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

Self-Massage for Fitness Professionals

If you’re reading this you probably need a massage. Or maybe you have a client or student who does. Most people aren’t aware of their need for massage but you are. As a fitness professional, you’re attuned to your body’s needs. You work with the bodies of clients and students, you observe them, evaluate them, and train them. You understand, better than most people, the regenerative and therapeutic powers of massage. But if going to a massage therapist every time a muscle tightens up is not an option; you might try self-massage.

Self-Massage Therapy
Self-Massage can improve your health, mood, and athletic performance. It’s handy, easy to learn, and you can’t beat the price. As a fitness professional, self-massage may even improve job performance, and it’s something you can teach your students and clients to help them feel better, and train more effectively.

Everyone uses self-massage to some extent. You’ve probably used it yourself to relieve a stiff muscle, work a kink out of your shoulder, or rub your feet after a hard day. Most athletes use it unconsciously, and often ineffectively. To get the most from self-massage you should use it with intent and effect by adopting some of the same techniques professional massage therapists use. All massage is therapy if performed properly.

Athletic Benefits
In addition to relieving muscle pain and soreness, self-massage therapy provides athletes with a plethora of benefits. It speeds recovery between exercise, and reduces the likelihood of injury. It improves circulation and warms muscles making them more fluid. Most of the performance enhancing affects of massage are obvious. That’s why athletes have used massage for thousands of years, since before the first Olympic Games in ancient Greece.

Improved Health
Not all benefits of self-massage are self evident. Recently, researchers discovered a host of health related benefits associated with massage. Clinical tests show that when massage is received at least twice a week for thirty minutes it strengthens the immune system. It’s also been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Stress not only effects mood but is a major cause of illness and injury. Massage, therefore, does double duty to improve health by strengthening your resistance to illness and reducing a cause of disease and injury. Of course, if your health and mood improve, you will be able to train more effectively and your athletic performance will benefit.

Stimulating and Relaxing
Massage has the ability to both energize and relax depending upon the stroke you choose. In that sense, it is like music for your body. Just as you would use gentle music while teaching yoga to relax your students, you would use gentle massage strokes to relax your body. However, if you were teaching a spin or kick boxing class you’d play more intense music at a higher volume to energize your students. Likewise, if the goal of your massage were to invigorate, your strokes would be intense and energizing.

Self-Massage and Professional Massage
Self-massage is not a replacement for professional massage therapy. The two are not mutually exclusive. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Self-massage provides almost perfect feedback. While a professional massage therapist can only guess how each stroke feels to you, with self-massage you get immediate feedback. Self-massage is convenient, it teaches you about yourself, and it’s empowering. On the other hand, assisted massage can be much more relaxing than self-massage. Professional massage therapists can go deeper and can better treat injuries because of their training and experience.


For You and Your Students
Use self-massage regularly to ease sore muscles, improve your health, mood and athletic performance. After you’ve learned first hand, how effective self-massage can be, feel free to teach it to your students and clients when they have a sore muscle or a hard workout.

Learning It
Self-massage therapy is easy to learn because it’s practically instinctive. There are only a few technical strokes to master, which, actually, aren’t all that technical. They include gliding, squeezing, squeezing and rolling, pressing, pressing and rolling, and drumming. Once you’ve learned these strokes, it’s just a matter of combining them and varying their intensity to suit your immediate needs.

Let’s try a few strokes. Glide your hand over your legs a few times. Vary the speed, pressure, and location of each glide. Next, press a few fingers into different locations on your shoulder with varying intensity. Then try squeezing your triceps. Slightly vary the intensities and location of each squeeze. Close your eyes and feel into each stroke. If you can perform these basic strokes and they make sense to you, learning effective self-massage will be easy.

Self-Massage for Runners

Every runner has a different reason for needing a massage. Maybe yours is your feet or your calf muscles? Or maybe it’s your knees and hips that need attention? Perhaps your quads or hamstrings are too tight? One thing is certain though, if you run often, or you run hard, your legs and possibly your whole body needs frequent massage. But are you getting it regularly?

While sports massage therapy has grown rapidly during the last twenty years, it can’t meet the needs of millions of runners. Just as a professional chef isn’t available every time you get hungry, a professional massage therapist can’t be on-hand every time a muscle tightens-up. One solution may be self-massage. Don’t snicker; self-massage is an effective way to relieve muscle soreness, prevent injury, and just plain feel better. It’s also easy to learn and simple to do.

