Healthy Stress Management vs. Training to Failure

Stress is ever present, so you can't shelter yourself forever. Since you can't eliminate stress, you have to learn to deal with it in an efficient way. Stress shapes who we are and how we interact with the world. All change is basically a form of stress and it's probably the most common source of stress in our modern, fast paced world. That means we have to deal with change to be able to manage stress efficiently.

Like many people, I have a hobby of running that relieves stress. I've been thinking about therapeutic properties of regular, aerobic exercise, but I also want to approach this as if I am building up my health, NOT breaking it down, recovering, and overworking again- cycling through pain and exercise with a "No Pain, No Gain" attitude. That's what I see in many of my clients who do marathons and triathlons, unless they have already taken several years to build up to that elite status.

That being said, we must start slow and steady- a little bit every day. Let's go for a short, peaceful run to build up some oxygen and pump the heart, instead of training to exhaustion. 

Here's a great video about how important it is to use your Brain to understand how Stress is affecting your Body- to have a healthy perspective about it.

What's the Difference Between Sports Massage and Deep Tissue Massage?

Yesterday I had a couples massage on a regular client. Afterward, when washing up, the other therapist said that I had done one of the best "Sports Massages" she had ever seen. That compliment was funny to me, because I was doing much more rehab/injury type work than sports work. The client had been working with a Chiropractor daily for a week to resolve some severe lumbar pain and spasm. I was thinking way more about that challenge, than preparing him to get back to training for the half marathon he has coming up. His sedentary desk job was exacerbating the issue just as much as running would have.

I mention this, because I feel like there's a lot of confusion about "Sports Massage" and what that label means. To me, it is applying Myofascial Release, Neuromuscular Therapy, Structural/Postural Alignment, Stretching and/or Flushing Swedish techniques to a specific soft tissue imbalance, in a person who is doing something athletic. I can use this very same definition for "Deep Tissue Massage" except that the client may not be using his body for specifically sports or athletic training. Sitting at a computer several hours a day isn't "Athletic," but it is using the body repetitively. Which is the unifying theme- Repetition.

There's not a list of secret "Sports" techniques that only apply to athletes. I'm going to do whatever kind of massage the client needs for the specific problem area that day. Problem areas usually come from some kind of repetition mixed with imbalance. When the body is not used to doing a movement and is then forced to repeat the movement, you create strain. After strain comes compensation,  creating more imbalance. I'm going to look at any client who comes to me from that perspective; to unravel the compensation, imbalance and overuse to restore the optimal movement in the body. If you want to call that "Sports Massage," I'm happy to take the compliment. If you want to call that "Deep Tissue Massage," we are starting to speak the same language.