Dynamic Contraction Technique DCT Therapy thread

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Re: Dynamic Contraction Technique DCT Therapy thread

Post by webslave »

As predicted, we now have feedback from somebody inside the cult. 😁

I received this email (name suppressed):

Hello,

Was just reading the DCT thread on your site, and thought I could offer some objective info on the method.

David McCoid initially taught Katy Bowman's static (isometric) stretching program. David is a decent guy and he started out with good intentions, but I'm not sure now though. At the end of the day he needs to make a living, and considering he lives in Panama, building an online business is a sensible way to do it.

There are a few issues I have with DCT; firstly, David said he created it as a method because his recovery (using Katy's routine) took 8 months and that was too long for people. He needed to find a quicker way. So he created this thing but nobody in the DCT Facebook group is getting better within 8 months. There doesn't seem to be anyone in there who's genuinely cured. There's a lot of cult-like behavior and people swearing by it, but they aren't curing themselves. Some are saying they're getting better, but the results are certainly not definitive.

The second issue I have with DCT is it was created without a single piece of testing and validation. David researched the idea of eccentrically loading muscles to eliminate tension, which other types of stretching don't do. The millions of people and hundreds (thousands?) of years of stretching have been useless, and he now has the answer. Obviously the correct way to build a product is to test it and validate it, then release it when you're confident of the results. This never happened. David had a theory of what 'should' work with this new research he'd done, built a product and sold it. It hadn't been proven to work on anybody.

The course has chopped and changed over the past year or two, mainly as Nic (the co-founder) has realised some things don't work and others do. He has a PT studio in California and it seems many guys go and do 1-on-1 sessions with him there. He's charging $200 an hour to work with people and they're essentially his guinea pigs. There's no validated results anywhere after however many years it's been running now.

On to the course. There's a muscle release routine and a fascia routine, with Nic explaining he wants people to understand the difference and be able to feel when they're stretching muscle and when they're stretching fascia. I have no idea why. You're expected to do each routine 3 times a week, on alternating days. You're also expected to do hanging work (different variations of swinging from a chin up bar) abdominal strengthening work and partner assisted stretching. Of course, Nic has a few products he invented and tacks these on to exercises, "you don't have to buy them, but they'll help you if you do".

They recommend buying weight vests (!) and stretching with these in order to put more load on muscles, and even zimmer frames to balance as you do a loaded split stretch, in your weight vest of course.

The muscle release is a few simple stretches and movements. There's a kneeling hip flexor stretch where you pulse forward and back, and a hamstring curl using floor slides. Nothing revolutionary here.

The fascia routine has more movements, including a standing hip flexor stretch, again with this pulsing movement, a modified pigeon, figure four and a few others. They're all the positions of standard stretches - the only real difference is you are doing 'reps' under eccentric load. Their variation on the well known clam exercise for example, involves resisting the leg with your hand as you raise the knee up in the air. You'll do this 15 times or so before switching sides.

The DCT guys are very against the idea of releasing or 'letting go' in any sort of stretch. Their premise is based on 'strengthening not stretching', so in all these stretches you're actively resisting, whether with your own body or an object, and performing reps. You're fatiguing the muscle essentially, with the idea that as you build strength the muscle will naturally become more supple. If all the prime movers around the pelvis are healthy, strong and supple, they argue, the pelvic floor has no reason to be dysfunctional and will return to its optimal state.

That's essentially the course, and they've recently added some new HF specific exercises as well as upper body stretches, which you have to pay an extra hundred dollars to access of course.

The Facebook group is quite a strange place. There was a guy called Greg Clark there months ago who was the only person who seemed to be cured and became a good friend of Dave's. He essentially just repeated every theory Dave had like some strange cult member. Greg has now gone - I think Nic probably got rid of him as he wasn't exactly helping the credibility of the program. He was also getting 20% of sign-ups and was making a lot of YouTube videos at the time to drive traffic. He was definitely the loudest voice in the group, then one day just disappeared. Admittedly, I haven't been in there for a while so he may have announced his departure and I just missed it.

In the group David is often posting videos from around the web with little snippets confirming his theories and beliefs. He's completely against pelvic floor PT and any form of relaxation to cure this. He's clearly pushing an agenda these days with everything he posts confirming DCT is the cure. When I called out the group was becoming cult-like and dogmatic in their thinking, I was obviously told firmly that was ludicrous.

And what is an "eccentric contraction"?



