Don't Be So Hard On Yourself: The Power Of Soft Tools
In this week’s episode of the Unreal Results podcast, you’re going to find out that I feel some type of way about “releasing” the psoas with hard tools. This is a clip taken from episode 15, Hard No To Hard Tools In The Gut, and just by that title I’m sure you can tell how I feel. This episode highlights the potential risks associated with using hard tools in the gut as well as the safer alternatives that I love to use instead.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Episode 15: Hard No To Hard Tools In The Gut
Coregeous Ball by TuneUp Fitness
Franklin Ball by The Franklin Method
4" Soft Ball by Balanced Body
Instagram Reel: Why Hard Tools Are No Good
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Considering the viscera as a source of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction is a great way to ensure a more true whole body approach to care, however it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start, which is exactly why I created the Visceral Referral Cheat Sheet. This FREE download will help you to learn the most common visceral referral patterns affecting the musculoskeletal system. Download it at www.unrealresultspod.com
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Anna Hartman: Hey there, and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman, and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone, even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs and the nervous system on movement, pain, and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole body assessment and treatment really looks like.
I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.
Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Unreal Results podcast. So, uh, just a reminder that the podcast for the summertime, so about a month and a half between the beginning of July and the middle of August 2024, We're going to be doing some, um, reruns, but not whole episodes, just clips of some of my favorite things that I've covered in the last 66 episodes.
I'm going to be focusing on more of the episodes that haven't got as many downloads as others. Um, just thinking that, you know, Not sure why you missed it, whether it was timing of the year, or the title, or whatever. Um, want to make sure you get the information, and then also I know that when you, when it comes to learning stuff, whenever you can hear it repeated again, it's going to have a better opportunity to sort of be absorbed and stick.
And then also, um, my experience and a lot of the mentorship alumni. Experience is when you re listen, re watch material, go back to it in a, you know, in another year, in another time, sometimes you hear and catch different things because often what we pick up in a class or what we pick up in a lecture is what we need to hear in that moment.
And you are a completely different person now than you used to be, um, a completely different practitioner, especially if you. been listening for a while and implementing some of these practical tips of utilizing a more true whole body approach, uh, that considers the viscera and the nervous system in your, uh, assessment and treatment plan.
So, um, Maybe it is exactly what you've already heard, but you're going to hear it in a different way and pick up different gems and different information from it. So I hope you enjoy it. I'm curating this specifically for you. And, uh, thanks for being here. Enjoy this episode.
Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Unreal Results podcast. This episode is a clip from, I think, season one episode, maybe like 16, uh, called a hard no to hard tools in the gut. It is such an important, um, episode because I'd say like one of the most common questions I get or the thing that is like It gives me like, it's like an ick to me when I see it in people's clinics, or outside of training rooms, or gyms, is what I think of the hard psoas release tools.
It's a big, big deal. N O. Big no. No. One sentence. Absolutely not. No. So, um, this clip is from that whole episode, which actually is episode number 15. And, uh, hope you'll give it a listen. Why I feel so Strongly about this. Basically it's a quick review of the visceral organs and why that, why they're important and why hard tools are not the way to go.
Um, so I hope you enjoy and then hope you consider actually listening to the full episode, which will be linked in the show notes. Have a great day.
No, please do not. No, absolutely not. Do you not listen to me at all? Because I've like, again, but, but really she does, but she doesn't, so I was like, no.
And then she proceeded to tell me that the, I was like, who are you getting advice from? It's like, you, do you not have anyone that you could ask that actually does this for their job? You're not giving her crap. And then she was like, I wasn't asking for advice. Um, I was talking to somebody at work about things and, uh, he recommended it.
He said, whenever his back flares up, he sleeps on it. He literally sleeps on it two to three times a week to prevent his back pain. And I was like, wow, that is amazingly insane. And also like, how do you sleep with a hard thing in your abdomen? I, I was like, I just can't. And so then I told her, I was like, yeah, no.
Um, You can do soft massage in that area, but it would be best if it was a soft ball or a soft thing or something gentle for your soft parts because there is a risk of perforating and injuring your visceral organs when you're using hard tools or even your hands or someone else's hands when they are used in a not a very intelligent way.
Specifically in a way that is like no pain, no gain, right? Which a lot of people think that's how self-massage should be. So, um, the risk is low, but it's still there. And so I actually made a reel on Instagram today. I'll, I'll. Shared in the show notes about this too. I've had, I've done a reel on this in the past, but you know, once is never, and I probably did it like during Covid Pan Pan and pandemonium, and so that was like three years ago now.
Right. So, um, and oftentimes I do get asked this by athletes and people and it's just like, no, there are better ways to go about it. So, and specifically too, it depends on the person, right? Because. She also has an inflammatory bowel disease, and that is like the person that I worry about in this scenario.
And actually, to be honest, the majority of back pain and the majority of hip pain does have a visceral driver, does have a gut relationship to it. And so, so many people who are suffering from back pain and hip pain that get these tools, Probably do have some sort of underlying inflammatory bowel problem or gut issue that is already putting their tissues of their viscera in a not so ideal or optimal tissue health.
