This leaves massage therapists with a tough choice – work more hours in order to pay the bills, but risk injury and burnout in doing so.

Given my strong affinity for massage and my experience training several therapists, I felt I must help. It would seem the basic goals of getting stronger and increasing work capacity would be the primary ones of a practitioner looking to take more clients and survive more years. However, in my experience of training this special population, certain considerations must be taken into account in the weight room.

“Bodyworkers should pair together grip-friendly exercises and get an elevated heart rate while still putting the body under tension.”

If you are a bodyworker concerned with the health of your own body, in addition to that of your career, then read on. (These would also be good for anyone else who works with their hands and on their feet all day.)

Avoid Grip Work

Farmers carries, barbell complexes, and high-volume kettlebell swings are great for increasing capacity and strength. Unfortunately, these methods tax the grip. A massage therapist absolutely cannot burn the grip and expect to handle a client load. Instead, bodyworkers should pair together grip-friendly exercises and get an elevated heart rate while still putting the body under tension.

Examples:

5 rounds:

• 10 kettlebell swings
• Walking lunges with weight vest or backpack

3 rounds:

• Plank on elbows for 1 min
• Rack carry, switching from right to left halfway

3 rounds:

• 15 goblet squats
• 10 push ups

The rack carry simply means keeping a neutral wrist on the kettlebell, squeezing your armpit, and locking your elbow down. Walk for a distance and switch arms. It should be heavy enough to make your arms, lats, and midsection work hard.

Protect Your Wrists

Wrist extension, like what happens in a push up, can be an aggravating position. The last thing a massage therapist or bodyworker needs is irritated wrists. Instead, try using push-up bars or suspension straps to limit wrist extension in pushing movements.

Watch Your Shoulder Position

Giving a massage tends to force you into a hunched over, downward-pushing position. This imbalance can lead to a locked-up thoracic spine and increase the risk for a shoulder injury in overhead movements. I love a good thoracic-spine opener and batwing planks are quick and easy ways to get the shoulder blades moving in different planes. In addition, batwing planks are not taxing on the grip when compared to rowing movements.

To do the batwing plank:

• Make sure your body is tight like in a regular plank.
• Constantly think “thumbs to armpits.”
• Hold for thirty seconds to a minute.
• You can increase difficulty by moving your feet further from the wall.

Take Advantage of Active Rest

Your warm up and the time between sets will be valuable for doing the little corrective exercises nobody wants to do. Think of these periods as useful rest and take advantage of all your workout time. Drills like the T-spine opener and a cross-pattern movement below will be great choices between sets. They help with posture and the up and down off the floor adds a heart rate benefit.

• T-Spine Opener – Take your time with these and think of opening your chest toward the sky. Push your stance arm through the ground.

• Dead Bug – Has similar benefits to a birddog movement, but without putting the wrist in that push up position. Do this in a position comfortable for your level of flexibility and make sure your lower back doesn’t arch too much.

Remember to Eat

Increasing your hours worked often means less time for nutritious food. You also always have lotion on your hands, and due to the proximity of your profession, you cannot afford to have bad breath. So, always keep these foods on hand:

• Bananas
• Nuts in a tube bag so you don’t need to put them in your hands
• High-quality nut and fruit bars
• Mint dark chocolate bar

Control Inflammation

Regardless of how well prepared you are, a demanding job will still have the risk of causing inflammation and anything with “-itis” at the end. Curcumin plays a role in controlling inflammation, and is relatively safe compared to NSAID drugs such as aspirin. You can try a supplement or cook with the spice turmeric as often as you can.

Optimizing Work Performance

Keep in mind: these suggestions aren’t regressions. They are just different ways to get the desired result. I want you to know that you can still look great and feel great at the same time.

As a bodyworker, you just need to be mindful of certain exercises and add in the ones that increase your ability to work, rather than detract from it. With some nutritional planning and tweaks, you should be able to optimize your work performance and make more money without pain.

Check out these related articles:

• Science Says Massage Heals Your Muscles
• Hack Your Stress Before It Hacks You
• Kick Pain in the Face With Natural Movement
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today

References:

1. Blau, Phd Gary, Phd Christopher Monos, Phd Ed Boyer, Jd Kathleen Davis, Phd Richard Flanagan, Phd Andrea Lopez, and Phd Donna S. Tatum. “Correlates of Injury-forced Work Reduction for Massage Therapists and Bodywork Practitioners†.” IJTMB International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork: Research, Education, & Practice 6, no. 3 (2013).

2. He, Yan, Yuan Yue, Xi Zheng, Kun Zhang, Shaohua Chen, and Zhiyun Du. “Curcumin, Inflammation, and Chronic Diseases: How Are They Linked?” Molecules 20, no. 5, 9183-213.

3. “Summary.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. January 8, 2014. Accessed August 8, 2015.

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photos 2 and 3 courtesy of Marc Halpern.

