Pregnancy Massage – Be More than Relaxation to your Client

Aches, pains, swelling, fatigue are just some of the complaints I hear from pregnant friends and family yet with many of my pregnancy clients looking for a massage as their burgeoning bump starts to overwhelm their daily life it’s the chance to switch off for a couple of hours and some time to relax that draws them in the door.  Whatever the reason, these women are choosing to look after THEM selves and this is where our job is to help these women keep their bodies in check during this time and to give them the tools to support their bodies during this time.  Let us get them to a place of restorative relaxation but let’s couple this with amazing, targeted treatment that will have a much broader impact on these individuals than relaxation will alone.

Movement: Fascia and Function in Soft Tissue Therapy

The world of Soft Tissue Therapy has moved forward at a startling pace over the last decade with more and more people realising the virtue of its benefits.  With this appreciation of the modality comes a more educated and demanding client who wants more than just relaxation, they want tangible results.  Research and the techniques available are progressing at a rapid pace, meaning that we as therapists need to keep up to date with regard to these areas to ensure we are delivering effective treatments and real results for our clients.

Fighting Fit in Pregnancy & Beyond: Part 2 Exercise in the Second Trimester

Having felt rather normal in the first trimester there had been little impact to my fitness regime but now in the second trimester I knew how important it was to ensure my fitness regime was appropriate.  My first priority is to ensure the health and safety of my baby, but my second priority is to ensure my own health and happiness.  I am a firm believer that keeping myself fit and strong can only benefit my baby both during the pregnancy and in the post natal period where I will need plenty of energy and strength to tackle my new job as mum.  In addition to staying fit and strong I want to also ensure that I am limiting the physical damage to my body to ensure I am not left with a legacy of musculoskeletal and pelvic floor problems in the years to come.

Achilles Problem? Hard work pays off!

If you don’t know where your Achilles tendon is, then count yourself lucky as if you have had a problem with it you would know ALL about it.  I find Achilles tendonopathies to be quite common place, but rarely is it the original reason people come to see me.  They come with other issues and in discussing their case history it will come up that they have this long standing niggling Achilles problem.  In some cases they ‘just get on with it’ in other cases they have given up the sports that make it worse e.g. squash or running.  I wonder why people are so keen to give up on this condition?  Or is it that they have tried many different treatments with limited result?  This got me curious.

Those who know me from my clinic will know how passionate I am about getting our bodies aligned so that they can resist the strains and pressures of our active lives, keeping us feeling well and pain free.  It is especially the case with women who have had children.  I cannot count the number of women I see who have musculo-skeletal problems, pelvic floor dysfunction or pain that link back to how they hold their bodies.  We dig a little deeper and they often trace right back to when they were pregnant.  ‘Oh my body is just trashed since I had the baby’ is not an acceptable state.  Either are Tena Lights for life – no ‘Oops’ moments please.   Yes, your body goes through huge amounts of change during those 9 months but how many women have the time or inclination to get their real ‘pre baby’ body back?  Focus is on weight loss, but focus needs to be wider than this.  We need to get aligned again so we can stand tall and strong against gravity and all that life throws at us.

Muscular Strain: Going Beyond DOMS

When do you cross the line from Muscular Fatigue, to Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) and sometimes jump right in to Muscular Strain?

 We have all had muscular fatigue, when you simply cannot complete that final rep.  Nothing left in the tank if you will.  DOMS is again something that I am sure we are all familiar with, that ache you get the day after, or even the ‘day after, the day after’ you have worked out hard.  It doesn’t necessarily stop you functioning and can even improve after further exercise.  Muscular strain is a completely different kettle of fish.  Yes there may be pain or ache but what is more pronounced is the lack of force that muscle of group of muscle or even more extreme the inability to contract that muscle at all.  Lets take a quick look at how you can identify what is going on for you and how you can take the right approach to address each.

Not a day goes by in my clinic where I don’t see clients presenting with pain or injury which is caused by an imbalance in their body.  Whether that be from sitting all day, repetitive daily activities or the demands of their sport.  We work together to relieve the symptoms but with a longer term view to resolving the imbalance at the root cause.  This is all well and good and generally with the right corrective exercise we can get them back to the best.  Alas, there are a set of clients where the demands for their activity or sport will be one sided or imbalanced (think golfer, tennis player etc.) which means that as their activity level increases their problem will ultimately return.

Fascia: Are your Muscles Really Hydrated?

We all know how important water is to our bodies.  It keeps us moving, it keeps us flexible, it saturates our joints, our tissues and is critical to life.  It is the very reason we exist!  If you are reading this blog then I am certain you are drinking your 2 litres a day, but is that water actually being absorbed by your muscles or is it just running straight through?

 Having spent 3 days with Tom Myers discussing all things Fascia, it really drove home to me that good Fascia (connective tissue) health is not just important to movement, injury prevention and pain levels but it is actually a major factor  in determining the hydration levels within your body too.

To Stretch or not to Stretch? The Benefits of the ‘RIGHT’ Stretching.

I only have to bring up the word ‘stretching’ with some of my colleagues in the therapeutic and fitness industry to generate lively debate.  Something that we have all thought was a good thing to do is now in question.  Truth be told, there is a lot of contradictory research out there and no solid

proof of the advantages and disadvantages so it’s no wonder there is confusion.  What is clear is that we have many joints and muscles in our bodies and even more confusingly, many many different stretching protocols each with a number of pros and cons, so where does one start when considering a regular stretch routine?

Fascia: Finding your ‘Unique’ Myofascial Line

We have talked about Fascia, our connective tissue a lot over the last few months and I hope you all have an appreciation as to how key it is in the process of well-being, healing and injury prevention.  That is all well and good but given that Fascia is everywhere and around everything how do we release it?  In such an endless web where does one begin?  How do we know where in the body a restriction of this Fascia is impacting on a current problem?  Bring forward the sterling work of Tom Myers who so succinctly outlines how are muscles connect through fascia to form our ‘Anatomy Trains’.