What Is SMR and How Do I Explain The Benefits To Clients
Published 11 May 2018
Author Erin Splatt
Self Myofascial Release (SMR) is a safe and very effective hands-on technique that involves applying gentle sustained pressure into the Myofascial connective tissue, to eliminate pain and restore motion.
Put simply we use foam rollers / balls to iron out knotted fascia or connective tissue to be in better alignment.
Think of myofascial release like cleaning your teeth: we should do it as much as possible to help remove waste products from our bodies to allow optimal muscle and connective tissue health. Myofascial release will not only have local benefits on the area you release but results will act globally on the whole connective tissue train spanning throughout your body!
Muscle ‘knots’, trigger points, restricted movement and chronic tissue tightness is our body’s way of trying to deal with imbalance. All of us have these in our bodies as part of our daily living. Overuse patterns of movement and injuries can make it become worse and eventually cause pain.
Myofascial Release can be described to clients as the following:
- A deep tissue massage for the muscles
- Getting muscles fibres more in line with the muscle to improve performance
- Correcting tissue alignment so that the body is more efficient in movement
- Allowing the smooth surface of the muscle to slide over each other better
- Releasing glued up areas of connective tissue to allow segments to move better
You can’t ‘stretch’ a knot out of a muscle! Myofascial release is essential to any flexibility program and will complement stretching. When we stretch we lengthen muscle fibres, but this doesn’t do a whole lot for the elastic fascia. We need to also address bound up areas of tissue so we get both alignment (Myofascial release) and length (stretching.)
Benefits of Self-Myofascial release
- Improved Flexibility
- Correct muscle imbalances
- Increase Joint range of motion
- Decrease muscle soreness and relieve joint stress
- Maintain normal functional muscular length
- Increase training performance
- Reduce injury
- A great way to warm up your clients for a session.