The post Manual Therapists: Training Tips to Stay Healthy on the Job appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

This is a fairly common question for me to get, and probably one most CrossFit coaches and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructors will hear from their athletes. In any contact sport or competitive sport for that matter, there are bound to be sprains, strains, and other injuries. What does not seem to be common knowledge however, is how to treat them and who should treat them.

As an acupuncturist myself, I tend to point my athletes in the direction of the “alternative” therapies listed in the initial question before sending them off to see an Orthopedist or surgeon. For that reason I will focus on those four healing modalities – massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, and physical therapy – for the purposes of this series of articles. (There are, of course, extremely talented healers in all walks of both alternative and Western medicine and I don’t want the choice of focus here to imply otherwise.)

My first and immediate response to the initial question posed is always the same, and comes in the form of two questions:

“Have you taken any rest?”

And then the big one.

“Have you iced your injury?”

This is a lot like your refrigerator repairperson asking you if your refrigerator is plugged in when you call them and tell them it’s not keeping things cold. Let’s start there before we get all crazy with diagnosis’s and referrals to professionals who will ask the same question.

The vast majority of the time, the answer to that question is a blank stare and slightly confused, “No, do you think that will help?”

I had a frustrated athlete come to me last week because his shoulder isn’t healing as fast as he’d like it to. He’s been seeing a physical therapist for a few weeks. Here’s how our conversation went:

Me: “What did your PT recommend that you do?”

Athlete; “He told me to stay off of it for four to six weeks.”

Me: “Well, have you?”
“Sort of” – was what I got back.

“Didn’t you do 100 burpees for time on Saturday?” my brilliant investigative questioning continues.

A sheepish, “Yes,” was his reply.

“Weren’t you just doing heavy thrusters?” (I’m shocked that the Santa Barbara PD detective bureau doesn’t consult me more often)

An even more sheepish, “Well…yes,” was what I got back.

So there we have it.

Please always remember the basics of healing. Pain is not the problem; pain in itself is not something to “cure.” Pain is simply your body’s way of letting you know what you’re doing at the moment isn’t all that awesome and it would like you to take a short break before it needs to make the message louder and more apparent to you.

Rest is the most vital aspect of healing, and one you have complete control over regardless of where the injury is. Rest does not mean four to six weeks of Ding Dongs and Married With Children reruns on the couch, it simply means not directly using the affected area.

Next on the healing spectrum, even before we break out the phone book and start calling doctors is – icing your injury.

Ice is the greatest active healing weapon in your arsenal and one that can be employed both prophylacticly and during the acute or immediate phase of injury. Much of the pain we feel from an injury is due to the ensuing inflammatory response. If you put 20 people, each of whom weigh 150 pounds into a 10 x 10 room, things are going to be tight. If those 20 people suddenly triple in size, there’s going to be some pain.

Icing an injury for 20 minutes is a great way to get that inflammatory response to reverse itself, even if only for a short time. I recommend to my both my patients and athletes the same protocol I follow myself – 20 minutes of ice, followed by 20 minutes in a hot shower, twice a day.

The ice does a great job of collapsing the inflammation and deflating the 20 people in my shoulder’s room. Following the treatment up with some heat (please make sure you don’t burn yourself – wait a few minutes for the sensation to come back to your skin) increases the blood flow to the area, bringing in freshly oxygenated blood and removing any waste that has been trapped by the inflammation. This combination is your own due diligence before reaching out to the healing community.

Most adults have heard of the R.I.C.E. (rest, ice, compression, elevation) principle with injuries, but not many people follow even the first two steps. Make it a habit of utilizing this world wide principle and watch your healing time increase and your time on the bench decrease.

Don’t miss part two – learn when to choose acupuncuture, chiropractic, physical therapy, or massage: Healing Choices, Part 2: Choosing the Right Treatment

The post Healing Choices, Part 1: The 4 Modalities of Healing and What to Do First appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

According to research conducted at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, massage therapy triggers sensors in the body to send out inflammation-reducing signals. The researchers believe the stretching of the muscle is what prompts the signal and encourages the healing process. Contrary to popular belief, researchers do not believe the benefits of massage come from the clearing of lactic acid.

To conduct their study, researchers chose eleven men to observe. The men rode on bicycles for over an hour, until they could no longer continue. They were then allowed to rest for ten minutes. During their rest period a massage therapist massaged one of their legs. After the massage a muscle biopsy was taken from both quadriceps, massaged and not-massaged. The biopsy was repeated two and a half hours later.

The leg treated with massage was found to be much less inflamed than the untreated leg. Scientists believe this is due in part to the massage encouraging the muscles to construct mitochondria. Mitochondria are the “power plants” in human cells and are believed to play a role in the healing process. People with malfunctioning mitochondria can suffer from muscular atrophy and insulin resistance.

In conclusion, scientists believe massage could be a good alternative to pain medication for athletes looking to heal damaged muscles. In addition, because massage is causing an anti-inflammatory response, scientists are now also considering it as a way to help people suffering from arthritis, muscular dystrophy, and other chronic inflammatory diseases.

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