Most runners know sports massage can improve athletic performance. What they don’t know is how to apply the benefits of massage to themselves. That’s where my new book Self-Massage for Athletes comes in handy. It teaches the same basic massage strokes professionals use. While not everyone can attend the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, everyone can learn a few simple massage techniques to help themselves feel better fast.

Let’s Try It
There are only three strokes you need to know for now: gliding, squeezing, and drumming. Once you’ve learned them, and some simple variations, you can apply them anywhere between your head and toes, and voila, free massage. So roll up your sleeves, get your running shorts on, and keep reading. You won’t need massage oil, massage tools, or malpractice insurance; just a sense of touch and a willingness to use it.

Stroke #1: The Glide
We’re just going to massage the legs, or to be more accurate: You are going to massage your legs. Begin with, the stroke that most sports massage therapists begin with, the glide stroke. Professionals call it effleurage. But by any name, it’s a glide, slide, or skimming motion. Get seated, get comfortable and try it. Just glide your hand over your thigh for starters. Use this stroke to warm up your body before the more intense massage strokes to come.

As a general rule, when applying deep pressure, your hand should move in the direction of your heart to help blood flow back to your heart. Try ten gliding strokes up and down your right thigh. Use light pressure away from your heart and deeper pressure toward your heart.

OK, now that you’ve got the idea try gliding your hand over your entire leg, from your ankle to your seat. You can use both hands if you like. Try ten strokes varying intensity and velocity. By reaching for your toes, you should get a gentle stretch as well. When you’ve sufficiently warmed your first leg move onto your second leg, again covering its entire surface. This should feel good, if it doesn’t, fake it for now, it will get better with practice. Let’s move onto:

Stroke #2: The Squeeze
This is a compression stroke called squeezing because it compresses the muscles you’re squeezing. It should be pleasing; let’s see if it is. The purpose of the stroke is to warm your skin and muscles, and improve your circulation. Improved circulation brings fresh nutrients and oxygen to your cells and forcefully ejects the toxins that have accumulated during your run. This is powerful therapy for runners because it feeds and cleans the very muscle cells that took it in the shorts during your run.

Try squeezing your calf muscles. Start at the bottom of your calf and work your way up in the direction of your heart. While keeping your calf muscles relaxed, vary the intensity of your squeeze. Try varying the volume, i.e., the surface area that you squeeze. Perform a minimum of ten squeeze strokes. Then massage the calf muscles that live in your other leg.

Now try squeezing your entire leg, begin at your Achilles heel and move on up as far as you can go. Use two hands if you want. Go slowly; it’s not a race. Stop at your butt. Massage your other leg using this squeezing stroke. Just press and compress the muscles as you gradually squeeze up your leg until there is no more leg to squeeze. Then you can either do it all again or move onto:

Stroke #3: The Drum
This stroke is called drumming for reasons that will be clear in the next sentence. It’s a stimulating stroke in which you use your hands to actually drum your body. Think of your body as percussion instrument with a low pain threshold, so don’t drum too hard or loud. If the neighbors complain, it’s too loud. A soft easy tapping will do. You can use your fists, flat open hands, the sides of your hands, or really any part of your hand that feels good. Begin at your feet, and move toward the largest muscles in your body, the ones you’re sitting on. Try drumming your other leg. Get a good rhythm going, and when you’ve had enough, stop.

Just Getting Started
Congratulations on completing the beginning of a powerful new practice that will improve your running. Massage will get easier and more effective with repetition. So practice it regularly, directly after running. You’ll find that your muscles are less sore and you’ll recover more quickly between runs. With time, you’ll also notice that your health has improved; that’s because frequent massage strengthens the immune system. It also reduces stress, anxiety, and depression which will improve your mood. And if nothing else, your improved mood will make your running partners happier as they desperately try to keep up with you.

Most of all have fun with it. If it feels good, do it. Self-massage is not an exact science. It’s user friendly and doesn’t require the precision of stretching. Eighty percent of self-massage is just showing-up and practicing it regularly. If after every run, you massage your legs for ten minutes, your running will improve, your health will improve, and your mood will improve.

