Unlike traditional massage or passive therapies, Active Release Techniques® (ART) targets scar tissue, fascial restrictions, adhesions, and dysfunctional movement patterns that frequently contribute to ongoing pain and limited mobility. Every treatment is customized to identify the precise tissues involved, restore normal biomechanics, improve flexibility, and help you return to the activities you enjoy as quickly and safely as possible.
Active Release Technique (ART) Doctors at ASSC target scar tissue, fascial restrictions, adhesions & dysfunctional movement patterns that frequently contribute to ongoing pain & limited mobility
At Advanced Spine & Sports Care, our goal extends beyond temporary pain relief. We focus on identifying the underlying cause of your condition while creating personalized treatment plans that improve movement, optimize athletic performance, reduce future injury risk, and help you stay active for years to come. From professional athletes and marathon runners to CrossFit competitors, golfers, pickleball players, office workers, and everyday Chicago residents, our team has helped thousands regain mobility and return to pain-free living.
Why Choose ASSC, Certified (ART) Treatment Sports Chiropractors?
Evidence-Based Sports Rehabilitation at ASSC the Top-Rated Sports Chiropractic in Chicago, Illinois
The ASSC Advantage: Clinical Precision vs. General Therapy
While standard massage therapy addresses superficial tension, and generic chiropractic treats joint alignment in isolation, our Board-Certified Sports Chiropractors sit at the intersection of neurological, joint, and soft-tissue mechanics.
Anatomy does not function in isolation. True structural recovery requires a clinician who understands how an adhesion in your gluteus medius alters the joint tracking of your lumbar spine.
ASSC’s Award-Winning Sports Medicine Clinical Standards: Elite Active Release Techniques® Provider in Chicago
True Full-Body Certified Providers: Our doctors undergo rigorous, ongoing credentialing directly through Active Release Techniques (ART) to maintain absolute mastery of over 500 specific diagnostic protocols.
Integrated Biomechanical Scans: We don’t just treat where it hurts. We perform real-time functional movement screens to isolate the structural root cause of your pain.
Seamless Multi-Modal Recovery: Your ART treatment is seamlessly amplified by targeted spinal adjustments, custom functional rehabilitation exercises, and advanced soft-tissue modalities for accelerated recovery.
Traditional sports medicine frequently misdiagnoses the resulting pain as simple, generalized inflammation. In reality, your body is battling a deep, structural optimization failure known as the Cumulative Injury Cycle.
Active Release Technique (ART) Doctors at Advanced Spine & Sports Care
Free up tissue – Promote oxygen delivery – Reduce inflammation
Dr. Luiz Neto, DC
Dr. Neto Difference: Biomechanical Precision
Most chronic pain, tightness, and recurring athletic injuries aren’t caused by a lack of stretching or a “weak core.” They are driven by soft-tissue adhesions—dense, restrictive scar tissue that forms when muscles, tendons, and ligaments are subjected to repetitive strain or acute trauma.
When these adhesions bind down, they alter your joint mechanics, trap peripheral nerves, and starve tissues of oxygen. No amount of general spinal cracking or passive heat packs will break them loose.
As a Certified Active Release Technique (ART) Provider, Dr. Neto combines precise, manual tension with patient-guided movement patterns to physically shear apart deep-tissue scar tissue. This evidence-based, elite-tier protocol targets the exact root cause of your physical limitations:
Break the Cumulative Injury Cycle: Mechanically dissolves stubborn soft-tissue adhesions, instantly restoring normal vascular flow, tissue elasticity, and full range of motion.
Liberate Entrapped Nerves: Safely releases compressed peripheral nerves to eradicate radiating pain, numbness, and burning sensations in the limbs.
Optimize Neuromuscular Function: Combines targeted myofascial release with precise, low-force corrective spinal adjustments. By removing joint fixations, this down-regulates hyperactive pain pathways and re-wires optimal nervous system communication.
Dr. Brandon Curry, DC
Elite Athlete to Award-Winning Clinical Expert
Dr. Curry holds a doctoral degree in chiropractic from Parker University. He is trained and experienced in hands-on spinal adjustments and manipulation, aiming to relieve pain and improve function.
Most chronic joint restrictions and recurring spinal pains do not exist in a vacuum. Muscles are anchored to bones, and bones are stabilized by muscles. If a doctor manipulates a joint without addressing the hypertonic, scarred soft tissue pulling it out of alignment, the body will naturally default right back into a state of structural dysfunction.
