2. TThe NFL Scouting Combine is a grueling weeklong
event in which the nation’s top college football
players undergo a series of physical and mental tests
in front of NFL coaches and scouts to demonstrate
their ability to perform under intense scrutiny. It’s
a standout college prospect’s one chance to make an
impression on NFL teams—a sort of high-intensity,
high-stakes job interview with, potentially, millions
of dollars on the line. Everything in the athletes’
lives has led them to this moment, and their futures
can quite literally depend on how well they perform.
The pressure to succeed is tremendous. The margin
for error is nonexistent, and a tiny advantage—a
half-inch increase in stride length, a minute shift in
confidence—can be a colossal factor in an athlete’s
success.
That’s where Tony Villani’s XPE Sports Academy
and George Kousaleos’s CORE Myofascial Therapy
come in.
By Brandon Twyford
CORE Myofascial
Therapy helps
NFL hopefuls
recover faster
so they can train
harder. Photo by
Patty Kousaleos.
Check out ABMP’s latest news and blog posts. Available at www.abmp.com. 53
3. EVERYyear, top agents send their top athletes to
Villani to prepare them for the NFL Combine,
where a fraction of a second in the 40-yard
dash can cause a player’s position in the draft to
skyrocket or plummet. Villani is known as the
“speed guru” to many in the NFL, and it’s his
job to help these elite college athletes perform
at a higher level than they ever have before.
“Most of these guys have trained their
whole lives in how to be football players,” says
XPE’s lead massage therapist and strength
trainer Don Stanley. “It’s a very different type
of training getting ready for the Combine.”
“We call it running on the razor’s edge,”
Villani says. “You’re running the fastest you’ve
ever run in your life. Your muscles are working
more powerfully than they ever have and
usually at a heavier body weight than you’ve
ever been in your life. So you’re on that razor’s
edge, where you’re trying to run faster than
you ever have, without pulling a muscle.”
Kevin Christie, a chiropractic physician and
certified strength and conditioning specialist,
is XPE’s sports chiropractor. He says, “The
reality of Combine training is that you’re
pushing the envelope with football players,
basically trying to turn them into track stars,
and we have to do it in a short period of time.”
Soft-tissue injuries—pulled hamstrings
and the like—are common occurrences at
this level of training. A similar problem faced
massage therapist Kousaleos in 2011, when
he was asked to develop a sports bodywork
therapy team to work with the Florida State
University (FSU) football team. In crafting
a strategy, Kousaleos, a former student of
sports massage legend Benny Vaughn, drew on
the experience he gained as general manager
of the British Olympic Association’s sports
massage team during the 1996 Olympic
Games in Atlanta and as the co-director of
the Health Services International sports
massage team at the 2004 games in Athens.
“During the 1996 games, we designed a
program of modified myofascial therapy for
the athletes who were in intensive training,”
Kousaleos says. “We made it slightly lighter,
but still comfortably deep, to work with
the athletes during their
Olympic competitions, and
the British team responded
to it incredibly well.”
Using the protocols he
developed during those Olympic
games, Kousaleos was able to
significantly lower the soft-
tissue injury rate among football
athletes at FSU.1
Jake Pfeil, MS,
LAT, ATC, the associate director
of sports medicine and head
football athletic trainer at FSU,
says, “One of the secrets to Florida
State’s successful 2012 football
season was the implementation of
massage therapy for all players.”
That year marked FSU’s first
conference title since 2005.
In 2013, with Kousaleos’s
bodywork program in full
swing, FSU’s football team
won the national championship
while enjoying something it
had never experienced before:
no season-ending injuries
for any of their starters.
MEETING OF THE MINDS
The partnership between
Villani’s XPE Sports Academy
and Kousaleos’s CORE Institute
was the brainchild of Stanley, a
massage therapist who worked
54 massage & bodywork may/june 2016
In addition to massage,
XPE’s trainers
incorporate frequent
yoga sessions to improve
athletes’ flexibility
and mobility. Photos
by Patty Kousaleos.
with Kousaleos two decades
ago during the 1996 Atlanta
Olympics. Largely as a result
of the experience he gained
working with Kousaleos, Stanley
designed his subsequent career
around structural integration and
myofascial therapy for athletes. He
also became a certified strength
and conditioning coach and
physical trainer, reaching an elite
level in the field and working with
some of the world’s best athletes
over his 20-year career. Stanley
came to work with Villani at XPE
Sports in Boca Raton, Florida, as a
trainer and therapist five years ago.
