Learn how to target problem areas of the back for an athlete with expert advice in this free instructional video lesson on sports massage therapy techniques.
Alexson Roy has practiced massage therapy for eight years and studied at the Academy of Massage Therapy in Inglewood. He is a practicing massage therapist at Beverly Hills Health and Fitness.
Usually after you go up and down you find the area that is giving you the most resistance and you want to pretty much target that area and kind of stretch it out. You can either target that area and stretch it out or apply more pressure to the area that is not as tense so it is pretty much up to you as a therapist which area you want to work on first. I pretty much want to work on the area that is not as intense and kind of bring attention to that area and not as much attention to the area that is really really tight. What I like to do is I like to, when I stretch it out, I kind of start on both ends of the back towards the shoulder and the lower back. What I do is I meet towards the shoulder blade so not too much pressure. Just enough to kind of pull from one side to the other, just grabbing the top point of the reference point and bringing everything up. Once again the best type of movement is back towards the heart, blood flows faster that way, back up. I use my knuckles because of kind of what it does to the muscles because it kind of separates the fibers a little bit. You don't have to, you can use your palms and you can even use your elbow if you want to but I like to use my knuckle. So press down and kind of bring it all up and to the shoulders and kind of around. You can go down the arms if you want to. Once again go down the lower base of the back, hold your head and shoulders as a reference and come up. Another good thing is to just create that heat and friction as fast as you can, bring blood and bring flow and those are the two healing properties, bringing blood and oxygen to the muscles.
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