As a dual-trained Chiropractic Physician and former Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT), Dr. Brandon Curry merges the physical science of spinal mechanics with advanced myofascial manipulation. At our state-of-the-art Lakeview facility, his protocol targets the dual-engine of your pain:
Eliminate Muscular Adhesions & Tension: Leveraging an elite soft-tissue background to physically break down stubborn myofascial restrictions that lock joints into painful imbalances.
Precise Hands-On Spinal Manipulation: Restoring normal joint mobility, optimizing structural alignment, and immediately reducing mechanical nerve interference.
Advanced Biomechanical Correction: Transitioning your body from acute relief to performance-level health, pairing structural care with advanced spinal decompression technology like the DRX9000.
Advanced Spine & Sports Care: Expert (ART) Active Release Technique Therapy
The Pathophysiology of the Cumulative Injury Cycle
Whether you are an elite tennis player executing a high-velocity slice or a pickleball athlete constantly holding a low-profile hinge at the kitchen line, repetitive motion creates microscopic shearing forces within your soft tissues.
Micro-Trauma and Cellular Hypoxia: Continuous mechanical overload induces microscopic tearing within individual muscle fibers, tendons, and fascial webs. If ignored, these micro-tears limit localized microcirculation, dropping the tissue into a state of cellular hypoxia (oxygen deprivation).
Fibrotic Scar Tissue Deposition: To protect the joint, your central nervous system triggers a rapid reparative cascade, depositing dense, irregular, and highly restrictive fibrotic scar tissue.
The Adhesion Trap: This scar tissue acts like internal biological glue. It binds together adjacent muscle layers, tethers sliding fascial sheets, and traps peripheral nerves. Muscles become structurally shortened and weak, tendons undergo accelerated tendinopathy, and your natural range of motion collapses, forcing adjacent joints into catastrophic mechanical compensation.
Targeted Anatomical Focus Zones: Restoring the Kinetic Chain
Advanced Spine & Sports Care utilizes patented, board-certified Active Release Technique protocols to target and dismantle these restrictive adhesions across the critical links of your lower and upper kinetic chains:
The Deep Core and Gluteal Matrix: The gluteus medius and minimus are your primary lateral stabilizers on the court. When adhesions bind these tissues, your pelvis tilts abnormally during multi-directional lunges, transferring immense rotational force directly into your lower lumbar spine.
The Hip Flexor and Psoas Complex: Sustained athletic crouching shortens the psoas and iliacus muscles. ART elongates these deep structural connectors, eliminating anterior pelvic tilt and instantly freeing your low back from chronic, protective muscular spasms.
The Hamstring and Posterior Chain Link: Repetitive explosive push-offs require smooth myofascial glide through the biceps femoris and semitendinosus. Stripping adhesions from these layers restores deceleration capacity and protects your knees from rotational shear.
The Iliotibial (IT) Band and Tensor Fasciae Latae: Lateral court tracking imposes massive friction across the lateral knee joint line. ART releases the muscular anchors of the IT band, neutralizing patellar tracking errors and chronic outer-knee pain.
The Deep Calf and Plantar Axis: The gastrocnemius, soleus, and deep flexor digitorum longus manage your explosive deceleration. Eliminating fibrotic density within these deep compartments restores essential ankle dorsiflexion, instantly offloading severe tension from the Achilles tendon and the plantar fascial web.
The ASSC 3-Phase ART Protocol: How It Works
Our certified ART sports clinicians do not apply generic, high-volume massage. We deliver a highly technical, diagnostic manual intervention designed to permanently alter soft-tissue architecture.
Phase 1: Diagnostic Palpation & Adhesion Mapping: Your clinician uses highly specialized manual palpation to evaluate the texture, tension, and sliding capacity of individual muscles, tendons, and nerve pathways, pinpointing the exact boundary layer where the tissue is restricted.
Phase 2: Calibrated Structural Tension: Once the fibrotic lesion is isolated, the doctor applies precise, target-specific manual tension directly to the scar tissue attachment site.
Phase 3: Active Patient Movement & Length Inversion: While the clinician holds this deep structural tension, you are instructed to actively move the affected limb from a shortened position to a fully lengthened position. This combination of fixed manual tension and active physiological movement shears the scar tissue apart, physically breaking the adhesion and restoring natural tissue glide.
