ART Spotlight Article: Track athlete facing sitting season out helped by ART.

Jeff happened to come to town for a few days to attend a funeral. It was the middle of track season and he hadn't run for 3 weeks. It looked as if he would miss the rest of the season. At this point, he was just interested in being able to walk without low back pain.

One day in the gym at his university, Jeff was warming up to do some squats. He wasn't certain what he did, but he noticed a "strange" feeling in his low back after re-racking the bar. He went to one of the trainers and was told to put ice on it.

Over the next couple of days, he noticed that the pain was getting worse. The trainers at his school gave him some ultrasound treatments and stretched him out. It didn't help. When he tried to run, the pain intensified. The trainers told him to take a week off.

The doctor who was in charge of treating the team diagnosed Jeff with a muscle strain and gave him anti-inflammatory medication. Jeff followed the prescription and felt a little better. However, as soon as he tried to run, he felt the pain immediately.

Three weeks after the problem started, he was still hurting and unable to train. When he came to town for that funeral, his father brought him to see his ART provider. Upon initial examination, the ART provider noticed that the muscles in Jeff's low back were tight, as was the hamstring on that side. Luckily for Jeff, this provider was credentialed to administer the ART spine and lower extremity protocols.

The relationships between the low back muscles, the hamstrings, and the deep ligaments of the pelvis are addressed in great detail by Active Release Techniques. Dr. Leahy teaches his credentialed providers how an injury to one of these structures can cause pain and dysfunction in the others.

Jeff's low back pain was coming from a sprain that had shortened one of the deep ligaments in his pelvis (the dorsal sacral ligament). This had changed the mechanics of Jeff's stride when he ran. As a result, the hamstring had tightened up and the low back muscles were over stressed. Jeff received two ART treatments to the affected structures before flying back to school. He immediately resumed training and finished the season without his problem returning.

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