Bikram Yoga
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Sports Massage
   
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To Find Balance, Retreat!
When our lives get out of balance we experience stress. The
stress may come from work, relationships, health challenges .....
Sports massage is primarily concerned with injury prevention. However, most of the time we are using it in the treatment of chronic injuries, pain, overuse syndrome and acute injuries in rehabilitation or ongoing treatment of aches and pains. Just because its called sports massage, many people think its just for athletes. This is just not true; its especially good for athletes, but everybody can benefit from it. It When our lives get out of balance we experience stress. The
stress may come from work, relationships, health challenges .....
differs from other massage forms because the techniques differ slightly.
Specifically, they are compression massage, cross-fiber massage and DTF.
Compression massage is applied with the palms of the hand with a rhythmic
motion, pressing on the muscle. In cross fiber massage, which can be applied with
oil, strokes are done at 90 degrees across the muscle and tendon. It is more
commonly done without oil, used on the belly of the muscle or on tendons by
moving the skin over the muscle, not by rubbing the skin. This has many beneficial
effects on the tissue systems, including the reduction of swelling, adhesions and
micro-traumas, lubrication and the increase of blood flow. Then there is the most
powerful technique in all massage: Deep Transverse Friction (DTF), started by Dr.
James Cyriax, MD, an English Orthopedic Surgeon. He was the biggest proponent of
this method, using it for the majority of his patients minor injuries. It has to be
very specifically for it to be beneficial and not create more irritation in the actual
movement of the body. DTF is a great technique for tendons, adhesions, micro-
tears and musculo-tendonous joints and connections. Even trigger points and
Swedish in the right areas is going to aid the body in accelerating the healing.
Of course, before the rehabilitative stage, rest, ice, compression and elevation (RICE)
is the preferred treatment plan for most athletic injuries for more information see
my book Your beautiful body.
The usual athletic injury, whether due to a direct blow, tear or to over-stretching
results in the same pathological tissue damage. Tissue death and blood seepage
from the vessels and capillaries create a hematoma. This is a mass of tissue debris
and blood with extra calcium and other chemicals the body dumps into the system.
Its shocked, and everything binds up to protect itself. A muscle spasm is the first
sign of injury. If you push it further, the signs intensify.
Following the injury and shock comes the inflammatory response, which creates an
enlargement of the original hematoma. Its the bodys cast; it sends all the white
blood cells and nutrients to the site, including extra calcium to repair the damage.
The problem is that it backfires by causing tissue death, due to slowed blood flow
and to oxygen starvation. As soon as the initial trauma occurs, this cycle can be
broken with the application of RICE, which will minimize the damage from
secondary effects and accelerate the healing.
The pre-event massage is usually not done very deep, unless your client is really
used to it. Even then, we dont deep work other than with deep compressions. We
sometimes use a combination of effleurage, petrissage and direct pressure on tight
areas, mostly tendons. We may even use a little Deep Transverse Friction (DTF), or
Circular Friction as a post-event treatment. You need to take care and take into
consideration the amount of therapy the athlete has had, as well as any possible
conditions that may hamper healing. I have seen athletes get very good deep
massages and run badly afterwards because they were not accustomed to it.
Mainly a pre-event massage is used to improve the speed, power and endurance of
the athlete. It can get him to perform at the top of his ability. We have seen it over
and over again: an athlete that is balanced structurally is one who has learned to
strengthen and stretch the right places. Obviously, a well-balanced, well-timed and
properly built machine (the human body) runs better. Sports massage is used for
injury prevention in the athlete more than any other type of massage. This is
because of the way its designed and the ultimate results you are seeking..
Structural balancethis is the key to improved performance and reduction of
injuries.
The usual effects of the pre-event massage are increased circulation, loosened
muscles and improved cellular nutrition through the dilation of the capillaries by
deep compression is one of the best techniques to the heart strokes. Transverse
friction (DTF) is one of the best techniques for tight, chronic or sore spots. (Read
James Cyriax MD.) DTF also helps to increase motion by breaking up adhesions and
improves circulation to tendons and ligaments as well.
You need to be cautious to using this technique: you can make an injury worse with
too much DTF. Used properly, it can get rid of a knot in a muscle, a sore tendon, or
even a hot trigger point, allowing to go beyond what may hurt or limit him down the
road. DTF promotes a well-functioning body; its a valuable tool. Like all therapy,
when properly given to athletes on a regular basis, the pre-event massage improves
peak performance with less injury and shorter recuperation time.
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Sports massage is also valuable in rehabilitation work. Unfortunately, the majority It seems that nearly everyone catches a cold or the flu between the months of December through February. Most people think this is just the way it has to be, and germs just randomly .....
of the problems we se in the clinic are injury related. Sometimes traumatic injuries
are incurred in contact sports, when players push the envelope in competition,
sometimes injuries are caused by overtraining. Pushing the body beyond the
established foundation will cause many problems with runners or any intense type
of athlete.