Measurable Clinical Outcomes & Court Longevity
By integrating Active Release Technique into your sports recovery program, we alter the physical properties of your soft tissues to deliver immediate performance metrics:
Immediate Neural Glide Restoration: Breaking the fibrotic adhesions that trap peripheral nerves instantly eliminates the radiating pain, localized numbness, and burning sensations typical of sciatica or terminal nerve impingements.
Instant Structural Plasticity & Enhanced ROM: Shearing away restrictive fascia allows muscles to achieve full physiological lengthening. This immediately unlocks restricted joints, giving you a deeper hip hinge, cleaner shoulder rotation, and explosive agility.
Synergistic Kinetic Preservation: ART is the perfect mechanical companion to our precision chiropractic sports adjustments. By removing the asymmetrical soft-tissue pull that continuously yanks joints out of alignment, your adjustments hold significantly longer, allowing your entire body to operate with zero biomechanical friction.
Restore Human Performance Without Drugs or Surgery
The Problem: The Cumulative Injury Cycle. Whether you are a pitcher repeating a 90mph throw or a runner logging 40 miles a week, repetitive motion causes micro-trauma. Your body responds to this microscopic tearing by producing dense, restrictive scar tissue (adhesions).
This scar tissue binds up and ties down tissues that need to move freely. As adhesions build, muscles become shorter and weaker, tension on tendons causes tendonitis, and nerves become trapped. The result? Reduced range of motion, loss of strength, and intense pain.
The Solution: The ASSC ART Protocol Active Release Techniques (ART) is a patented, state-of-the-art soft tissue movement-based massage system. It is the gold standard for treating problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, and nerves. It is not a standard massage—it is a highly targeted clinical intervention.
How ART Works at ASSC:
Diagnostic Palpation: Our certified ART providers use their hands to evaluate the texture, tightness, and movement of muscles, fascia, tendons, and ligaments.
Targeted Tension: Once the exact adhesion is located, the doctor applies precise, directed tension to the restricted tissue.
Active Patient Movement: While the doctor maintains tension, you are instructed to actively move the affected body part from a shortened to a lengthened position.
The Release: This combination of clinical tension and specific patient motion literally breaks apart the scar tissue, freeing the trapped nerves and restoring absolute tissue glide.
Clinical Outcomes of ART:
Neural Glide Restoration: Eliminates numbness and tingling by breaking the adhesions trapping peripheral nerves (e.g., Sciatica, Carpal Tunnel).
Instant Range of Motion: Unlocks frozen shoulders and stiff hamstrings by physically shearing away the restrictive fascia.
Kinetic Synergy: Perfectly complements our Targeted Adjustments. By clearing the soft tissue restrictions, the spinal adjustments hold longer, and the kinetic chain operates with zero biomechanical friction.
Conveniently located on Chicago’s North Side, ASSC proudly serves patients throughout Lakeview, Lakeview East, Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, North Center, Roscoe Village, Uptown, Buena Park, Lincoln Square, and Ravenswood, making expert soft tissue treatment easily accessible from nearly every surrounding neighborhood. Our central location makes ASSC a trusted destination for professionals working downtown, student-athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and active families seeking specialized care for muscle strains, tendon injuries, nerve entrapments, repetitive stress injuries, sports injuries, and chronic pain conditions.
Active Release Techniques® (ART): Expert Soft Tissue Therapy for Pain Relief, Mobility & Performance
Active Release Technique (ART) at ASSC is an advanced, evidence-informed soft tissue treatment used by chiropractors and sports medicine providers to diagnose and treat injuries affecting muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia, and nerves. (ART) is a form of soft tissue therapy, assisting in the break down scar tissue, adhesions in tight muscle groups, and microtrauma.
Unlike traditional massage therapy, ART combines precise hands-on pressure with specific patient movement to identify and release scar tissue, adhesions, and fascial restrictions that develop from repetitive motion, athletic activity, trauma, or poor posture.
(ART): Eradicating Kinetic Friction & Scar Tissue
As healthy tissue becomes restricted, muscles lose their ability to glide normally, resulting in pain, stiffness, reduced flexibility, weakness, and nerve irritation.
ART restores normal tissue mobility by breaking down these adhesions, improving circulation, and allowing muscles to move freely through their full range of motion. This highly targeted technique is trusted by professional athletes, runners, cyclists, golfers, CrossFit competitors, and active individuals seeking faster recovery and long-term performance improvements without surgery or medication.
