Massage

Sports massage is not just for sports men and women! It is a deeper, more intense treatment ideal for anyone suffering from muscular pain or excessive muscular tension anywhere in the body, joint stiffness, sciatic symptoms, tension headaches, whiplash and many other conditions.

Muscles and joints are put under great stress from factors such as injury, poor posture, an overly active or sedentary occupation and sport and exercise. Muscles respond to this stress by forming scar tissue which cause muscles fibres to adhere or "stick together", shortening the muscle, making it excessively tight and preventing the muscle from stretching, contracting or indeed functioning properly at all. This invariably leads to pain and dysfunction and the muscle subsequently becomes weak as it is not used properly. This then means that other muscles are called upon to do the job of the dysfunctional muscle. These muscles are usually ill-equipped to perform these tasks and so they then quickly become overused, excessively tight and dysfunctional and so the condition "spreads" to other areas, becomes chronic and can affect many muscle groups if it is not treated promptly.

Trigger Point Therapy

Using his thumbs, fingers, hands, fists, forearms and elbows, Matt can precisely locate "trigger points" in an affected muscle. This is a palpable "knot" of adhered muscle fibre that is shortening the muscle, causing excessive tension and possibly pressing on a nerve which may even be causing referred symptoms into another part of the body (examples of which would be how trigger points in the neck can cause headaches and trigger points in the hip and buttock can cause sciatic sensations down the leg). These "knots" have no blood supply and the body can only heal something if it can get blood to it.

The trigger point or knot is treated with deep, direct pressure. This is often painful at the time, but as the pressure is maintained, the pain will often diminish. It is vital to the success of the treatment that the patient remains relaxed so the pain is always kept within the patient's pain threshold. This is because excessive pain would cause the muscle to tighten further, which would be counter-productive.

Stimulating the Body's Healing Process

As the pain diminishes during the pressure, this would indicate that the trigger point has been successfully treated. The pressure helps to break up the knot, allowing blood to flow in to the surrounding tissues. This means that the body can then continue the work done by the massage therapist and over the subsequent 4 or 5 days post-massage, the knot should continue to reduce in size. Tension subsequently decreases and pain reduces, allowing the muscle to once again function efficiently. After the trigger point therapy, the affected muscle is treated with advanced stretching and muscle release techniques which lengthen the muscle, and break apart any adhesive bonds that may still be restricting the muscle. After a massage, it is important to rest and gently stretch the area to assist the healing process, and also to drink plenty of water to allow the excretion of toxins that may have been trapped in and around the knots and could have been released in to the blood stream.

Matt is inviting you to undertake a course of up to 6 weekly or fortnightly sessions with him. If he can help, your pain and dysfunction should be dramatically improved by the 6^th session. If Matt doesn't think he can help you, he will advise you and refer you on to a different practitioner such as a Chiropractor, Osteopath or Physiotherapist.