I am just as passionate about my workouts today as I was 20 years ago. The difference today is, I listen to my body's signal(pain) when there is a problem. If I feel pain (not to be confused with the "burning" that we feel in the active muscle produced by lactic acid) I stop that particular movement before further damage.

Throughout many years of rigorous, heavy training routines day in and day out to gain strength and muscle size at almost any cost, I incurred injuries by ignoring my body's warning.

Imagine you're squatting a weight you normally max out at 6 repetitions. Today you have an extremely tight and sore right hamstring since doing heavy dead lifts the week before. The "protective mechanism" of the body is to tighten that injured area and the surrounding tissue, limiting range of motion. This puts excessive demand on the surrounding muscles to over compensate and complete the movement while keeping the body's balance. Eventually, if not immediately, these compensatory muscles get injured. For a competitive bodybuilder who is judged on muscle symmetry addressing this injured hamstring to prevent further damage and unwanted muscle compensatory movement patterns is critical to success.

Muscle imbalance may never be an issue for much of the population that workout on a low to medium intensity. But for the athlete who is training with heavy weights at high intensities or for the professional baseball player who puts extremely high demands on the shoulder joint, muscle imbalances will almost always create pain, and injuries limiting one's potential. It is critical for a pitcher to maintain healthy and balanced rotator muscles. If this athlete practices throwing a ball everyday without strengthening the rotator muscles he will compromise both the shoulder and elbow joints causing tearing, inflammation, pain and a shortened career.

Again, if we experience an injury in the body the surrounding muscles and fascia tissue tighten to protect this injured area and compensatory movement patterns form. It is our body's way of preventing further damage to this injury. This is important to know because when there is chronic tight muscles in an area of the body there is usually a dysfunction associated with this tension in the soft tissue. There can be a number of contributing factors and for this reason we require a written clearance for massage therapy from your doctor before we can create a treatment plan when an injury is present. When we know the cause of tension in the tissue we are more likely to reach a positive  outcome.

Massage Therapy can benefit an athlete by increasing range of motion, decreasing compensatory movement patterns, releasing adhesions, breaking up scar tissue, increasing circulation which means more nutrient rich blood enters the injured area and promotes healing, ease tension off joints by stretching fascia and muscle tissue and ultimately decreasing injuries and increasing performance.

Please do not contact this provider for anything other then Professional Massage Therapy.