FAQ: About YoMaMa

What is YoMaMa?
YoMaMa is the union of yoga and massage, actually self-massage. By incorporating a massage tool as a yoga prop, your yoga students receive the benefits of massage and yoga. YoMaMa brings a new awareness to an ancient practice.

Who practices YoMaMa?
People who want to experience yoga and their bodies in an exciting new way.

Why Combine yoga and massage?
Merging yoga and massage delivers a deeper physical experience and a healthier practice. The combination of benefits will empower old students and attract new practitioners to your mats.

What are the advantages of YoMaMa?
Your students will receive all the benefits they’d normally get from yoga plus many of the most salubrious perks of massage, including:

• Relief from muscle pain and soreness
• Improved health and mood
• Increased energy
• Reduced likelihood of injury
• Improved knowledge of your physical nature
• Improved athletic performance and fitness
• Faster recovery time between workouts
• Reduced muscle tension and stress
• A trigger point release to your entire back body and feet

To learn more about the benefits of self-massage, see Chapter 2 of Self-Massage for Athletes, a book that serves as a resource for YoMaMa practitioners.

Does YoMaMa provide any other benefits?
In addition to the long term benefits of a yoga practice, YoMaMa packs a sensational short term benefit, an immediate sense of physical well-being. This benefit is measured by how much better practitioners feel leaving the class than entering it. Your students will walk out of class feeling as if they’ve experienced a full body massage and a yoga practice.

Is YoMaMa a form of therapy?
YoMaMa heals the body, mind, and spirit in a new immediate way by mating two of the oldest therapies in the world.

What form does it take?
YoMaMa is both a preventive and a remedial therapy. All active people sustain tiny injuries, of which they are largely unaware. Because yoga and massage can both prevent those injuries from growing, they are excellent preventive therapies.

How does YoMaMa work as a remedial therapy?
The goal of preventive and remedial therapies is similar. Both therapies prevent a medical problem from growing larger, while allowing the injury to heal. Preventive medicine corrects a problem before you’re aware of it. Remedial medicine is a post awareness therapy. As such, both yoga and self-massage help you stay healthy and become healthier.

How much class time will the massage component take?
As little as ten minutes or as much time as you like. The massage component is time well spent because it delivers benefits that would otherwise only be available through a massage therapy session.

Why is it called YoMaMa?
The practice is named YoMaMa because it combines one part traditional
yoga with two kinds of massage. The first massage component is the implicit massage that is traditionally part of yoga but is rarely noticed. For instance, in a seated pose when weight is brought to bear on your glute muscles and the muscles are moved they’re massaged. Many yoga asanas impart an implicit massage to your internal organs, especially twisting poses. The second massage component in YoMaMa is explicit and is delivered by a yoga prop or massage tool.

What does the massage tool look like?
The massage tool looks like a big blue “S,” standing for Super Yoga. It’s molded from a durable polymer composite and measures twenty inches long by ten inches wide, and weighs two pounds. At each end of the “S” is a small ball or knob which serves as a powerful massage tool. In fact, the entire prop can be used for massage. The serpentine piece between the knobs can glide over and compress muscles, to improve circulation and energy.

How does the tool work?
You can use the massage tool much as you’d use any other yoga prop to assist in asanas. The tool also gives you the power to deliver a complete back body massage in about ten minutes. Lying supine, your body will naturally relax letting you release trigger points and neuromuscular tension while restoring balance and energy. You’ll feel an intense and immediate release and will leave class feeling a sense of well-being bordering on euphoria. Students will attend yoga classes more often and bring friends to experience the wow effect of YoMaMa. Teachers will find their classes grow in size and will have to schedule more private sessions as more people are attracted to this new style of yoga.

How can I use the massage tool?
Lie on your back and allow your body to relax onto the yoga mat. Then place the end of the tool under your back body. Allow gravity to press your muscles onto the knob. The pressure releases muscle tension, stress, and trigger points while promoting chi balance. Then by moving the knob along the muscles in your back body a couple of inches at a time, first on one side of your body and then on the other, you’ll gradually massage points along your entire back body releasing waves of tension and stress. YoMaMa puts the power of massage directly in your hands.

How about my feet?
You can massage them using the little knob at the end of the tool. This too provokes a powerful release of energy. YoMaMa gives you the benefits of a foot massage without the costs.

