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

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Check out my latest YouTube video: Balls On Quads Massage: Do It While You View It. It's fun action. The intent of the video is not to teach you anything but to help you to feel something, to help you feel better when you finish than when you started. If it does that it has succeeded, if not it has failed. Give it a try let me know how it does.

IT Band Self-Massage

Massaging your iliotibial bands can be a big help if you run, cycle, or are experiencing pain in your knees.
The IT band lives on the lateral portion of your thigh and runs from just below your knee to your pelvis. It’s made of tough connective tissue and muscle. The muscle is in the middle.
When it’s working right your IT band stabilizes your hip and knee. When it’s not working right you might experience pain along the outer portion of your knee. IT band syndrome is the overuse injury often suffered by runners and sometimes cyclists.
Massage can help. To help you give it a try I've posted a youtube video: IT Band Massage Quickie: Do It while You View It. I'm planning to post a couple more, a longer version with massage tools and another with the IT band stretched a little.
Another IT band massage video I like is this one by Art Riggs. If you're experiencing problems in your legs and you think it might be related to your IT bands this video is worth watching. And finally this one by Massagenerd is also worth checking out.

Quadriceps Massage

If you've got quads, you'll benefit from massaging them. But this massage is particularly helpful if you run (especially up hills), cycle, ski, board, play soccer, practice karate, squat, or jump rope.

Your quadriceps are a muscle group made up of four distinct muscles which live in the front of your thigh. The four muscles are rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, and vastus intermedius. But you can call them all Bob. They're probably the strongest leanest muscles in your body. They straighten your knee when getting up from a seat, walking, running, cycling or any other activity that requires you to straighten your leg. So if your knees are a problem, the problem may be in your quads. Massage them regularly and your knee may feel better, but your quads definitely will. Try it: Quad Massage: Do It while You View It.

Naked Aerobic Foot Massage

Clothing is not at option. Check out this new youtube video Naked Aerobic Foot Massage: Do It while You View It. It's intended to be a workout and foot massage, but mostly a workout. You can do it at your desk in about 2 minutes. And it really can get aerobic. Try ten reps with a minute recovery. This video is meant to be part of a series of aerobic foot massage videos. I posted the first of the series, Aerobic Foot Massage, in June. Clothing was optional in that one. Hope you like them.

Chest Pec Self-Massage

Since being hit by a car in July, I've been unable to run and have been doing lots of swimming and more weight lifting. As a result my pecs were sore so I came up with this chest massage YouTube video. It's done me some good, hope it does you some. Try it out Chest Pec Massage: Do It while You View It. Let me know what you think.

photo by Mylor

Foot Health and Self-Massage

Four million years for the human foot to evolve, 200 years for modern shoes to undo it.

Your feet are highly evolved complex instruments. Each foot contains 26 bones, 33 joints, and 20 muscles. Most of the major muscles live in the soles of your feet along with more than 200,000 nerve endings. These are among the richest concentrations of sensory neurons in your body. Their purpose is to transmit information to the rest of you, especially your legs. They thrive on sensation, without it they die.

Modern Shoes
Your shoes act as sensory deprivation chambers for your feet. Sensory deprivation has been shown to be harmful, sometimes deadly. Want to drive someone crazy? Deprive them of sensory input. Want to damage your body? Deprive it of sensory stimulation. That’s what shoes, in part, do to your feet.

Information Transfer
Our feet, as evidenced by their large supply of nerve endings, are designed to transmit information about our environment. Without shoes, our feet tell us when they hit the ground so our legs can absorb the impact. Because of the cushioned shoes we wear our feet don’t get the message and neither do our legs so neither can do their job. Our whole body pays the price, especially our legs. For more on this check out this article You Walk Wrong.

To some extent your body compensates for this lack of sensory feedback by getting used to the shoes in question and calculating the correct response to each step you take. To make the calculation easier, it makes sense to wear shoes with little cushioning and be consistent in the shoes you wear.

Massage
Bare foot walking provides a massage for your feet as they directly touch a rich and varied terrain. Shoes prevent your feet from getting the daily massage they need. Unless you’re walking around barefoot, you need another way to get your feet the sensory stimulation they must have to remain healthy.

A handy way to deliver the sensory information your body needs is massage, and the handiest way to massage your feet may not be with your hands but with your balls, tennis balls that is. Just put them under your feet and run with them. You should be seated when you try it. Here, take a look at this foot massage video and give your feet a treat.

Recommendation
Keep a couple of tennis balls under your desk, and from time to time kick off your shoes and roll your feet over your tennis balls. Your whole body will thank you for it.

Trigger Point Yoga

Admit it, you go to yoga for one reason and one reason only because it makes you feel better. For you, better might mean healthier, stronger, more flexible, or happier. Adding massage to your yoga practice will make you feel even better. How much better? For some it’s the difference between a firefly and a fire. Here’s why:

Massage and yoga are two different ways to stretch your muscles and two different ways to release trigger points. Trigger points are those nasty little knots that form in muscles day and night. If your body is to feel its best, you must continually release them. Yoga and massage release different types of trigger points.

If you weren’t aware that yoga asanas release trigger points, you’re not alone. Few yoga practitioners are aware of this hidden benefit. Fewer still are aware that trigger points are continually forming in their muscles. The more active you are the more trigger points you’re likely to have. Every time your muscles are overworked trigger points grow.

One reason you practice yoga is because of a need, albeit unconscious, to release trigger points. In part, it’s that release that gives you a sense of pleasure and pain. But yoga doesn’t release all of your trigger points. Some trigger points are resistant to yoga and release only when direct pressure is applied to the muscle, by pressing on it with a finger or a massage tool. The best way to eliminate trigger points is a combination of pressing and stretching your muscles which is what trigger point yoga is all about.

What’s a trigger point?
Think of a trigger point as a knot of muscle fibers. It serves as a defense mechanism when your muscles are injured, over worked, or weakened in some way. The tiny strands that make up your muscles contract into a hard knot. Imagine an injured muscle as being like a scared turtle receding into its shell. It’s a good defensive strategy but not good for getting any work done. Trigger point therapy is a way of getting your muscle to come out of its shell so it can get back to doing its job.

If the trigger point is not released your muscle will remain weakened. Other muscles will be recruited to do its job and they too will be compromised as they try to make up for your slacker muscle. In a weakened state, they’re more likely to get injured and form trigger points of their own, until your entire muscle group looses strength and range of motion.

This loss usually happens gradually over a long period of time so its not noticeable. Your loss of strength and range of motion will be blamed on the usual suspects: old age and arthritis. You will become less and less active and eventually your body will give up and you’ll take drugs to ease the pain. That too will happen over a long period of time so you’ll accept it as part of the natural aging process. Don’t!

What Types?
There are two types of trigger points, active and latent. The active ones emit pain on their own so you are aware you have one. The latent ones are sneakier and only emit pain when pressed. Latent trigger points are much more common. Both types reduce muscle function and can be resolved in the same way. Unless they’re released they will continue to weaken your muscular system and burn excess energy doing so.

Pressing it is stretching it
When trigger points are pressed they hurt. If they continue to be pressed the pain will give way to gain, and disappear like a fist when you open your hand.

Go
If you want to leave the yoga room feeling much better than when you entered it, add a touch of trigger point massage to your yoga practice. Click here to learn more about trigger point yoga.

above photo by Neeta Lind