Kousaleos says, “Don Stanley
brought Tony Villani and me
together this past June, and said,
‘You two are my mentors. Can
we put something together where
we work as a team and build a
camp, much like we did for the
British team at the Olympics?
But this time, we’ll do it during
the NFL Combine training.’”
4. THE IMPACT OF INCHES
An NFL team’s criteria for
selecting its next player can be
acutely specific. Quarterbacks, for
example, can be chosen or rejected
because of the size of their hands.
A span length of 9 inches from
the tip of the little finger to the
tip of the thumb is considered
the minimum benchmark for
NFL quarterbacks. Any smaller,
and some coaches begin to worry
whether the player will be able to
maintain a controlled grip on the
football in inclement weather.
When Brandon Allen, a
quarterback from Arkansas,
arrived at the XPE Sports camp,
his hand measured 8½ inches.
Conventional wisdom would
dictate that Allen’s hand size
could not be increased, and that
his position in the NFL draft
would be negatively affected.
Kousaleos had other ideas.
In 2015, he used myofascial
therapy to increase the foot and
ankle mobility of FSU’s star
quarterback and Heisman Trophy
winner Jameis Winston, who
went on to be the first player
selected in the 2015 NFL draft.
Using a similar approach,
Kousaleos was able to increase
Allen’s hand size to 87
/8 inches
at Combine time, an increase of
three-eighths of an inch in about
a month. Kousaleos and Allen
plan to improve that to just over
9 inches with continued therapy.
SOMATOTYPES
Somatotypes were developed in the 1940s by psychologist William Herbert Sheldon,
PhD, to categorize the human physique according to physical traits. Most people do
not fall neatly into one type, but are a unique combination of the three body types.
ECTOMORPH: linear, fragile,
delicate, lean, and lightly muscled.
ENDOMORPH: spherical, round,
soft-bodied, underdeveloped muscles,
difficulty losing weight.
MESOMORPH: hard, rugged, triangular,
athletically built with well-developed
muscles, thick skin, and good posture.
Clients’ body types influence how
they will respond to training and
treatment. Kousaleos offers these
guidelines for performing sports bodywork on each of the three somatotypes:
The metamorphic structure of most football players allows for deeper
repeated sessions with less postsession soreness and more immediate
improvement of both structural and functional outcomes.
The ectomorphic structure (lean, endurance) needs more comfortable pressure
with less specific depth. Because ectomorphs typically have more neurological
sensitivity, the techniques and protocols should be smoother and less deliberate.
The endomorphic structure needs a more layered approach, focusing on
broad, less deliberate techniques, especially on the superficial fascia, before
attempting to stretch and release the outer layers of dense, fibrous fascia.
5. Having access to the same
bodywork that helped FSU win
a national championship with
no season-ending injuries has
helped Villani’s NFL hopefuls
recover faster so they can train
harder. “Normally, we would
have more pulled hamstrings
than we have now,” Villani says.
Christie concurs: “It’s been
great. We’ve seen a decrease
in injury rates and an increase
in players recovering from
injury sooner. We have a bigger
class this year, so to see so few
injuries has been really nice.”
It’s this symbiotic dance of
training and recovery that allows
the athletes to push themselves
further than they ever have before,
while avoiding the soft-tissue
injuries that typically come with
overtraining. For a professional
athlete, coming back from a major
injury is an uphill battle. If Stanley
and his team can prevent those
injuries from happening in the first
place, their clients will have longer,
more sustainable careers. They call
the approach prehab, not rehab, and
it’s aimed at identifying, assessing,
and treating potential issues before
they become major problems.
“A lot of these athletes have
never been through this intense
a level of training,” Stanley says.
“They’re pushed to the absolute
limit. They’ve never experienced
this level of soreness in their body,
so having unlimited access to a
high level of bodywork, where they
can get bodywork every single
day, has been a unique experience
for everybody involved.”