Standpoint. So theoretically one would think that if the tissue health of the visceral organs are not that great to begin with, pressing on them with a hard tool, with a lot of force and pressure eliciting pain often is a really quick way to significantly increase the risk of perforating organs or um, causing massive.
Hematomas that result often in the need for surgery, like abdominal surgery to fix things. So, And I don't make this up. Um, there are case reports in the literature you can do pub me search and come up with it pr pretty easily. Um, I shared three in the reel today. One was a older gentleman who was constipated and having pain and was vigorously and very hard self massaging with his hands and lacerated his pancreas.
You might, if, if you've been in one of my courses or, or seen some of my videos, I'm, I'm not sure if it's a public video or not, sorry, but I have a video of a visceral massage with a gorgeous ball, which I'll show you in in a second. The ball and, um, Even in that video, I, when I'm talking about the anatomy and the areas that we're at, I say, Hey, this area is where your pancreas is at, and your pancreas is a very soft and delicate organ, and also a very important organ.
The pancreas is an organ you don't wanna fuck with because. If you were to lacerate it like this guy did, like when you start removing injuring organs like the pancreas that are like linked to the function of everything, right? Because it is a endocrine and XO organ. Like that's not ideal for optimal healthy living.
That is just a risk I am not willing to take for the sake of self massage or even like, Working on someone. I am very gentle and very cognizant when I have my hands in the area of someone's pancreas. So that was one. There was also a article shared about, um, transverse colon perforation, and then I think a, I can't remember if it was ascending or descending colon perforation to, so those are probably the more common ones, the colon.
Things because oftentimes people are going after the, so as in the, so the, so as the area it is around is gonna be sigmoid colon on the left, um, the small loops of the intestine, so the mesenteric root of the small intestine. Um, and then on the right side, same thing, mesenteric root, um, can be. Uh, ascending colon a little bit.
Kidneys, the base of the kidneys are in this area too. So those would be ones that, gosh, those are the worst too, like that the kidneys are also very sensitive to, to high pressure. So the quickest way to feel like shit is to overtreat and compress on the kidneys. So, um, these are some the common things.
You know, you also have like an your abdominal aorta and vena cava there, your iliac vessels, like presion a vessel. Think about like some people, you know, some people's health of their vascular vessels are not great, and so then you're adding more pressure and pushing on it with a hard tool. I worry about some sort of like aneurysm type of scenario.
Don't know if that's ever happened. There's potential for it. We have a lot of an important anatomy deep in our gut that is deep to fat, right? There's supposed to be fat to protect things, and it's deep to muscles, right? Posterior abdominal wall. Anterior abdominal wall like it's supposed to be. Fairly protected.
Think about the organs that sit within the bowl of our pelvis, like they sit within a bony protection, and when we're sticking things in there, it's just we're asking for trouble, especially if we're sticking things in there without having a. Idea of what the anatomy is like. So you I will, I will give, it's not like I don't give self-massage of the visceral to people or a quote, you know, you know, A so as release, I call it that often because that's, you know, the language, I'm speaking the athlete's language, but I don't necessarily think we're always working on the psoas.
But it's the general area I'm trying to get. I give these to my clients. I give them very often actually, but always with soft tools and always. Always, always, when I am taking them through this journey of their insights, we're talking about the relevant anatomy. We're talking about what the anatomy is, what it could feel like when you, when what it should feel like.
It shouldn't feel super uncomfortable. It shouldn't feel very visceral. It shouldn't be really painful, right? So if they're feeling these areas, feeling that way, I encourage them to move to a different. Part or like, change the prop, change the position, right. We're honoring what we're feeling and we're not forcing things.
So, um, those are important things to, to know. Um, you know, and same thing too. The organs. The organs up underneath the ribcage. So there's, there's, when we think of the thoracic cage, right, the thorax. The ribs went through 12 in the spine, and then the sternums xiphoid process, manubrium, and the cartilages, right?
The entire thorax. The entire thorax contains more than just the thoracic cavity organs. The thoracic cavity is the area above the diaphragm in the thorax, but then we have. We have things below the diaphragm, still within the thorax, but technically part of the abdominal cavity. These organs are interesting and they're important, so they're still protected underneath the bone, but they can get, they do now, can they, they do kind of get pushed down with the, in inhale breath, right, and become a little bit more exposed.
Right. This is actually how you can palpate the gallbladder to see if somebody's got gallbladder issues going over on. This is like somebody, one of my athletes just recently asked me because of the fight that was on TV last week or whatever, about like the anatomy of the A liver punch and why that can be like, so like such a big deal.
The anatomy of a liver punch is. It's usually a left hook applied to underneath the right ribcage. If it's timed right when the other athlete isn't an inhale phase. Now the liver's even more exposed. Right? And then this causes a big problem because why the liver is a very important organ. It's why it's protected under the ribcage.
So, um, So it's important to realize too that when we're using self-massage and, and, and these tools when we're up in that area, that subdiaphragmatic area around the ribcage, like there's some pretty sensitive and important anatomy they're to be aware of. When you're doing some of these self-massage things, it doesn't mean that you can't do self-massage.
With your hands or with tools, but it means that the type of tool you use is important and the knowledge of why you're doing it is important. And to understand the rules of harder is not better, should not be painful. Let your breath guide you like deeper is not better, et cetera.