. Combine both of those modalities with a solid person and it can work wonders.

Monopoly

45

Mixed bag for me, had a few ART sessions a couple of years ago, did help some nagging shoulder issues - sprained rotator cuff on one, separated the other - to get better pretty fast, but did nothing for an ongoing hip problem that still bothers me (about to start a thread on that actually).

46

ART is an ongoing therapy. A lot of injuries you will not have worked out in one session.

There are very few ART specialists that do it properly. I’ve have everything from basically a massage, to ART with light pressure, to absolute god awful torture. To the point where i was screaming, as was the other two guys i was there with.

The torture was good but you feel it for days afterwards.

I truly believe that there is a certain element of pain than has to be endured with ART to have it properly done. Especially on heavily muscled people.

47

[quote]Big Jay wrote:
ART is an ongoing therapy. A lot of injuries you will not have worked out in one session.

There are very few ART specialists that do it properly. I’ve have everything from basically a massage, to ART with light pressure, to absolute god awful torture. To the point where i was screaming, as was the other two guys i was there with.

The torture was good but you feel it for days afterwards.

I truly believe that there is a certain element of pain than has to be endured with ART to have it properly done. Especially on heavily muscled people.[/quote]

Agreed. If it doesn’t hurt, it’s probably not working.

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Is ART good for the lower back?

49

[quote]krayon wrote:
Is ART good for the lower back?[/quote]

It has helped me with bad spasms when my back goes out. I have several herniations, in particular one at l-4/l-5 that causes me severe pain when it acts up.

Chiro adjustment will put my spine back, but I am left with godawful muscle spasms for several days. When I have had ART done in conjunction with the adjustment, I had no spasms by the time the session was over.

50

[quote]pushharder wrote:
IronDude17 wrote:

As for the pain, I was expected some torture based on what is available to read as far as testimonials go but man it felt good to have pressure…

For me there was real, live, honest to gosh, genuine pain.[/quote]

I guess Irondude is just made of iron.

My guy actually has a swear jar, he calls it his retirement fund & laughs when he brings it out…

BTW it’s pretty full.

51

[quote]jc2000 wrote:
pushharder wrote:
IronDude17 wrote:

As for the pain, I was expected some torture based on what is available to read as far as testimonials go but man it felt good to have pressure…

For me there was real, live, honest to gosh, genuine pain.

I guess Irondude is just made of iron.

My guy actually has a swear jar, he calls it his retirement fund & laughs when he brings it out…

BTW it’s pretty full.

[/quote]

Haha thats awesome. When he did forearms last time, I definitely let out some sissy yelps since they were pretty tight. But, I think its a pretty cool feeling when he pushes on an area and you feel little knots being broken down. And no I’m not a crazy person just imagining things! Glutes and hamstrings are next so my guess is that that won’t be too pleasant.

52

[quote]tom63 wrote:
pushharder wrote:
IronDude17 wrote:

As for the pain, I was expected some torture based on what is available to read as far as testimonials go but man it felt good to have pressure…

For me there was real, live, honest to gosh, genuine pain.

Depends how bad it is. I had a 12 year old injury to my subscapularis that was one nasty adhesion. He put his bodyweight, all 235 or so into it and it might have been one of the most painful things I have ever experienced.

[/quote]

HaHaHaHa!

I had that done too. Felt like having a handfull of hair ripped off of the inside of my shoulder blade.

There ain’t no way around it sometimes. That is one hell of a procedure.

53

I’m a firm believer in ART. I go to Whole Health Patners in Dallas. Great facility with a very proven track record. They work on my entire shoulder complex. My pec minor was a bad area as well as my entire lat. The pain is intense, but well worth it. I think it is very important to properly stretch with a band and warm up the shoulders before you train. I also roll my rear delt area and lats on PVC before I train. Hurts more than foam, but more effective. Also, ice IMMEDIATELY after I train has helped me quite a bit.

54

Count me as another true believer as well.

I had developed serious pain in my left shoulder from…you guessed it…benching too much and not pulling enough. I tried for a couple of years to fix it on my own. I layed off it, I streached, I had my wife dig her fingers into all the muscles around my shoulder, I iced it, I heated it, I even went through the entire Neandertal No More program. Everything seemed to make it better until I started getting back to the heavy benching and then it would flare up again, despite the fact that I was doing two pulling exercises for ever pushing.

I finally got fed up with it one day when driving my car. I went to put my arm on the window sill and a sharp pain went thru my shoulder. Just moving my arm with no weight caused it to hurt pretty bad.

I went to a local ART provider I found on the ART site and started getting treatment. The first session hurt like hell and I thought, great it time to hit it again. I was dissappointed to find out one session didn’t do it. I mean everyone on here said one session was enough. I was patient with it though and kept going back. After two sessions a week for a couple of weeks, something just clicked. The pain hadn’t gone away totally yet, but it felt different. It had moved. I spoke to my provider about it and he came at it from a different approach and worked the coracobrachialis (sp?). I nearly flew off the table it hurt so bad. It took so many sesions because, he would work different muscles each time based on the feedback I would give him. As the pain moved around, he worked different areas.

After that things were definitely different. I started working out the upper body again and used what I learned from NNM and all of the articles I pulled form the T. This was two years ago and the only time I have even mild issues is when I don’t warm up or when I neglect the upper back, which just doesn’t happen anymore.

If you’re having problems, an ART provider can definitely help, but you need to find out what caused the problem in the first place and fix it. One time trauma events are one thing, but repetitive use issues can only be fixed by changing what YOU are doing or not doing in my case.

55

I did not feel it helped me any more than a normal massage. There are so many “techniques” out there. Someone decided to make money off one of these techniques and patented “active release technique.” Out of all the things I see on this site I think this is the most overrated.

56

[quote]Bullit wrote:
If you’re having problems, an ART provider can definitely help, but you need to find out what caused the problem in the first place and fix it. One time trauma events are one thing, but repetitive use issues can only be fixed by changing what YOU are doing or not doing in my case.[/quote]

I decided to wait on booking with one of the ART guys until after I see a physiotherapist. My problem is in my hamstring/groin. My doctor isn’t sure what the deal is and after bending and twisting the hell out of my leg but unable to reproduce the pain he referred me to someone. I still don’t know what the cause is and I agree that is what you need to find out first.

57

[quote]krayon wrote:
Is ART good for the lower back?[/quote]
Any muscle a guy can get to can be helped, along with some ligaments.

Lower back would be glutes, piriformis, quadratus lumborum, spinal erectors, multifidi, interspinous, rotatores, inter transversi, dorsal sacral ligaments, sacrotuberous ligaments, ilio psoasand obliques. I probably forgot a few.

I have lower back issues and my problem goes back to deep in my piriformis.

58

Great stories everyone! Bump for the hell of it in case someone missed it or had anything to add . . . .

59

I had it done about a year ago to address some adhesions in my rhomboids as well as tight psoas. I was skeptical going into it, but the chiro I went to was quite reputable. I didnt think he would be strong enough with his hands to break up the scar tissue, but he was.

Pretty painful 20 minutes to endure but the benefit was well worth it. I went straight to the gym afterwards to do a back workout. I hit 4 more pullups than normal, which is good since my PR was 11 total. I also noticed that I was more fluid in my movements. My own experience was a very good one.

60

I just switched chiros as I felt my last one was just fixing me up enough to keep me coming back.

My new one was telling me about this Graston Technique. Similar to A.R.T but with tools it looks like. He’s trained but not certified in ART but wants me to try GT first to see what I thought. Has anyone had any experience on it? His sessions are only 40 bucks so I’ll probably try it anyway, but would like some feedback if anyone has any.