How healing those muscles is an ART form

If you’ve got an injury, or just a petulant niggle, it’s often tempting to ignore it. For many of us who do seek treatment, the progress can be frustrating; things get noticeably better, but the problem never disappears entirely. We learn to live with those “sore wrists”, that “tweak in the hip” or that “angry ankle joint that flares up now and again”. To some extent, this is fair enough – realistic even: the body ages and heavy exercise and/or repetitive strain causes inevitable wear and tear. But I am not ready yet to accept that the issues I’ve been having around my hips and lower back, and shoulders and chest, for 18 months are now just a part of me. I don’t want to feel restricted or a bit injured for ever. So I decided to try a handson soft tissue treatment called Active Release Techniques, otherwise known as ART. Just to be clear: this isn’t the art therapy that requires you to draw pictures of emotions or make models of your family (though I’d gladly try that, if it promised to make me injury-free), rather it refers to a style of treatment of ligaments, muscles, tendons and nerves. ART was developed in the Eighties by Mike Leahy, a chiropractor from Colorado with an engineering degree from the US Air Force Academy. The technique only became available in Europe in 2009, but according to Nicolai van der Lagen, manager of ART education in Europe, it’s now routinely used by medical staff at Everton and Tottenham Hotspur football clubs, and professional cycling and athletics teams. “To treat a muscle with ART, the muscle is shortened and a manual tension is applied to the muscle by a therapist’s fingers,” says Newcastlebased ART expert, Thomas Feeney. “The muscle is then actively lengthened by the person being treated, while the tension on the muscle is held in place. The treatment hurts a bit, although most patients describe it as a ‘good hurt’. It feels like a stretch that you need,