Preventing ACL Injury: Sports Massage Therapy & PNF Stretching Techniques

Video Transcript

"Hi! On behalf of expertvillage.com, my name is Jean Hurley from Siegels Day Spa in Cottonwood, Arizona, and I’m here to give you some techniques for sports massage. We are using PNF techniques, and the way we engage the athlete into helping us warm up his muscle to give stretch and elongation. This one is for the ACL. What we’re going to do is at 3 different levels, have him stretching out with the leg. I’m going to rest your leg here on mine, and I want you using 20%, push against my body, trying to close your leg in. A little bit of engagement, you see the muscle starts to bounce, and relax. I’m just going to take some pressure off here. Again, we’re going to come up a little higher using 20% of you body. He’s trying to close his leg, getting some resistance, comply some pressure. We’re going to relax. Just taking pressure and coming forward, even a little farther. Again, resting his leg. We’re going to go ahead using 20%. Okay, and relax. On this one, because we’re getting some resistance there, we did it at 3 levels of 20. So we would go back and do the same 3 levels at 40% of his muscle strength and then at 60%, 80%, etc. We were able to get the leg fully out here without having muscle repercussions. "