56 massage & bodywork may/june 2016
THE STRUCTURAL
BODYWORK TABLE
Kousaleos uses the Storable Mat table
from Oakworks when performing
structural work on athletes. He says,
“The Oakworks Storable Mat structural
tables are wider (33–40 inches) and can
be set significantly lower (16–20 inches)
to allow for better leverage, especially
when working with a large client in
side-lying position. I use an Oakworks
Proluxe electric table in my private
practice, allowing me to quickly adjust
the height of the table during the session,
depending on how I position the client.”
Kousaleos, Stanley, and Villani
developed a program in which
Kousaleos would train therapists
in his modified CORE Myofascial
Therapy in the morning while
the athletes were training for
the Combine. In the afternoon,
the therapists would put what
they learned in the classroom
into hands-on practice on the
athletes. Kousaleos tailors his
instruction around the work
the athletes will be doing that
day or the next: for example,
if Villani needs his athletes’
legs to be fresh for a big day of
running and leg work, Kousaleos
and his team of therapists can
loosen up the athletes’ hips
and glutes the day before.
Villani says, “We have a
program that George has built
around our day to day training
program. But at any given time, if
an athlete has a problem area, they
can get it worked on, on demand.”
The bodywork Kousaleos
brings to XPE is not aimed solely at
assisting in recovery from training,
but also in making adjustments to
the athletes’ bodies so that they
are able to perform at a higher
level. Bill Welle, a former mentor
of Villani and now one of Villani’s
XPE Master Trainers, explains,
“Speed is based on stride length,
stride frequency, and power. Stride
length can be improved. If you have
a short, choppy stride, you don’t
have a lot of power. With this type
of bodywork, we can open up the
stride so that everything is looser.
Even if the athlete is able to drive
his knee up just an inch more,
that’s going to allow him to develop
more power into the ground.”
73"
29"
24"—34"
78"
35"
16"—25"
Standard table
Structural table
6. THE MASSAGE
THERAPISTS
For bodyworkers interested in
practicing sports massage therapy,
getting the opportunity to work on
the elite athletes at the XPE Sports
Academy is the chance of a lifetime.
The therapists who were selected
for the certification course come
from a wide range of backgrounds,
modalities, and experience levels.
Wil Daddio, from Dallas, Texas,
SI and has worked on many athletes
in his career. But he was looking
for a gentler approach to use on his
clients who are in active training.
He says, “Structural integration
changes so much in the body that
if an athlete is in active training
or in season, their movement,
pitching, throwing, or running is
going to be different. Structural
integration can actually destabilize
them, rather than help them.”
Pegan finds the techniques he is
learning to be extremely effective,
especially when considering the
intensity of the athletes’ training.
“We’re not changing the posture
like we do in SI. We’re giving more
freedom of movement and more
range of motion to the athlete,
and they can then increase their
training. This is now week six,
and they’re at the top of their
training and still getting structural
bodywork, which is awesome.”
The precise, targeted nature of
the work gives therapists a deeper
understanding of the reasons
behind the techniques; they’re
not simply repeating the same
routine over and over—they’re
learning why certain techniques
affect certain muscles, and they’re
able to view measurable benefits
in how those muscles perform.
Tina Hopkins, a massage
therapist from Pilot Mountain,
North Carolina, who has been
practicing for just over two years,
says, “I recently started a referral
relationship with a personal
ACHIEVING PEAK PERFORMANCE THROUGH SPORTS MASSAGE
has been practicing massage therapy for 21
years, while Kim Jackson, from Elmont, New
York, has only been practicing for one.
Describing the criteria he used to decide
which therapists to accept into the program,
Kousaleos says, “We were looking for a
diversity of experience, a willingness to
work in a team atmosphere, and a passion
for helping athletes fulfill their optimal
performance skills and abilities.”
Daddio was looking for something that
would help him take his practice in a new
direction; specifically, working with professional
athletes. “When I found out about this course,
I knew it was an amazing opportunity,” he says.
“This training will open up many different
doors for me to work with athletic trainers,
chiropractors, and medical practitioners.”
Jackson is a member of a runners’ group
in her town, and she says the other members
of her group are already requesting bodywork
sessions from her: “They can’t wait for me
to come back so I can use it on them.” She
adds, “I don’t have many private clients
yet, and I’m hoping to use this experience
and certification to build my practice.”