Post-event sports massage is used primarily for recuperation from an event, race or
an intense training session. I recommend any athlete that is serious about training
to get a sports massage from knowledgeable therapist once a week. Youre
investing a lot in your body and, just like a car, it needs regular tune-ups. Youd
better be doing yoga or a whole lot of stretching as well. The runners I used to see
did between 90 and 100 miles a weekyes, a week. I used to say, just let me hit
your legs with a 2 x 4 and run forty miles less, and youll get the same benefit.
The post-event massage will speed up the recovery after all out effort in training or
a race and aid in removing the lactic acid, histamines and other toxins, promoting
great relaxation as well. Most athletes are so charged up youve got to get them to
come down off that race. Trigger points release tension and spasms can be
removed with compressions or with circular friction, another form of DTF. It also
takes a lot of stress out of the nervous system. Acupuncture, acupressure and
trigger points all work on the electrical part of the body. Some other forms of
massage like Tragger, Feldenkrais and polarity work on the electrical system.
Sports massage is primarily concerned with structure and chemistry. Lets simplify
the point by comparing the body to a car, for just a minute. Tuning the car makes it
run more efficiently, but if the wheel structure is out of alignment, it will drive
terribly. If you put the wrong gas (chemistry) in the car, it may not run at all! So if
you work on the problems with the right tools you can expect better results. You
could get any massage and it will feel good; the results that you get depend on what
you want or expect.
TECHNIQUES FOR COMPRESSION
The essence of compression work is deep, repetitive pressure to the belly of the
muscle. Usually you find a knot and apply the technique to it for a few minutes.
The compressions should be administered in a nice rhythm, always breathing with
the patient
and applying pressure with the exhalation. Stay within tolerance: never go into
pain. You cannot fight pain with more pain, remember that. This promotes
circulation to the deep tissue and is more tolerable than the fingers of DTF,
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The wide deep strokes of Swedish and lymphatic massage encourage the circulation
of blood and lymph, which helps to cleanse the body by eliminating toxins. These
techniques work on the chemical level. A full body massage can take from 60 to 90
minutes to complete. This is tough to do these days. I used to do a full hour and
sometimes an hour and a half. But it gets very difficult to put that much time in. I
go more for frequency rather than intensity. While some of this massage work must
be deep to be effective, you still have to stay within the athletes pain tolerance.
You can do deep tissue work without pain by slowly building up over the course of
several sessions. I dont try to do the deep tissue work in the first session. You can
go deep by slowly increasing the pressure as you work with a person. They didnt
build that body in a day and you cant help them in one session to change it. It
takes time, knowledge and care to build a body. Massage can help, but the key is
proper training and the right exercise program to structurally correct muscle
imbalance.
DTF (Deep Transverse Friction)
We could write a whole book on DTF, and some doctors have. With transverse
friction to the tendons, origin and insertion progressively deepening with each set,
you can take so much stress away from a joint that it makes a huge difference in
competition as well as in every day life. I dont do DTF just on athletes-- heck,
everybody needs it.
In general, sports massage or corrective body work sessions are done with three
sets of compressions alternated with three sets of deep transverse friction (DTF).
We will normally take one muscle group at a time. I usually begin with the biggest
muscles first and work my way to the smallest; from the belly of the muscle to the
tendons, and from the tendons to the ligaments. (See Spirit massage for my work on
ligaments.)
Muscle spasms or cramps are acute conditions that can be stopped with deep
compression (just grab hold of the cramp), or origin and insertion techniques (push
muscles together from the origin and insertion) from kinesiology. They have way
too many causes to list here (look at chapter on muscles). Adhesions and other
abnormalities in the belly or other soft tissue of the muscle will be addressed
through friction (DTF) and direct pressure (trigger points, shiatsu or acupresssure)
see http://www.molinamassage.com for more information and other articles..
Othon has been involved in the health field as a massage
therapist, manual therapist and personal trainer for over thirty five years. He was
one of the first therapist to teach in the University of Hawaii and had one of the first
licensed massage schools as well. He has studied with some of the top doctors
and healers of our times.
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Everts Loomis MD., Ram Dass, Tony Robins, Rolling Thunder, and many more to list
here. His specialty is treating sports injuries, back problems, and teaching others
how to improve their health or athletic competition using nutrition and other fitness
technologies.
Some of his specialties are Kinesiology, Polarity therapy, Reflexology, Iridology,
Nutrition, herbs, Native American Indian Medicine, Neuro-Lynguistics and sports
medicine with an emphasis in body mechanics. He has been an athlete and runner
all his life, and competed in many triathlons, 5k's, 10k's and marathons. Competing
at an elite level gave him the experience to help train.