Top Active Release Technique Benefits
Active Release Technique for Chicago Runners: Injury & Performance
Breaking the Stride Bottleneck: Overcoming Chronic Running Restrictions
For an endurance runner or sprinter logging miles on Chicago’s pavement, the repetitive gait cycle demands flawless tissue mechanics. Every foot strike generates forces equal to several times your body weight. When your muscles underperform due to fatigue, your body compensates by depositing dense scar tissue across your running mechanics.
ART acts as a precision release valve for the running athlete. By mapping out and treating tissue layers under load, our certified sports chiropractors physically separate adhered fascia, allowing you to run without mechanical drag.
Targeted Solutions for Running Pathologies
The IT Band & TFL Interface: Repetitive knee flexion and extension causes the Iliotibial Band to frictionally rub against the lateral femoral condyle. ART releases the anchoring Tensor Fasciae Latae (TFL) and Gluteus Medius muscles, stopping outer knee pain at its structural source.
Plantar Fasciitis & Deep Calf Remodeling: Chronic heel pain is rarely a localized foot issue; it is a posterior chain restriction. We target adhesions within the Gastrocnemius, Soleus, and Deep Flexor Digitorum Longus, instantly restoring ankle dorsiflexion and eliminating tension on the plantar fascial web.
Hamstring Overuse & Hip Flexor Shortening: Sitting all day shortens the Psoas and Iliacus, forcing an anterior pelvic tilt that overstretches your hamstrings. ART systematically elongates the hip flexor complex and breaks up scar tissue within the biceps femoris, maximizing stride length and stride power.
Active Release Technique for Chicago Baseball Player Injury & Performance
Unlocking the Kinetic Chain: Maximizing Rotational Power and Arm Velocity
From a youth travel player to a high-velocity pitcher, baseball requires violent, explosive, unilateral rotational force. The overhead throwing motion subjects the shoulder joint, elbow complex, and contralateral hip matrix to extreme deceleration stress. If your soft tissue is bound by restrictive adhesions, your velocity drops, your mechanics break down, and your risk of a structural tear skyrockets.
Our specialized baseball ART protocol restores microcirculation and structural elasticity to the exact fascial planes responsible for throwing, swinging, and rotational translation.
Precision Interventions in Lakeview / Lincoln Park for Baseball Players
Rotator Cuff & GIRD Management: Repetitive throwing leads to Glenohumeral Internal Rotation Deficit (GIRD). We use ART to isolate and release the Infraspinatus, Teres Minor, and posterior joint capsule, protecting the labrum and instantly restoring lost internal rotation.
Medial Epicondylitis (Pitcher’s Elbow): Extreme valgus stress during the late cocking and acceleration phase tears the flexor-pronator muscle mass. ART breaks up the painful scar tissue surrounding the medial epicondyle, protecting the Ulnar Collateral Ligament (UCL) from catastrophic overload.
Thoracic & Core Rotational Release: Hitting and pitching power is generated from the ground up. Adhesions in the Latissimus Dorsi, Obliques, and Thoracolumbar Fascia act like an internal brake pad. By stripping away these restrictions, we release hidden rotational velocity.
At the moment when you’re searching for an Active Release Techniques® provider near Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, North Center, Uptown, Lincoln Square, Ravenswood, or anywhere on Chicago’s North Side – Advanced Spine & Sports Care delivers advanced soft tissue treatment, chiropractic sports medicine, rehabilitation, and performance-focused care, all from one convenient location.
Alleviate Pain Through Integrated Soft-Tissue & Spinal Decompression
The Clinical Reality: You don’t have to accept a life dictated by structural limitations, structural pain, or invasive surgical risks. By restoring perfect biomechanical harmony between your muscular and nervous systems, we don’t just temporarily mask your symptoms—we optimize your entire physical architecture.
Whether you’re a competitive athlete, weekend warrior, office professional, runner, cyclist, or someone living with chronic muscle pain, Advanced Spine & Sports Care (ASSC) provides evidence-informed Active Release Techniques® (ART) treatment to help restore movement, reduce pain, and accelerate recovery without surgery or unnecessary medication.
The human movement system operates as an unbroken series of fascial planes and muscular chains. When you subject this system to the high-velocity deceleration, explosive lateral cutting, and repetitive structural tracking required by competitive racket and court sports, you create predictable zones of mechanical stress.
