What is fascial tensioning and who is the 27-year-old trainer teaching Bears players to move more efficiently?

For the best of the best athletes, a small advantage can make a big difference.

Seventh-year NFL veteran Allen Robinson understands this. The Bears’ top receiver, and most productive offensive player in 2019, went into the offseason with the goal of moving more explosively in his routes.

“Especially certain intermediate routes, being able to training myself to want to create the proper separation that I want to create,” Robinson said.

Robinson needed someone who could make him quicker than the quickest athletes in the world. He turned to Dr. Michael Risher, a 27-year-old Palatine native who now lives in Chicago.

Risher, a former Division III cornerback at Wheaton College, specializes in unique foot-speed techniques, among other things. He has a doctorate from Palmer College of Chiropractic's west campus in San Jose, California. He describes himself as a rehab- and exercise-focused chiropractor. He opened his own clinic, Rehab Lab, in January.

His business operates out of a CrossFit gym in Bucktown and out of EFT Sports Performance in Highland Park. Risher previously worked at EFT before starting his own business. He treats all kinds of musculoskeletal injuries, while also working on sports performance with athletes of various types.

His work has caught the interest of numerous Bears players, from Robinson to running back David Montgomery to tight ends Eric Saubert and Demetrius Harris, as evidenced by his Instagram account.

Risher agreed to an interview with Shaw Media Illinois about the work he does, although he couldn’t comment on his work with any individual client.

With football players, he spends a lot of time working on a technique called fascial tensioning. Fascia are little bands of tissue surrounding the muscles throughout the body.

“A good percentage of the force that’s produced every time you use your muscles is from the fascia, not just the muscle,” Risher said.

Using this knowledge, Risher teaches football players to run, jump and cut more efficiently. It all starts with the feet.

“We’re changing an athlete’s foot and we’re trying to make an athlete’s foot more reactive with the ground,” Risher said. “Every time their foot strikes the ground, we want their glutes to already be engaged.”

By increasing tension on the bottom of the foot, the foot and the glute become more in-sync through the fascia. Risher provides single-leg and lunge exercises that focus on the “intrinsic muscles of the foot,” he said.

A recent video of Robinson posted to Instagram showed him working on a relatively simple-looking, one-foot hopping exercise.

Risher wrote on Instagram that Robinson never felt completely back to normal following his ACL tear in 2017.

“Because he has elite body control, he was able to create a workaround for the entire 2019 season,” Risher wrote on Instagram. “But he still didn’t feel the usual explosiveness and core control.”

Risher wrote that he believed Robinson was dealing with a fascial tensioning issue that didn’t allow his foot and glute to work efficiently together.

“When I did get a chance to work with him, those are some of the focal points that I had,” Robinson said. “Different foot placements and stuff like that. Just helping me get in and out of my breaks a lot better.”

Robinson said they focused a lot on core work, foot placement and ankle stability.

Risher said the best athletes in the world – the LeBron James and Kevin Durant types – have similar foot structures. Risher tries to reverse engineer an athlete’s foot, to make it more like those of the elite athletes. Risher can look at an athlete’s foot and know which muscles to target.

It might sound like something insignificant, but Risher said these are changes that are observable with the naked eye, just like when the chest muscles grow bigger with weight training.

“It takes probably a couple of weeks to a month before you start to notice the changes, just like it would with any sort of muscular training,” Risher said. “You’re not going to notice a change on day one, but after two weeks, you’re like, ‘OK, I have a little bit more muscle tone.’”

On the field, Bears fans might not see an observable difference in the way Robinson runs or cuts. But Robinson likely feels a difference. It might not help an athlete improve his 40-yard dash time significantly, but it can make his first step quicker and it can help prevent injury.

“When we get to a certain level in this foot strengthening, to a person, everyone says that their glutes are more activated,” Risher said. “Everyone says that they feel the difference. If they feel the difference on the field, that’s all that matters. Then they know, and I know, that they’re operating differently.”

For a football player like Robinson, with a major injury in his past, it’s about feeling right again. It’s also about staying healthy.

“My main focus is just keeping my body right,” Robinson said. “I think that’s the biggest thing. For me, the main focus is paying 16 games.”