A. Frederick - Fascial Stretch Therapy

F irst and foremost, we both wish to express our gratitude and heartfelt thanks to all of the students who have graduated from our FST training school, the Stretch to Win Institute. We have learned as much from you as you have learned from us in a symbiotic, loving relationship of mutual openness, respect, safety, and care that fosters personal and professional transformation during five days of training. Since 1999, our currently certified students have used FST professionally, ethically, and responsibly to change the lives of those they touch for the better. We thank all of you for representing our work so well that FST is now recognized as the premium brand of assisted stretching in a rapidly expanding industry more interested in quantity of clients over quality of care. Thank you for your faith, loyalty, belief, and support in us through all these years. As torch bearers of our ever evolving work, we are confident that you will continue to stand out as leaders in client care and wellness, giving hope to those who were lost and about to give it up.

A very special thank you to our partner and friend, Kevin Darby, President of Stretch to Win Canada and to all our teachers without whom it would have been impossible to reach as many students and impact their learning experience so tremendously. Your passion, knowledge, and desire to make a difference is highly valued and greatly appreciated.

Thank you to Handspring Publishing and to Sarena Wolfaard and Andrew Stevenson for taking on this project once again. It has been an honor and pure pleasure to work with the both of you and your team of talent. Many thanks also to the rest of the team including (in no particular order): project manager Morven Dean, copy editor Stephanie Pickering, Hilary Brown for marketing, and Bruce Hogarth for incredible new art and photo layouts.

From Ann: First and foremost, I need to thank God for the divine guidance and inspiration of creating this work.

Words are inadequate for all that he means to me but I would nonetheless like to thank my husband Chris. He raises the bar of expectations and standards for our work together and I am very grateful for all that he brings to our collaboration. When one is fortunate enough to share their life and dreams with a partner who truly fulfills every aspect of what a soulmate can be, one is a very lucky lady, indeed!

A special thank you to my parents who always supported and encouraged my endeavors. My mother imparted the belief that I could accomplish anything I chose, if I kept my feet firmly planted on the earth and kept my spirit stretching up into the heavens. She started my lifetime of movement through the study of dance at the age of four and set into motion the original inspiration for this work. She was also instrumental in developing my love of teaching very early on, as she was my teacher in so many ways.

My father gave me the invaluable mission of creating my own special niche that I was passionate about. He said that I would need to become the very best at it and never stop improving. I will forever be grateful to him for giving me the blueprint for finding true happiness and real fulfillment in my career.

Special thanks to Tim McClellan and Rich Wenner for giving me the opportunity to develop my system at Arizona State University in 1995. A heartfelt, huge thank you to Michael J. Alter, author of Science of Flexibility, for giving me hope and inspiration that an entire new field based on flexibility could be created.

From Chris: It is difficult to express my true gratitude to the love of my life my wife, partner, and co-author of what has been a joy to co-produce. FST has changed my life for the better on so many fronts personal and professional and promises so much more for our future and all those we touch.

Thank you to my many early mentors, especially Sifu Sat Hon and Sifu Dr. Mei Chan, who were most instrumental in helping me develop intuition and awareness that guided the evolution of my unique abilities and made me who I am today. A heartfelt thanks to my mentor in manual therapy, Marika Molnar, PT, LAC, who helped me develop on levels much deeper than the physical in her magical dance physical therapy clinic. Thank you to my current teacher of all things Tao, author, poet, and artist Deng Ming-Dao for teaching, training, and guiding me with his contemporary wisdom built upon that of the ancients.

To our mentor, colleague, and friend Thomas Myers, we thank you for a friendship that gets deeper over time, despite no longer having you stay at our home for annual visits while hosting your famous dissection workshops. Your eminent work of Anatomy Trains substantiated and gave a grand dose of credibility to the work that we had been doing with FST all along.

To Paul Standley, PhD, Dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, who kindly enabled us to create a research project with one of his medical students. We successfully presented this research as a poster presentation at the 2018 Fascia Research Congress. This experience has catalyzed future collaboration with Dr. Standley in helping us develop more studies about the effects of FST on the human body.

To Robert Schleip, PhD, renowned researcher of all things fascia and so much more, we thank him for giving us many opportunities to present our research as well as writings about fascial stretching in his works with other contributing writers.

To David Lesondak, Anatomy Trains and FST practitioner and author of Fascia: What it is and why it matters, for being a great friend and colleague and for graciously inviting us to add our contributions to his delightful works of writing.

To the Fascia Research Congress for giving us the opportunity to present our research at the most prominently established fascia research conference available. We were honored to be accepted by the Scientific Research Committee and will be submitting more research to be published and to be presented at future conferences.

We thank all of the clients and patients who have chosen to try FST even though there is not enough scientific evidence to support it. Thousands of testimonials from over 1 million people who have now experienced FST obviously provide enough belief and faith that there is a unique alternative to opiates and other risky medications, unnecessary surgery, and living in chronic pain and disability.

And we thank the many athletes and fitness enthusiasts who spread the word about FST to their teammates and buddies, when they consistently experience rapid recovery and restoration of their athletic abilities in as little as one session with our graduates.

C hris Frederick has been a physical therapist/physiotherapist since 1989, focusing on manual and movement therapy particularly with integration of Fascial Stretch Therapy and ancient Taoist principles and practices. He has an extensive background in dance, both as a professional dancer of contemporary ballet, as well as being a practitioner in the specialty of dance physical therapy/physiotherapy.

Chris is also well versed in the ancient movement and healing arts of tai chi and qigong. He is a co-author with Thomas Myers of the chapter on stretching in the seminal book Fascia: The tensional network of the human body edited by Robert Schleip et al.

Ann Frederick is a former professional dancer, having grown up in her mothers dance studio, starting to dance at the age of four. Teaching dance students at age fourteen, she also started to do assisted stretching on individuals to improve flexibility and correct imbalances.

Over the next twenty years, Ann developed and refined her approach to assisted stretching with a practical methodology that clearly differentiated it from traditional methods. Rather than focusing on stretching isolated muscles, she became a pioneer in evolving the art and science of assessing and stretching the human fascial network.