Clinical Sports Care Intelligence
Review comprehensive, anatomical answers regarding our advanced non-surgical rehabilitation protocols and active structural alignment frameworks.
Traditional medical models routinely rely on chemical interventions like NSAIDs or corticosteroid injections to blunt local pain indicators, which can lead to metabolic stasis in tendons and mask structural damage. Our board-certified sports chiropractic protocols target the underlying structural errors. By combining precision joint adjustments with active myofascial remodeling, we restore exact biomechanical alignment, clear nerve tracking restrictions, and eliminate the compensatory motion patterns causing the injury.
A kinetic chain assessment evaluates the human musculoskeletal framework as an integrated, interdependent structure. Regional pain rarely originates solely at the site of symptom presentation. For example, acute lateral elbow pain is frequently the result of restricted thoracic spine mobility or a shoulder blade tracking error forcing the forearm to overcompensate. By mapping your entire movement framework, we isolate and neutralize the hidden mechanical drivers of your pain.
Repetitive motion and micro-trauma lead to localized cellular hypoxia, forcing your body to deposit dense, irregular fibrotic scar tissue to protect the area. This scar tissue binds muscle layers, traps peripheral nerves, and shortens tendons. Active Release Technique (ART) uses target-specific manual tension paired with active, patient-directed physiological movement. This micro-frictional shearing force physically breaks down the dense adhesions, restoring normal soft-tissue glide and circulation.
Yes. Severe low back pain, radiating numbness, and sciatica are frequently driven by disc annular tears or facet joint imbrication causing direct neural impingement. We treat these complex conditions through advanced spinal adjustments paired with computerized non-surgical spinal decompression. This targeted distraction lowers intradiscal pressure, creating a localized vacuum effect that helps draw herniated material back into the disc space and off the nerve root.
Our primary objective is to avoid mandatory, long-term athletic isolation. Because our programs focus on active movement integration and accelerated cellular repair, many patients maintain modified sport-specific training immediately. Total court or field clearance timelines depend on structural tissue tearing metrics, but acute cases frequently achieve stable, competitive return patterns within 7 to 14 days.
Standard chiropractic care often focuses primarily on general spinal alignment. Specialized sports chiropractic care, delivered by a Certified Chiropractic Sports Physician (CCSP), integrates global joint centration—including the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, and ankle complexes—with functional neuro-muscular rehabilitation, advanced soft-tissue tracking therapies, and dynamic multi-planar movement mapping.
Absolutely. Repetitive overhead movements can cause the humeral head to migrate superiorly, narrowing the subacromial space and impinging the supraspinatus tendon. Once our advanced orthopedic baseline exams rule out full-thickness structural ruptures, gentle glenohumeral and scapulothoracic tracking adjustments help re-center the joint, instantly widening the subacromial channel and removing soft-tissue friction.
The DRX9000 platform uses an advanced, closed-loop logarithmic feedback mechanism that bypasses the body's natural muscle guarding reflexes. By applying a targeted distraction force to specific lumbar segments, it drops internal disc pressure into a negative state. This vacuum effect encourages the retraction of bulging or herniated material away from the nerve while pulling oxygenated blood, fluid, and nutrients into the disc to support cellular repair.
Yes. Chronic heel pain and Achilles strains are usually structural tracking failures within the lower kinetic chain. Sudden directional steps on hard court surfaces stress the lower legs if subtalar joint mobility is restricted. We treat these conditions by adjusting the tarsal and metatarsal bones of the foot to restore shock absorption, alongside specialized myofascial techniques to relieve plantar fascial strain.
Advanced imaging is not a baseline requirement for your initial evaluation. Our board-certified sports clinicians perform extensive physical, neurological, and dynamic movement testing during your first visit. If your specific clinical presentation indicates significant structural vulnerabilities—such as a suspected disc herniation or high-grade ligament tear—we coordinate fast, localized imaging orders.
By clearing localized joint restrictions and soft-tissue adhesions, we restore proper mechanoreceptor activation and muscle firing patterns. This structural optimization ensures that when you make rapid, multi-planar athletic movements, force is distributed evenly across your joints rather than overloading a single structure, helping prevent injuries before they happen.
Advanced Spine & Sports Care works in-network with a wide range of major commercial PPO insurance networks. Additionally, all of our non-surgical orthopedic treatments, sports chiropractic care, spinal decompression sessions, and active physical rehab protocols are fully eligible for Health Savings Account (HSA) and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) use.