Other therapists in the program already
have experience in myofascial bodywork
or structural integration (SI), but see the
certification in CORE Myofascial Therapy as a
natural extension of their current practice. Atilla
Pegan, originally from Budapest, Hungary, now
practicing in Savage, Minnesota, is certified in
“WE WERE LOOKING
FOR A DIVERSITY
OF EXPERIENCE, A
WILLINGNESS TO
WORK IN A TEAM
ATMOSPHERE,
AND A PASSION
FOR HELPING
ATHLETES FULFILL
THEIR OPTIMAL
PERFORMANCE
SKILLS AND
ABILITIES.” GEORGE
KOUSALEOS, ON THE
INTERNS CHOSEN
FOR THE PROGRAM
The CORE approach
gives more freedom of
movement to athletes,
allowing them to
train at increasingly
intense levels. Photo
by Patty Kousaleos.
7. trainer who started sending me
bodybuilders, football players, track
runners, and cyclists, and I had to
start watching videos on YouTube
to learn what techniques to use.”
Her research brought her to the
CORE myofascial certification
program. “The techniques make
a lot more sense when put into
the context of what the athletes
are doing, and why they’re doing
it. For example, we work on their
hip flexors because they have to be
able to pick their legs up higher to
run faster. Their shoulder girdles
have to be able to move so they
can throw the ball farther.”
THE ACADEMY PROTOCOL
Kousaleos’s approach entails
using lighter pressure to spread
superficial fascia, facilitating
recovery without affecting an
athlete’s ability to train at an
intense level. He says, “We’ve
been able to test our method on
a wide range of athletes and body
Check out ABMP’s latest news and blog posts. Available at www.abmp.com. 59
types, and the overall response
from the athletes is they feel
like they can train at a higher
level the next day and aren’t
experiencing a lot of the soreness
that other massage experiences
have given them, with therapists
going too deep, too quickly.”
Each week, a new batch of
6–10 therapists arrives in Boca
Raton to train with Kousaleos and
Stanley. Kousaleos trains them in
CORE Myofascial Therapy from
8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., and the
therapists work on the athletes
from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Many therapists believe
performing sports massage on
bigger, more muscular individuals
requires a higher degree of physical
strength in the therapist; that you
need to push harder or go deeper
to be effective. That simply isn’t
the case, Kousaleos says. Through
a combination of intensive
training in myofascial treatment
protocols and more efficient body
mechanics, therapists learn they
can capably perform effective
bodywork on athletes of all sizes.
“The work we’re learning here now is much
less taxing on the body than what I’ve been
doing,” Daddio says. “We’re learning the lunge
stance, using leverage, putting your client’s body
in a position where you don’t use any of your raw
power—you’re basically using leverage the whole
time, which is incredibly different from what
I’ve learned. It’s going to enable me to keep my
body healthy for another 10 or 15 years, easy.”
Hopkins agrees: “I do lot a lot of deep-tissue
work, and by the end of the day, I’m beat. I use
my upper body a lot to lift, push, and pull. This
fine-tunes your technique. You’re using gravity
to do the work. This is going to lengthen my
career, because I’m not working as hard.”
Another keystone of the CORE approach is
the amount of lubricant used during a session.
A dime-sized portion of Kousaleos’s specially
formulated CORE butter is all that is used,
which allows the therapist to glide more slowly
over the muscles. “We were always taught to
use a lot of lotion,” says Hopkins of her massage
school education. “This approach uses friction
to generate heat, and the heat actually melts the
fascia under the skin instead of us forcing the
muscle to move. It makes a big difference.”
TACTICAL TEAMWORK
More professional athletes and trainers are
acknowledging the benefits of sports massage
therapy than ever before, but there’s still a
long way to go for massage therapy to be fully
accepted into the mainstream health-care
community. Kousaleos thinks the practical
experience his therapists are gaining in working
as an integral part of the XPE Sports Academy
team is a big step in the right direction.
In previous years, the approach at XPE
has been to bring in a diverse range of high-
level specialists—strength trainers, physical
therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists,
etc.—and let them perform work on the athletes
George Kousaleos,
founder of the CORE
Institute, instructs
therapists in CORE
Myofascial Therapy
each morning. Photo
by Patty Kousaleos.