When can the massage tool be used in class?
It may be used anytime but it should be used at least twice, once to massage your lower back body and feet, and a second time right before shavasana to massage your upper back body from your head to your glutes, along your erector spinae muscles, and the muscles around your scapula.

Can the tool be used at other times during class?
Yes the massage tool can be incorporated into yoga asanas just like other yoga props at your discretion. For instance, when balancing on one leg and extending the other leg straight-out in front of you, the tool can be used to both massage the foot of your extended leg, and support it. By pressing the knob into different points on your foot, you’ll get an intense foot massage and yoga stretch. The tool can also deliver a potent glute massage by balancing on one leg while folding the other leg on top of your knee and pressing the knob into your glutes. YoMaMa delivers an exciting new dimension to the physical experience of yoga.

Is the massage tool easy to use?
It’s easy to learn, and simple to use. Any yoga teacher trained as a YoMaMa instructor can lead you through the massage component effortlessly. YoMaMa is extremely easy to teach. If you teach yoga and are interested in teaching YoMaMa,contact us.

What does it cost?
You can get it online for between $30 and $40, and by delivering a constellation of massage benefits, it pays for itself in no time. So it’s cheap if you use it and expensive if you don’t.

Where can I get it?
The tool, called the Backnobber II is made by the Pressure Positive Company, can be purchased at their website www.pressurepositive.com or at Amazon. You can also use the Thera Cane® or Body Back Buddy™ massage tools.

Why teach YoMaMa?
It’ll attract more students to your yoga classes and private sessions because it provides a new and exciting experience for everyone. You’ll feel improvement in your own body and see it in your students. YoMaMa delivers the goods to students and teachers. For more information on YoMaMa contact Rich.

Treating Your Trigger Points

by Rich Poley©

“The key to treating trigger points is to lengthen the muscle fibers that are shortened by the trigger point mechanism.” Travell & Simons’ Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, Volume 2, page136.

Gentle stretching lengthens muscles and removes many latent trigger points; but not even the super heroes of stretching, yoga and Pilates, will get them all. Trigger point therapy, which can be a powerful extension of yoga and Pilates, will eliminate the most dangerous ones. This simple remedy can be incorporated into most fitness classes.

Finding
Because you have many trigger points, they’ll be easy to find. Just press different places on a muscle until you hit a tender spot. Trigger points are more likely to be found in the areas of your body that are stiff and tense. Your upper back is a good place to look. If you run, you’ll find trigger points in your leg muscles. If you swim or play tennis, you’ll find them in your shoulders. Almost everyone has them in the bottoms of their feet.

Releasing
Once you’ve located a trigger point, continue pressing it until the tenderness goes away. Pulsing or slightly changing the angle you’re pressing usually helps. Mild trigger points should resolve within five breaths. After releasing a trigger point, slowly move the muscle through its full range of motion three times. An extremely tender point may take more than one session to dissolve. Use a body marking pen to tag it and come back to it on succeeding days.

Relaxing
Relaxation facilitates stretching and is the secret to releasing trigger points. To relax a muscle, you must relieve it of its work load. Muscles perform two jobs: they stabilize and mobilize. If your muscles are working to stabilize you, they won’t be able to relax. To relieve your muscles of this burden, lie down, preferably on a yoga or Pilates mat. Here are some more tips to help you deactivate triggers:

• Warm your muscles with exercise, a shower, a hot tub, or by gliding your hands over them.
• Use a massage tool to extend your reach and power to press deeply with less effort.
• Let gravity do the work by placing the tool between the mat and your trigger point.
• Tensing a muscle before relaxing it, will identify the muscle and help it release.
• Straighten the muscle and direct your full attention toward feeling it let go.
• Breathe slowly and deeply into your abdomen, exhalation is relaxation.
• Relaxation is an active process.

Benefiting
Trigger point therapy will remove the knots from your muscles. To find out how much better you’ll feel and perform, try it. It’s the difference between yes and no.

Thumbs Up or Down

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.

Therapeutic Foot Massage and Exercise

I hope you'll try my new foot massage video, Foot Massage with 2 Tennis Balls: Do It while You View It, for foot therapy and a workout. I used it to treat my neuroma and cramping in my feet. The cramping in my feet had been a problem my whole life. The neuroma had been bothering me on and off for a few years but grew much worse in the last six months. And now both problems are gone. In addition to its therapeutic value, this video can be a pretty good workout. Do it fast, hard, and often. It'll give you an aerobic workout at your desk and get the circulation going in your feet no matter how cold your office gets.

