Today’s smart guy is John Pallof, a great physical therapist with whom I am lucky to collaborate on a weekly basis.

The message if very clear and simple – and the practice of this lesson yields marked improvements in outcomes: once you’ve had soft tissue work done, it’s imperative to stretch the tissues that have just been worked.  Once you have “disrupted” the tissue and created the desired response, the next step is to re-establish proper lengthening of the involved tissues.

We typically encourage athletes to use multiple sets of 60-second holds over the course of the day following the soft tissue work for most beneficial results.  So, if an athlete has aggressive soft tissue work on the elbow flexors, he would do this stretch over the course of the rest of the day to re-establish the elbow extension range-of-motion we’re trying to attain.

Recommended Viewing: Check out this cool free slideshow about how Graston Technique (R) works: