Through the years, I’ve seen an evolution in therapeutic massage chairs and the stretch packages accessible in these chairs. Every stretch presents a unique physiological profit to the person.
I’ve damaged down the completely different stretches into 3 varieties: full physique extension stretches, segmental stretches, and hip distraction stretches.
Segmental Stretch
Segmental stretches can be found in only a few chairs anymore however contain stretches to completely different areas/segments of the backbone, most significantly the neck/shoulders, the again, and the hips. It’s a stretch that makes use of airbags and rollers to work on one phase at a time, both by distraction, rotation, or translation of the phase. One of these stretch is primarily discovered within the older S-track chairs. An instance of a neck stretch can be the seat airbags inflating to elevate the entire torso after which maintain, adopted by the rollers transferring to a spot just under the again of the cranium, after which the seat airbags deflating in order that the torso slowly drops and the rollers maintain the top up from below the cranium. Laborious to explain with the written phrase, but it surely feels nice. The concept of the neck segmental stretch can greatest be illustrated by a neck traction system, as seen within the picture to the appropriate.
Full Physique Extension Stretch vs. Hip Distraction Stretch
The mechanics of the total physique extension and hip distraction stretches are very comparable however differentiated by whether or not the therapeutic massage chair is an S-track or an L- or SL-track therapeutic massage chair. Each of those stretch packages contain the chair reclining, shoulder airbags inflating to pin the shoulders again, and airbags within the toes and calves inflating to carry the legs whereas the ottoman drops down.
The distinction is that in an S-track chair, the chair again can transfer independently of the seat whereas in an L- or SL-track chair, the chair again and seat are all the time articulating/transferring collectively, thus all the time maintaining the physique within the L-shaped place and never flat, just like the S-track chairs. As a result of the S-track chairs can recline to shut to horizontal, the total physique extension stretch is supplied. It appears like the total torso and hips are being pulled aside. As a result of the L- or SL-track chairs can not full recline horizontally, when the ottoman drops it tends to drag on (or distract) the hips relatively than prolong the entire physique, just like the S-track chair does.
The total physique extension stretch of the S-track chairs is sort of a bit stronger than the distraction stretch of the L-track fashions. The trade-off is that the L-track offers you a curler therapeutic massage on the buttocks muscle tissues, whereas the S-track chairs present a a lot stronger extension stretch.
J-track configurations have been created to attempt to get the perfect of each worlds…a full physique extension stretch in addition to a curler therapeutic massage to the buttock muscle tissues. Theoretically, the J-track chair would recline again with the seat being nearer to horizontal than the L-track seat, thus facilitating a stretch that’s extra full physique extension than a hip distraction stretch. In actuality, nevertheless, it’s nonetheless extra of a hip distraction stretch.
Due to the physics of every stretch program, primarily based on the design of the chairs that deploy them, you’ll be able to anticipate a really completely different really feel and consequence from every of these three stretch varieties. People sitting on an L-track chair anticipate the stretch to be the identical full physique extension stretch of an S-track chair. The business has tried to duplicate the total physique extension stretch of an S-track within the L-track configuration, however it’s nearly unimaginable to try this due to the physics of the 2 completely different chair varieties. Because of the completely different builds of the S vs. L-track chairs, and the utterly completely different feels of the stretch program in every, we have to develop a unique nomenclature on the subject of naming and describing stretch packages. That’s what I’ve tried to do with this text.
Quite than say that the stretch program of an L-track chair is “not pretty much as good” as the total physique extension stretch of the S-track chair, since we do attempt to group them into the identical description, it could be higher to say that they’re completely different stretches with completely different physiological stress factors and advantages. One is just not essentially “higher” than one other…they’re simply completely different. That’s the reason I’ve damaged down stretch packages into these 3 varieties.
Dr. Alan Weidner
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