An Interview with Dr Jonathan Wan

By Maki Riddington

If I told you that there was a type of therapy out there that could in some cases heal you in one session, relieve your muscle pain, eliminate muscle tightness and restore your body back to it’s proper balance, would you believe me? Probably not. But that’s because you haven’t heard of a type of soft tissue treatment called ART.  Nor have you had it performed on your body.  If you have, then you’ll know just how great this treatment is and what it can do for your body.

“ART is a patented, state of the art soft tissue system/movement based massage technique that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves. Headaches, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, shin splints, shoulder pain, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, knee problems, and tennis elbow are just a few of the many conditions that can be resolved quickly and permanently with ART. These conditions all have one important thing in common: they are often a result of overused muscles.”

In this interview Dr Wan sheds some light on a treatment that can help you reduce the pain or aches you might be receiving from your workouts inside and outside of the gym.

Maki R: Dr Wan thanks for your time. To start off with can you fill us in on what your educational background is?

Dr Wan: I went to the University of British Columbia for undergraduate work, and then went on to Western States Chiropractic College in Portland Oregon to obtain my doctorate in Chiropractic.  I've attended numerous seminars, including Active Release and have also obtained my CSCS from the NSCA for educational reasons.

Maki R: So why why did you choose to get certified as an ART practionare? Why not a certified massage therapist?

Dr Wan: After sustaining repetitive injuries to my left rotator cuff, I had substantial weakness with any sort of pressing motion in my left arm.  I went to physiotherapist who couldn't help me and just used electrotherapy, and a chiropractor who did the same thing to no avail.  I went to a chiropractor on the advice that ART would help, and it did.  About 8 treatments later, the chiropractor that did ART was able to find out where I had weakness and adhesions and worked it out.  A few months later, I was able to regain full strength in my presses and decided that was what I wanted to do for a living, and how I wanted to practice it. With massage therapy it's a bit different as there are many types. Generally massage promotes relaxation and circulation. Neuromuscular Massage gets more specific but it does not fix the soft tissue and make it work properly. ART is protocol specific for the correction of adhesions & scar tissues.

Maki R: Interesting. So then, what exactly is ART?

Dr Wan: ART (Active Release Technique) is state of the art treatment that is effective for treatment of problems within muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves.  There are over 500 treatment protocols that are unique depending on which structure is being treated. Most people think of scar tissue as something that develops only after a cut, strain, tear, or a crushing injury and occurs only at the site of injury but there are many more ways that scar tissues can develop. Stress, poor posture, and repetitive motions like typing or driving, are all examples of things that can cause muscles to tighten up, leading to adhesions. When muscles tighten up for an extended time, this causes increased friction, pressure & tension to build between the muscle layers. As a result the oxygen supply to the muscle is significantly decreased. When the muscle tissue does not get enough oxygen, the resulting condition is called hypoxia. Hypoxia leads to scar tissue development because some of our muscle cells and connective tissue cells die and stimulate fibrosis; the process that creates scar tissue and adhesions. ART is an effective, non-invasive soft tissue treatment process that both locates and breaks down the scar tissue and adhesions, which cause pain, stiffness, weakness, numbness and physical dysfunctions associated with repetitive strain injuries.

Maki R: From personal experience I know that I had a lot of work that needed to be done on my body. However for the readers who have never experienced ART and lift weights how would they benefit from ART?

Dr Wan: A person who lift weights whether for show, for sports, or just to get healthy have one thing in common, weight lifting will cause micro tears into muscle fibers and the body will consequently repair itself in order to be able to lift the heavy load that it was previously subjected to.  That is how hypertrophy of muscles work, if the body cannot maintain the load, the only way to do so is to breakdown, grow and get stronger.  With compound movements such as military press, bench press, squats etc, many muscles are being utilized in order to do the appropriate movement.  For instance the bench press will incorporate the pec major, minor, deltoids, triceps, and stabilizer muscles of the spine, neck, and rotator cuff in order to do the movement.  If something slightly goes wrong in that movement, often time’s people will feel a twinge and just work through the pain.  Over time, scar tissue will form, hypoxia will occur and one of those possible stabilizer muscles such as the subclavius will get weaker and weaker impacting your ability to achieve maximum performance.

Those adhesions that form in the muscle and often times lead to someone asking themselves why wont this get better?  You may end up doing lighter weights; the problem still won’t go away.  You may try to rest it, and the problem still won’t go away.  You may take a smaller rep count but that still wont help.