So basically, "an eccentric contraction is the motion of an active muscle while it is lengthening under load. Eccentric training is repetitively doing eccentric muscle contractions. For example, in a biceps curl the action of lowering the dumbbell back down from the lift is the eccentric phase of that exercise" (wikipedia).

So no great breakthroughs, no mysteries, no need to support Mr McCoid's lifestyle in tax haven Panama 🙄
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Re: Dynamic Contraction Technique DCT Therapy thread

Post by webslave »

Another response from one of our members, this time a little more positive, which of course (with permission) I am relaying to you all, in the interests of fairness:
Hi Webslave!

I am the user Pundl from the Prostatitis forum. As you requested I write to you via e-mail my experiences concerning DCT. I paid the full price, I have nothing to do with a financial rewarding system or something else. I also have to tell you, that I have never been in this Facebook group, I even don't have a Facebook account. I am not interested in that – I'm just doing the exercises. I have no problem, that they earn money with it.

First of all, the idea that tension in the big hip flexors and extensors may result in tension in the pelvis is not new. The first book I read in the beginning of my pelvic pain (3 years ago now) was Amy Stein "Heal Pelvic Pain". In her book, the first thing to do is stretching these muscles. The new idea is the eccentric stretching. That is something completely different to normal stretching or foam rolling. It's very hard work – you start sweating in a few minutes. The DCT program is hard work. You have to exercise 6 days a week. They say it lasts 20 min a day. Actually I always need 40 min – but I don't want to hurry. After those exercises you feel good. You feel you have done some bodywork. I am doing this program now for about 2 months, I'm getting better at doing the exercises. That's the negative point: the exercises are not easy, they take some time, if you have problems with your spine or with your knees it's even more complicated. I'm 45, skinny but not very used to sport. If you are young and healthy you can do those exercises.

For me it's to early to say if this program is helping me. I read in the forum "DCT was created without a single piece of testing and validation". Possible that is true – but to be honest pelvic pain has many different reasons, the symptoms may be similar, but the reasons are widely not understood. If the average man goes to a doctor with symptoms of pelvic pain, he gets the diagnosis Prostatitis, and most of the time he will get some antibiotics. Where is evidence in that?

DCT could be a solution for some pelvic pain sufferers. It focuses only on muscle tension. So it may be a solution for patients with a lot of tension in the muscles. I also had good results with deep belly breathing, hot bath's, diazepam and hiking. So I try a mixture of different methods. Everyone has to find his way to live with this. But I don't see anything negative or dangerous in DCT. The only problem is the hard work and that you don't get the results right away or maybe never. But you won't harm yourself, it is empowering and you have an almost daily bodywork program – better doing some bodywork than doing nothing.

By the way: Thanks for the forum, thanks for your work in helping people with pelvic pain. You are doing a great job! I would like to write more often in the forum, but as English is not my first language, the words don't come easy.

Yours
Pundl
Pundl, thank you for your opinion (I edited your post to make the English more readable). I agree that DCT is not harmful, and like any exercise and stretching program may be beneficial, even if only through the placebo effect, or via the well-known positive effects of strenuous exercise on mood, but I do not think this justifies their dismissal of other proven treatments, or their (high) paywall and secrecy, or their use of patients as recruitment affiliates. It would be nice if the inventors of DCT could make the effort to conduct a study showing that eccentric stretching and muscle strengthening has a positive effect on CPPS, because at the moment there is no scientific support for the idea at all.
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Re: Dynamic Contraction Technique DCT Therapy thread

Post by nikolayv »

Did DCT for 8 months starting in summer 2020.

Spoke with a couple guys that it had allegedly helped.

But they kept coming back to the Facebook group.

Spoke with a few more who got zero benefit like myself.

Soon afterwards the team split up.

There was conflicting beliefs, if not so much goals.

Admin comment: more interesting evidence, thanks!
Age: 36| Onset Age: 20 (mild), 30 (severe)| Symptoms: Genital pain, perineal, anal, suprapubic, back of legs, entire feet (3 years post-severe pudendal pain), especially plantar| Helped By: Lying down, eating, bowel movement, urination, diazepam, foot pain by pregabalin| Worsened By: Sitting, clothes, post-ejaculation, stress (duh), chocolate, alcohol | Main findings: inflammation and E. coli in prostate, varicosities and veinous reflux throughout pelvis/PN distribution, zero lumbar lordosis when spine is loaded, thoracic herniations
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