Hello, welcome to the August blog from NW Sports massage.
Hope everyone has been enjoying the hot weather and summer holidays. During these hot spells it is more important than ever to stay hydrated. Water in our body is essential for many important processes to take place. Our blood needs enough fluid to carry oxygen and
essential nutrients to cells. Water helps keep our joints and eyes lubricated, plus our muscles, nerves, and skin healthy. Our kidneys need enough fluid to flush out the waste products we no longer need. Good hydration reduces tiredness and fatigue aswel as helping us stay alert, focused, and concentrate better (since our brain is mostly water).
I also have these fabulous water bottles now available to buy from NW Sports massage. They are robust, metal flasks that will help keep your water at a lovely cool temperature and no leaking!!
Finally, don’t forget you can book your massage online in just a few clicks or by clicking here.
MET – Muscle Energy Techniques
I quite often use MET’s alongside my massage treatments with great results and they have many benefits.
But what exactly are they?
Muscle energy techniques are a technique that was developed in 1948 by Fred Mitchell. It is an active technique requiring you the client to also be involved. For a MET treatment a person is asked to actively contract a muscle on request from a controlled position as instructed by the practitioner at around 10- 20 % effort. This contraction is then utilised to assist and help correct the presenting muscle tightness or imbalance. To sum up, you are using your own muscles energy to form an isometric contraction which following that contraction allows the muscle to relax and via autogenic inhibition or reciprocal inhibition and the muscle can be lengthened.
Benefits to MET’s include:
· Restoring normal tone in tight muscles
· Strengthening weak muscles
· Preparing the muscles for subsequent stretching
· Increasing joint mobility (A tight muscle can become a stiff joint and a stiff joint can become a tight muscle)
· Boosting circulation to the area being treated
· Improving muscular function.
Sport in the spotlight
Each month I cover a new sport highlighting how it can effect our bodies and muscles required for that sport. This month we look at Stand Up Paddle boarding or SUP, and the experts at SUP Gloucester have offered some great info and advice. .
Stand-up Paddleboarding has become the world's fastest growing and most popular water sport for very good reason, it's a lot of fun for beginners to your experts, easy to learn, accessible to everyone and combines the best of both worlds in Canoeing and Kayaking where you can sit down, stand up and move around your paddleboard.
The SUP Gloucester team whom work on the River Severn at Lower Lodes Inn teach Award Winning SUP lessons and experiences with some of the very best paddle sport instructors throughout the South West and South Wales. Their lessons are for 2hrs and are a combination of quality skill building on the water, mixed with self-safety instruction and lots of games on your paddleboards that will leave you with memories for summers to come.
With practice, SUP can be a great core body work out and can be combined with other sports such as Yoga to increase your balance and control of different muscle groups throughout your body. If you enjoy paddleboarding and SUP Gloucester's river experiences, then you can quickly advance up to their SUP Adventure throughout the Tewkesbury locks if you dare to take on their 3hr SUP Adventure for your more intermediate paddlers.
The constant instability that a paddleboard gives means that the stabilising muscles especially in our lower limbs and feet work hard to help keep the board stable, even the quads and hamstrings will be working to aid balance and stability (when standing upright). Our core muscles and abdominals are key to helping balance and in the upper body, deltoids and back muscles, trapezius, latissimus dorsi and the smaller back muscles such as rhomboids are used in pulling movements to help row us along, so you may even find your arms and upper body aching after a SUP session particularly if this is a new movement to you (And, Massage at NW Sports massage can be a great way to reduce soreness after new exercise!). So, you can see SUP really is a full body workout, plus, there are the great mental and physical benefits that we get from being outdoors in the sunshine and exercising helping reduce stress and boost mood. And SUP Gloucester also provides a fun place for a party, hen or stag do with a difference.
I’d love people to share their knowledge on a sport they are passionate about to participate in the newsletter please email: nswsportsmassage@gmail.com
Moving Muscles
Each month I pick a new muscle to look at and see how it helps us move and effects posture and problems tightness in the muscle can cause. This time we will look at the Latissimus Dorsi or Lats.
It’s a large, flat muscle covering the width of the mid and lower back.
This muscle is used a lot in sports like climbing, rowing, and swimming.
It’s main function is to move our arms back towards our body (adduct), and extend the arm and it assists in expanding the chest during breathing.
It is a chief climbing muscle as it pulls shoulders and arm downward and backward.
Common exercises used to strengthen lats include pull ups and lat pull downs.
Flexibility in the lats is important for overhead movements and for example holding a bar squatting. Soft tissue mobilisation can be done with a foam roller and stretching.
Here are some great ideas from Squat university blog on how to help tightness in the Lats.
Sports massage can be used to both assess tightness and shortening of this muscle, plus helping to alleviate tightness.
Massage Myths
There’s a plethora of information out there about sports, muscles, and massage. I want to debunk misinformation that may be out there and confusing people.
Myth – The harder the pressure the more beneficial the massage.
When it comes to massage therapy, the old saying “no pain, no gain” does not apply. It is important to communicate with your therapist during a session to get the most out of the treatment. Effective massage therapy is about applying a level of pressure which is appropriate to and commensurate with the aim of the treatment and the clients needs. Sometimes deeper pressure can be more beneficial, however, if you find yourself tensing and holding your breath then you may want to ask the therapist to reduce the pressure.
I hope you have enjoyed this months NW Sports massage newsletter, and don't forget you can also catch up with previous months.
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