What are Soft Tissue Mobilizations?

Soft Tissue Mobilization (STM) is an umbrella term used to describe manual, hands-on techniques that manipulate and promote the movement of soft tissues such as fascia, muscles, tendons, etc. You will see the term applied to many different forms of manual therapy; however, we focus on the utilization of movement, both active and passive, during the manual manipulation of tissue.

During passive soft tissue mobilizations, the therapist is performing a compression, effleurage, pettrisage, or decompression with one hand, while moving the client's body or limb with the other hand. In most passive STMs, the therapist will move the client in a way that lengthens the muscle or fascia under the therapist's pressure

To understand passive STMs, you want to have a good understanding of what actions make a muscle shorten or lengthen. Much of this will be covered in the Soft Tissue Mobilizations courses.

In active STMs, the client is going to engage in the movement themselves. You must start with passive STMs first to expose the client to the movement. Fortunately, the only difference between most passive STMs and active STMs is that the client engages in the movement that you would perform for them in the passive STM. If you know passive STM, you can likely figure out the active STM.

So what’s the difference?

Active STMs take advantage of a neuromuscular reflex called Reciprocal Inhibition (RI). RI is a phenomenon of voluntary movement in which the activation of an alpha motor neuron automatically inhibits or downregulates the alpha motor neuron of the opposing or antagonist muscle. For example, if you actively contract or engage your quadriceps to perform knee extension, the alpha motor neuron of your hamstrings will automatically downregulate tone to allow the movement to occur. With STMs, we can use RI to help promote the downregulation of hypertonic or overactive/ shortened muscles that may be restricting movements or causing ischemia, spasming, or trigger points. 

To understand active STM, you want to know antagonist pairings, as well as the actions that cause a muscle to lengthen. The goal is to have the client perform a movement that causes the antagonist to engage while also lengthening the targeted tissue as we apply pressure. Fortunately, these are the same thing, which will be covered more in the Soft Tissue Mobilization courses.