Sports massage is a little like being a motor mechanic, when first qualified the mechanic may recognise the clunking sound as something they've heard before but without years of experience can spend a good few hours hunting down a solution to the problem. With experience they'd hear the noise and aim straight to the cause and have a variety of solutions to tackle the problem.
Sports massage is the same, it's a skill you learn over the years and to fix the problem requires years of practice on clients and a desire to want to get to the bottom of the problem. This is my style of treatment and one of the reasons I get so many recommendations. While my brain is completely useless at things like maths and spelling, it's wired into recognising structural imbalances and patterning movements to hone in on the area causing the problem. Don't ask me how it does this, it's a mystery to me too sometimes. I often joke that my hands have a mind of their own.
When a client comes in with a problem, my aim is to get to the bottom of the problem, invariably I'll offer some thoughts on what the cause may be and give options on how to change this to ensure we can avoid the problem returning. It the tests I do turn up any weaknesses, I'll send you home with a few remedial exercises to do. You may leave with a little more knowledge on how your body works, this helps you understand why the remedial work is necessary and hopefully motivates you to do it.
Most of my session is hands on, I'll talk you through my thinking whileI free up the areas that need help. You are never too young or too old to get things sorted out. My youngest client was 11 years old, accompanied by his Dad, this young cyclist suffered a strange lump on his knee and wanted an understanding on what it was. It was a medical condition we could not fix, but he and his Dad went away with a good understanding of the mechanics of the knee and who they needed to consult to get a diagnosis of the problem. At the other end of the spectrum, I worked on someone in their 70s who'd had a full knee replacement and just wanted to bend his knee so he could line up his golf put. Despite his skepticism that he was too old to change, we took his knee flexion from less than 90 degrees to the 135 degrees promised in the artificial knee brochure.
After 15 years of doing this job, something new can always present itself, I've been know to say "in the 15 years I've been doing this job, I've never seen this before" followed by an honest "and to be fair I'm am not 100% sure this will work but logic tells me this is what we should do". I've sent the client away with some exercises and on the next session the muscles have started working. In this instance the client had been to see many specialists and after a lengthly assessment with one expert, they turned around and said, I have no idea how to fix this and sent him away without a solution. After the 4 session the client came in and said "I'm not sure whether to burn you at the stake or marry you" - I guess he was ecstatic at finally being fixed. To be honest I'm not sure either proposal would suit me, but I get the gist of what he was saying. While I may not have seen a problem before I follow the same process for resolving issues and with a little lateral thinking, a solution can be applied to a variety of issues whether I've seen them before or not.
While you may see "sports massage" advertised on our page, actually I'm a lot more than that, but it's hard to categorise it and trying to find a new title is not that easy, so I'm a sports massage therapist with penchant for fixing you so that you don't need to come in every week to rub the sore areas better, I'm here to get to the root cause and get you out running, cycling, jumping, swimming or just plain old living pain free.
My view is that almost everything can be fixed if you target the right area, you're never too old to change and if you have a budget (who doesn't these days) I'll try and get you fixed within your budget. This may not make me wealthy person, but it enriches my life beyond money.
So please bring your ailments to me and lets get you back out there a better version than before.
