Massage

I am an avid blog follower. I also enjoy writing which is why I choose to blog as my main interface for Harvest Moon with the internet.

As such, quite a while back I found a blog about fitness and nutrition and added it to my Bloglines, “Massage Blog” folder as more articles than not were of interest and I gleaned information I could use in my massage practice.

This morning I noticed a new article had been posted. It was on the knee and ligaments in the knee and how each different ligament experiences damage. It was focused and succinct and quite possibly the best overall description I’ve ever read of the ligament configuration and ligament function of the knee joint. You can read the article here, if you care to.

I wish my textbooks had been written as well as this lone article. Even though her focus is definitely not massage, but injury, this macro-style would have saved hours of flipping through books and internet searches trying to learn the specifics of the knee.

And this, my friends, is why I love the internet. A chic from Australia who knows a thing or two about knee injury can put her knowledge online and halfway around the world a chic from the U.S. can learn a thing or two from it. Where else are we going to get that kind of collaboration?

When I was in massage school, I never felt like I’d ever be a sports massage therapist. It just didn’t feel right to me, probably because I had never been athletic. My instructors would talk about how you had to know massage and specialize in a particular sport to become a good sports massage therapist. It just didn’t interest me.

In my head I would think that if I worked with athletes, I would treat them as any other client who presented with aches and pains. Identify the ache or the pain and work accordingly. It was simple, in my mind.

Of course, recently I have learned how to be a coxswain, taken a Learn to Row class with Rocket City Rowing Club and spent this year’s summer vacation learning to scull at Calm Waters Rowing camp. You might say that I’ve become a novice athlete.

Last weekend I found myself working with a client who sweep rows competitively. She was having lumbar region issues that manifested mostly while she was sitting in the boat and felt kinked up when she wasn’t in the boat. While working I began asking her questions about when and where she felt the pain. Before I realized it I was asking very specific question about during what phase of her rowing stroke she was feeling the pain.

That’s when it hit me. This is what my instructors were talking about when they talked about understanding the sport and its biomechanical peculiarities.

I certainly didn’t set out to become a sports massage therapist when I began this odyssey of learning to row. Mostly I did it to appease friends who were rowing and needed a short person to steer the boat. The learning to sweep row was a necessity at becoming a better coxswain and an attempt to get healthier. In the process though, I found something that I really enjoy doing, I’ve made new friends, gained new clients, dropped some weight, and gotten healthier.

And, unwittingly, I have also become a sports massage therapist who specializes in the sport of rowing. Who knew?