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

Hamstring Massage

Want healthier, happier, younger, snappier, more articulate hamstrings? Check out the latest youtube video Hamstring Massage: Do It while You View It. A tennis ball, a backnobbber II, and your own hands are all you need. Actually all you need are your hands but the other stuff is nice. Give it a try and let me know what you think.




photo by ijiwar jimbo creative commons license

Foot Massage Workout

If you’ve ever wanted to warm up at your desk before going out for a run, walk, or whatever, I've got a video for you. It's a short warm up you can do at your desk before going out or, if you want a challenge, it's an interval routine you can do in your chair. It comes with free foot massage. To try it now, click here

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

Neck Massage: Don't Neglect Your Neck

Neck massage is one of the kindest things you can do for your body. I just posted a new neck massage video that I've been working on for the last few weeks. Working on this video, experimenting with different neck massage routines, was one of the most pleasant things I've done in the name of work in a long time. If you don't want to spend hours, days, and weeks looking for the best neck massage of all time just click and follow along: Neck Massage: Do It while You View It.
Thanks and let me know what you think.

Wrist Massage

Every active person can benefit from a wrist massage once in awhile and depending on the state of your wrists you may need one every day.

This massage is recommended for people who train with weights, practice yoga, ride mountain bikes, climb rocks, swing rackets, bats or clubs, spend their days working on a computer keyboard or anyone who wants healthy happy wrists.

7 Steps to Happy Wrists
Step 1: Roll’em Up
If you’re wearing long sleeves roll them up and bare your wrists.

Step 2: Squeeze
Rest your hand on your thigh and wrist in the air. Squeeze your wrist. Then begin pulsing your squeeze by alternately tightening and loosening your grip about ten times. When you’ve massaged the first wrist move onto the second and then to step 3.

Step 3: Front Press & Roll
Rest the back of your wrist on your thigh and press & roll your thumb into your wrist. Relax your arm and breathe deeply. When you’ve covered one wrist move onto the other and then to step 4.

Step 4: Back Press & Roll
Turn your wrist over, rest it on your thigh, and press & roll your thumb or three middle fingers from your other hand in small circles into the back of wrist. Relax your wrist and breathe deeply. Press & roll a finger into the sides of your wrist. When you’ve covered one wrist move onto the other, then to step 5.

Step 5: Experiment
Rest your left hand on your left thigh with your fingers pointing toward your left knee and your hand folded at a 90 degree angle from your arm. This position will flex the muscles on one side of your wrist and stretch them on the other side. Massage both sides of your wrist by pressing and rolling your fingers into your wrist. Look for tender spots. Try folding your wrist the other way and massage both sides of it. Relax your arm and go slowly looking for tender spots. When you’ve covered one wrist move onto the other and then to step 6.

Step 6 Drumming
Drum or tap your fingers on your wrists.

Step 7 Rock’n Roll
Let it go, move your arms quickly keeping your hands in a fist!

Conclusion: Try variations on this routine every time your wrists feel stiff or painful.
Suggested Time: 3 to 4 minutes (but take as long as you need)

Benefits of Wrist Massage
*Relieves muscle pain and soreness
*Prevents Injuries such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
*Renewed flexibility to wrists
*Younger happier wrists
*Improved muscle performance
*Energizes
*Releases trigger points
*Feels good
*Activates acupressure points
*Relaxes
*More flexible wrists

Check out our YouTube video: Wrist Massage: Do It While You View It
For more information on the wrist see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrist
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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.

Massage Your Hands (mano y mano)

Every active person needs the benefits that massage can give their hands. Here’s how to get those benefits whenever you need them.

Eight Steps to Happy Hands

Step 1: Glide
Glide your hands against each other to warm them. This rubbing should produce an energy or force in your hands. After briskly rubbing the fronts of your hands together for about 30 seconds stop. Hold your hands palm to palm about a quarter inch from each other without touching. When you can feel the force you’re ready to move to step 2.

Step 2: Finger Pull and Squeeze
Script: Squeeze each finger beginning with your thumb. Make a fist, put a finger in the center of the fist. Squeeze the finger, pulling and twisting it out. When you’ve massage all five digits on one hand massage the remaining five. Squeeze the skin on the side of the hand below the pinky.

