Massage Blog 1: Vanessa’s View

Hello, all you Crossfitters!

This is the first installment of the BodyWork Blog, which I hope will both educate and inspire you to make bodywork a serious part of your recovery program. Future entries will discuss certain parts of the body, such as the shoulder girdle, abs, IT band, etc., as well as recovery tips and stretches you can practice before and after a workout.

This first entry will serve to introduce who I am, what I do, and why I do it.

In the short time I’ve been at Crossfit, I’ve been blown away by the amount of physical manipulation you are all capable of. I’ve been a very active and competitive person for many years, participating in sports like rugby, water polo and martial arts like tae kwon do. After incurring several injuries over the past few years, I’ve taken to lower impact activities, such as yoga (one of my passions), movement arts like hula hooping, poi spinning and, very recently, aerials with the lovely Ms Rachel Stewart. (Ed. Note: Rachel teaches in our aerials studio, contact her if you’re interested in scheduling a lesson! -JT)

As a massage therapist I am fascinated by the blueprint of the human body. Given the right amount of exercise and practice, the human body is essentially made to be an efficient, dexterous and mean lean zombie killing machine. That is what I’ve come to believe CrossFit is breeding: zombie killing machines.

One of the main things I overhear discussed before, during and after a workout is the level of pain or soreness someone is in due to a workout. Soreness and pain are, of course, part of the game. It’s almost refreshing to know that you’re building muscle, that the soreness is surely a sign of progress. However, as a massage therapist, I like to emphasize to athletes that not all pain is necessary. Some of it serves to alert the body to potential injuries, like a warning beacon.

Massage is excellent for helping the body process post-workout pain. Post-workout, your muscles are already warmed up. In this state during a massage, muscles tend to release a lot quicker, leaving you pain free coming off the table. Also, any spinal compression or rotator cuff stress gets immediately addressed, reducing recovery time by a significant amount.

Massage is important for other reasons as well. According to holisticonline.com:

“Heavily exercised muscles may also lose their capacity to relax, causing chronically tight (hypertonic) muscles, and loss of flexibility. Lack of flexibility is often linked to muscle soreness, and predisposes you to injuries, especially muscle pulls and tears. Blood flow through tight muscles is poor (ischemia), which also causes pain.”

Massage therapy works to relax the body, bring blood flow back into locked up tissue and thus can help prevent injury and increase flexibility.

I will be offering massage therapy in the mornings from 7:30am til 11:30am on Mondays and Wednesdays, 5 until 8 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 5 until 7 on Fridays. I’m offering 15% off your first treatment, just to ensure that this is in fact something you want to make part of your recovery program. My normal rates are $85/hr, $45/30 min and $125 for 90 min. I may be offering discounted packages for people who want to come in more consistently. Feedback on this would be very appreciated!

I look forward to working with you all!
-Vanessa

This entry was posted on June 20, 2010 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.