ACHIEVING PEAK PERFORMANCE THROUGH SPORTS MASSAGE
8. Check out ABMP’s latest news and blog posts. Available at www.abmp.com. 61
If you’re interested in the July 2016
CORE Sports Bodywork Certification and
Clinical Mentorship Program sponsored
by the CORE Institute and XPE Sports,
visit www.coreinstitute.com/2016-core-
sports-bodywork-at-xpe-sports.
as they saw fit. While effective, Stanley knew
they could do even better. “When you put these
different styles together, the results are not
always predictable, and it hasn’t always turned
out well for the athletes,” he says. Stanley
wanted to bring an increased consistency
to the camp this year. “This concept, with
everybody on the same team, doing the
same protocols, has produced a consistency
of results. Just like when you do scientific
studies, you try to remove as many variables
as possible to get a predictable outcome.”
Working in a support role with clearly
defined goals is something that appealed to
Pegan. “I’m a big advocate of working in a
team. I’m not a physician, or a chiropractor, or a
physical trainer,” he says. “Here, we’re working
directly with chiropractors, strength trainers,
and massage instructors, so we have a lot of
support and direction in what we’re doing.”
THE FUTURE
Kousaleos’s long-term goals for the program
include a national sports bodywork team
that will be made available to every sports
medicine department and every strength
and conditioning department of Division I
universities and every professional sport—
from baseball, basketball, and football to
soccer and volleyball—men’s and women’s.
“We’re trying to create a team we
can promote not only to sports medicine
departments, but also to individual professional
athletes, because we believe the future of
this level of bodywork is working one-on-
one with athletes throughout both the season
and the off-season,” Kousaleos says.
The vision of a national team is another
reason Kousaleos picked a diverse group
of therapists for the certification training.
“Having new therapists working side-by-side
with more experienced therapists is a plus.”
An important part of the program is
providing the therapists with the practical
business tools they need to effectively
incorporate their new training into their
practices. Christie, XPE’s sports chiropractor,
speaks to the therapists on Wednesday mornings
about how to create or join an integrated
sports medicine team. The idea
is to help the therapists create
a referral system that supports
their athletic clients, athletic
teams, and already existing
sports medicine departments.
Stanley, who is an entrepreneur
and successful business owner as
well as a massage therapist, sees a
wealth of exciting opportunities for
the now-certified CORE therapists
to expand their practices in their
local community. “Everybody
wants to work on the professional
football players, but there are only
32 NFL teams across the country,
so there are a lot more therapists
than there are athletes,” he says.
“But there’s a real opportunity
for therapists to duplicate this
model in their local demographic
at the college level. If they can go
into a local college or university
and develop a contract, hire a
team of therapists, and develop
a business model where they are
the lead therapists bringing other
therapists into that environment,
they can make money organizing
that. They’ve seen that same
model work here at XPE, and it’s
something they can potentially
duplicate and be very successful at.”
The program’s success has led
Kousaleos and Villani to offer the
same mentorship program again in
July of this year, this time working
with NFL athletes during their
off-season training. “Approximately
150 NFL athletes will be there,
training full-bore, getting their
legs, upper body, agility, and speed
ready for preseason camp, which
starts the first week of August,”
Kousaleos says. “We’ll be doing
that for the next five years.”
ACHIEVING PEAK PERFORMANCE THROUGH SPORTS MASSAGE
Villani has worked with an
impressive roster of professional
athletes in his career, including NFL
greats Cris Carter, Randy Moss,
Warren Sapp, and Hines Ward.
Carter and Sapp often come by
the XPE training facility to speak
to the college athletes about the
realities of life as an NFL player.
“My pro athletes come in and see
the access to bodywork these college
athletes are getting, and they’re
just amazed,” Villani says. “So I
think this is going to be the norm
for our pro athletes as well, almost
year-round. It’s been great. It’s
actually been a better experience
than I ever thought it would be.”
“That’s because you’ve gotten
more massage than ever this year,”
says Welle, XPE’s Master Trainer.
Villani smiles. “I’ve gotten a lot
of massages.”
Considering Villani routinely
works 10-, 12-, or 15-hour days
getting his athletes ready for the
Combine, he clearly deserves it.
Note
1. Jake Pfeil, Training & Conditioning,
“Recovered and Ready,” accessed
March 2016, www.training-
conditioning.com/2013/05/19/
recovered_and_ready/index.php.
Brandon Twyford is associate editor
for Massage & Bodywork magazine.
Contact him at brandon@abmp.com.