Step 3: Hand Squeeze
Squeeze your left hand with your right hand. Begin at your wrist, move your right hand towards your finger tips re-squeezing every inch or so until you’ve covered your hand. Then do the other hand and alternate a few times between the two until you’ve got it covered. Relax, look for tender spots, and breathe deeply.

Step 4: Press and Roll
Front of Hands
Interlace your fingers, rest the back of your right hand on the outside of your left thigh, stretch your right hand with your left. Press and press & roll your left thumb into your open right hand. After covering your right hand reverse positions and use your right thumb to massage your left hand.
Back of Hands
With the fronts of your hands facing each other and your fingers interlaced, press and roll the fingers from your right hand into the back of your left hand. Massage between the bones in the back of your hand. Just below the knuckles feels especially good. Massage the muscle tissue between your thumb and index finger. When the back of your left hand has been massaged, return the favor and massage your right hand. Then release your hands from their embrace and massage the backs of each hand by pressing and rolling the fingers from one hand into the back of the other.
Going Deeper
For an extra deep massage rest your left hand, palm up, on your right thigh and press and press & roll your right elbow into it. If it feels good on your left hand massage your right hand.


Step 5: Gliding
Repeat Step 1 by gliding your hands together.

Step 6: Drumming
Drum, slap, or tap your hand with your fingers, fist, or palm.

Step 7: Rock’n Roll
Shake your hands. Let them dance.

Step 8: Breathe Deeply & Sit Quietly
Take three deep breaths into your lower belly and feel the difference a good hand massage makes.

Suggested Time: 5 minutes.
Conclusion: Try variations on this routine every time your hands deserve it.


Benefits of Hand Massage
Relieves muscle pain and soreness
Prevents Injuries
Renewed flexibility to hands
Younger happier hands
Improved muscle performance
Energizes
Releases trigger points
Feels good
Activates acupressure points
Relaxes
More powerful hands

For more information on hands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand


Booty Ball Massage

If you want to run faster, jump higher, or sit prettier, a glute massage is your ticket. Yes, every active person needs the benefits that only a glute massage can bequeath. If you have a desk job, here’s how to get those benefits at work.

Choose One

Softball, baseball, hard rubber ball, golf ball, squash ball

Get a ball. Size matters, so does hardness. Choose the size that’s right for your chair and seat. The softer the seat the bigger the ball. It’s a hard ball and a hard chair you want. Choose the smallest ball that you can feel when you sit and roll your hips over it. A hard squash ball is best butt if your seat has lots of padding you’ll need something bigger maybe a golf ball, tennis ball, baseball or even a softball. Then you’ll need to get on the ball.

Five Steps to Massage Your Glutes
Step 1: Choose sides
Choose the side you want to start with, the one that most needs a massage.

Step 2: Roll it
Place the ball on your chair and your glutes on the ball. Then roll 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 a different sized ball works better, if you have another ball handy try it. After massaging one side give your other side a ride.

Step 3: Turning the other cheek
Rotate your hips in small circles, then every once in a while move the ball to a new spot under your glutes. Look for tender spots. You can move the ball by shifting your glutes or just picking up the ball and replacing it.

Tips:
Music makes this massage more effective and fun
Relax your glutes
Breathe into your butt
Press the heels of your hands into your quads while continuing to roll your hips.
It may take you a couple of tries to find the right ball but when you do you’ll know it

Step 4: Drumming
Drum, slap, or tap your glutes with the heels of your hands or your fists. You’ll have to stand up to drum your glutes but they’re worth getting up for.

Step 5: Rock’n Roll
Get up and dance. Wake it and shake it, move your booty!

Conclusion: Try variations on this routine every time your glutes feel tight, or your lower back or hips need attention. If it’s been awhile since you had a good glute massage do this routine often.

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

Benefits of Glute Massage
Releases trigger points
Activates acupressure points
Relieves muscle pain and soreness
Feels good
Improves athletic performance
Relaxes
Energizes
Gives your hips a workout
A treat for your seat
Massaging your glutes massages the largest muscles in your body
Massaging your glutes may relieve pain in your lower back and hips

Note: I 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.

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

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

Watch the YouTube Video Booty Ball Massage: Do It While You View It