Seated Massage on Tennis Balls

If you want to relieve muscle pain in your butt while giving your upper hamstrings and seat a treat and try this youtube video. This massage may help relieve pain you're experiencing in your lower back or knees. It will also serve to revive you if you feel your energy stores waning or if you need to get your upper leg muscles charged before a run.

This no hands self-massage routine lets you experience sensations you never thought possible. Every active person can benefit from this improbable combination of seated massage and dance. Try it! But before you do locate a couple of tennis balls and your sitz bones.

Sitz bones, or sitting bones, are the bones in your pelvic girdle that help support your body when you sit. If you study anatomy you probably know them as the ischial tuberosity. They’re the lowest of the three big bones that are your pelvis. When you’re sitting up straight you’ll feel one on each side of your seat. To locate them try placing the tennis balls directly beneath them. You’ll know them when you’re sitting on them because they’re the only bony structures in your butt. Don’t massage them but use them as reference points when working the muscles around them.

For a balanced massage synchronize each tennis balls in relationship to its sitting bone so that each ball is just to the outside of its sitz bones, or just in front, or where ever you like just as long as their relative distance from their respective sitz bone is about the same. Ok try it!

Balls on Butt Massage: Do It while You View It

Trigger Points and Booty Ball Massage

If you want to run faster Booty Ball Massage is your ticket, here’s why:

Over time everyone, you, me, President-elect Obama develop knots in our muscles that reduce our strength. These knots are called trigger points. (For the extensive scientific evidence supporting this theory this see the two volume treatise by Travell and Simons Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual . In a more accessible form see Claire Davies book The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook.

Trigger points develop spontaneously in muscles all over our bodies. Pressing on them through massage and other forms of body work releases them. That’s one of the reasons massage can be painful.

Until a trigger point is released the muscle in which it lives is weakened and other muscles must do the inhibited muscle’s work which weakens those muscles as well. You’ve probably seen elderly people whose old bent bodies can barely function. It’s usually not old age per se that’s crippling them but the accumulation of unreleased trigger points.

Releasing trigger points is easy to do when you’re young and relatively healthy. All you have to do is press on them with enough force to release them which can be painful. As a matter of fact that’s how you know you’ve found one, it emits what has been described as an “exquisite tenderness” when pressed. Yikes!

Anyway one big place these trigger points live until they’re released is your butt. Your glutes are the largest muscles in your body and unless you’re massaging them regularly trigger points are growing in them and weakening them and the surrounding muscles. This of course reduces glute and leg strength which reduces your running speed.

One easy way to release trigger points in your glutes is to allow your body weight to do it while you’re sitting at work or watching a video. That’s why I created the booty ball massage video now on YouTube. Watch the video, do booty ball massage and your trigger points will disappear like a fist when you open your hand. You’ll feel better and run faster.

The Hip Butt Massage

Every active person needs the benefits that only massage can deliver to their glutes and hip flexors. Here’s how to get those benefits when you need them.


To get the best massage for your hips and glutes, you’ll need a couple of massage tools. For your hip flexors, those skeletal muscles that flex your hips, you'll need a Backnobber II. For your glutes a hard squash ball, super ball, or golf ball will come in handy. You'll also need a hard chair. If you have any questions about whether your hips and glutes should be massaged or any of the techniques described in this post consult your doctor, massage therapist, or medical practitioner.

Eight Steps to a Hip Glute Massage
Step 1
Glide your hands over your hips to warm them up.

Step 2: Hip Massage Using Your Hands


Stroke #1: Sitting akimbo, press your hands into your hips and roll your pelvis slowly in small circles. This should feel good.



Stroke #2: Place your thumbs on your front hip flexors (the place where your thigh meets your hips). Four fingers from each hand rest on your sides and extend towards the seat of the chair. Press & roll your thumbs into your hip flexors. If nothing else it will give your thumbs a pretty good workout. Relax your hips while pressing & rolling your thumbs. Move your thumbs around until you’ve explored the territory.



Stroke #3: Holding your hands at 90 degree angles to the sides of your hips press and press & roll your finger tips directly into the sides and backs of your hip flexors. Again explore the terrain.



Stroke #4: Press and press & roll the heels of your hands into your front hip flexors. Use your upper body weight to lean into it. Move your hips in small circles clockwise, then counter clockwise, and adjust your hands ever so slightly until you’ve got it covered.



Step 3: Hip Massage Using The Backnobber II
Stroke #1: Press and press & roll the Backnobber II into the muscle and fleshy areas on the sides of your hips. Begin at the back of your hips and gradually press & roll your way to the front. Lean your hip into the knob at the end of the massage tool while relaxing your hips. I don’t recommend massaging your hip bone with the massage tool. When you've finished massaging one side move onto the other.


Stroke #2: Front Hip Flexors
Hold the massage tool perpendicular to the floor. When massaging your right hip flexor rest the top knob on your right hip flexor. Place your left hand just above the knob and your right hand on the inside of the tool even with your right thigh and press down. Be careful you’re in delicate territory here. Go slowly and get comfortable with this stroke. Move your hands slightly to massage different spots. Or just rotate your hips in small circles. Be careful. Relax and breathe into it.


Stroke #3: Rest the bottom S curve on your front hip flexor. Then, sitting up straight, just press on the top of the upright S. Press, and press & roll the curved section at the bottom of the S into your hip flexors.

There are many more variations you can try with the Backnobber II. Find some that work for you.


Step 4: Booty Ball Massage
Place a small hard rubber ball* under your glutes and rotate your hips in small circles, clockwise and then counter clockwise. Periodically shift the position of the ball. Continue shifting the ball and circling your hips. You may find that different sized balls work better for different parts of your glutes, depending on the size of the padding in your chair and your seat. After massaging one side give your other seat a treat.

Step 5: More Booty Ball Massage
After moving the ball to your other side follow the same routine of rolling your hips and moving the ball ever so slightly until your glutes have been massaged. Stay relaxed and breathe deeply into your butt.

Step 6 Gliding
Repeat Step 2 by gliding your hands over your hips.

Step 7 Drumming
Drum, slap, or tap your hips and glutes with the heels of your hands or your fists. You’ll have to stand up to drum your glutes but it’s worth getting up for.

Step 8 Rock’n Roll
Get up and shake it, move your booty, your hips, dance!


Test: OK, now get up, walk around, and feel the difference a hip butt massage can make.

Suggested Time: 5 to 10 minutes (but take as long as you need)

Conclusion: Try variations on this routine every time your hips or butt feel a little tight.

Notes:
* I highly recommend a hard squash ball. Squash balls are made of rubber of two types: hard and soft. The hard ones make great massage tools, the soft ones do not. Squash balls are a little smaller than a golf ball. Any hard rubber ball about the size of a golf ball should work. A golf ball can also be used but is not as effective as a hard rubber ball.

For more information on hip flexors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_flexors

For more information on the gluteus maximus muscle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutes

And for more than you ever wanted to know about the butt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt

And to watch the YouTube video The Hip Booty Massage: Do It While You View It