Myofascial Release Therapy versus Muscle Energy Technique on Hamstring Flexibility in Physically Inactive Students – A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Physical inactivity [sedentary] is one of the significant concerns in young adults in various developing countries. College students show a marked reduction in physical activity and have adapted to the sedentary lifestyle due to the substantial transformation from school to college life. This study aims to compare myofascial release therapy versus muscle energy technique on hamstring flexibility in physically inactive college students. An experimental study design with 60 volunteers was assessed with sit & reach test and included in the study. Of twenty students, each participated in the myofascial release group (MFR), Muscle energy technique (MET) group, and passive stretching (PSG) group. All the students underwent 24 sessions of treatment in their respective groups allocated. Sit and reach test was used for measuring the hamstring length; measurements at baseline (pre-test), in the middle of the session (4th week), and at the end of the program (8th week- post-test) were taken. All the values were collected and analyzed using SPSS 24.0. One-way ANOVA was used to analyze the difference between the duration and the Tukey HSD Post Hoc test to identify the number of differences in each group with the critical value of p < 0.05. When comparing the MFR with MET, the Tukey HSD shows 1.18 with p<0.43; when comparing MFR with PSG, the Tukey HSD is 5.63 with p=0.001, and when compared MET with PSG, the Tukey HSD shows 5.23 with p=0.001. This study concludes that the Muscle energy technique and the Myofascial release therapy have shown effectiveness in improving hamstring flexibility.