SHOULD I DRINK WATER AFTER MY MASSAGE?

Should I drink water after my massage? We had this question from one of our clients yesterday, so that means some of you may be having, as well! This will be a shorter post than normal, but we wanted to give you a quick answer to a common question about massage.

The short answer is YES, ABSOLUTELY YES. If you have been to our clinic or any other massage clinic, you will find that you are most likely offered a cup of water after your massage. That is not enough water to drink after your massage, and no, coffee or tea doesn't count! After your massage, we recommend to drink at least 3-8 ounce cups of water after your massage. Not only should you be drinking 8-8 ounce cups of water day, there a couple reasons why it is so important to drink enough water on your massage days. 

The biggest reason is that your muscles need water. After your muscles have been worked out for an hour or so, they definitely need some water to rejuvenate, just like you need water after you

work out!   If you get a massage and do not drink enough water, you are WAY more likely to be super sore the next day. It is important to note that even if you drink plenty of water there is a chance that you will be sore for 24-72 hours after your massage, but if you can do something that will not only help your body to heal, but will also to prevent you from being sore the next day, why wouldn't you do it? Exactly!!

Drinking enough water is one of the easiest things to do that is extremely beneficial for your body. If you're anything like me, days can get very busy, which makes it a bit difficult to keep up with your water intake. That being said, there is a water bottle that tracks your water intake throughout the day and will light up when you need to drink more water. If you are having a hard time drinking enough water, I would highly recommend this! The water bottle is called Hidrate Spark if anyone is interested! 

Let us know if you have any other ideas on how to drink more water throughout the day when life gets crazy!

Contact us at: 619-917-4675 OR  massagelamesa@gmail.com 

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OUR FIRST STRETCHING CLASS

Stretching is such an important part of everyone's lives even if they don't know it. Everyone stretches and needs to stretch. This can be even just lifting your arms above your head and bending backwards when you wake up every morning although we would recommend stretching more than that. Some people think that stretching is only useful if you work out or exercise all the time, but that is not true at

all. It does not matter how much or how little you exercise, stretching is an easy, beneficial activity that helps to reduce pain and tension throughout the body. If you don't know where to start, our Stretching Workshop would be a great place to start! 

We hosted a Stretching Workshop on Saturday that turned out to be a great hit! We had some awesome clients and two of our awesome therapists there to learn! We focused the workshop around stretching to better the life of each person, so Angela helped to individualize stretches to each person and their specific needs and limitations. We also discussed why stretching is so useful and how it can be used to better the lives of everyone. We understand that life can get crazy sometimes and your health and wellness can be put on the back burner, but doing a set of stretches every day for 20 minutes to try and help the problem areas that you have is a great way to get through even when life is tough. A lot of stretches can be done anywhere- at home, at work, or even out and about. It is important to have a set of stretches that you know works on hand at all times because pain and tension doesn't have a set time for when it will kick in. We hope that everyone came out feeling a lot better with an assortment

of stretches that they can utilize whenever their trouble areas are acting up. We truly hope to see you at our future workshops, and thank you to everyone who came to our stretching workshop!

Contact us at: 619-917-4675 OR  massagelamesa@gmail.com 

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MEDITATION IN THE MORNING

Everyone has stress and handles it differently. One thing that has been proven to reduce stress and increase mindfulness throughout the day is meditating for ten to twenty minutes every morning. Yoga International. The point of meditation is to erase all outside distractions and completely inwardly focus on your mind and true being. By doing this, you are able to achieve peace and quiet any negative internal voices. Obviously, meditation is great, but why is so beneficial in the morning? Meditation is the act of quieting and resting the mind and finding a state of consciousness that is very much different than our normal awake state, according to

According to Mind Body Green, meditating helps to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. When this is activated, you are bale to enter a state of deep relaxation. This helps you to get pumped up and ready for your day without any caffeine or sugar. Even if you are tired when you wake up and would rather sleep for that extra thirty minutes, making yourself get up and meditate for that time will actually make you more awake than more sleep would make you. This is a great bonus for anyone needing more energy and focus throughout the day.

It helps to establish a "spam filter" for your mind. Everyday each one of us has countless thoughts that take over our mind. From the self-sabotaging ones like "You can't do this" or "Why do you even
bother," to the distraction ones like "I wonder what that donut burger that I saw on FaceBook tastes like" or "How many fish could I have caught already today if I was at the lake." No matter wha these thoughts are, they are time consuming, distracting, and decrease your productivity throughout the day. By meditating every morning, you are putting up your spam filter. This blocks out all of the negative and unimportant thoughts that may cross your mind throughout the day. Rather it will only allow the positive and productive thoughts that can help you to burn through your day like a pro!

The biggest way that meditating in the morning can help is by decreasing the amount of stress that you go into thew day with. As the day goes along, you are bound to run into some sort of stressor. Imagine that your stress level is already at a 5 in the morning from all of the ugliness the day before. When you run into those stressful situations, you are quickly brought up to a 10 on the stress meter, which make you eat poorly, get less productive, have a bad night of sleep, and become very distracted. Now imagine that you meditated this morning so your stress level is at a 1. As all of those stressful events happen throughout the day, you are only brought up to a 5. Still not great, but you would be much more inept to deal with that as opposed to being at a 10. This all adds into you being a more productive, happy person.

It may take you a while to truly get down the art of meditation, but there is no down side to meditation. There is no possible side effects and anything that could help you to better deal with life and stress is worth a try in my opinion.

Contact us at: 619-917-4675 OR  massagelamesa@gmail.com 

Book now by clicking HERE.

SPORTS MASSAGE

Sports Massage

At Massage La Mesa, we specialize in sports massage, which is different from a regular massage.  Our website has two pages covering the different types of sports massage and sports massage for injuries.  Here we will give an overview of how a pre-event massage session would be structured for a Basketball Player.  

The purpose of pre-event sports massage is to prepare the athlete for high-intensity activity.  Usually performed no more than 24 hours before the event or game, the massage is used to get the major muscle groups specific to the event ready for action.  This could be done by warming the muscles with traditional massage strokes, followed by more invigorating massage techniques including shaking, jostling, percussion and then moving into stretches or taking a joint through a range of motion.  This is not the time to correct dysfunction or reduce stress, which are two main goals of a typical massage session. 

Let’s take a basketball player for example.  Basketball requires running at full speed coupled with the mobility to stop, start, and change direction very quickly.  Players need to have sufficient strength to jump in the air, but enough mobility and flexibility to land in a controlled and graceful manner. Although basketball is not thought of as a contact sport, between lay-ups, jump balls, picks, hard fouls and random collisions, mobility and supple joints are key for a basketball player.  

  On the massage table, a basketball player needs attention to the gluteal group, the quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves.  Mobility of the hip joint might include the massage therapist picking up a leg and doing a straight leg stretch for the hamstring and then with a bent knee, doing circumduction of the hip joint.  One of my favorite things is to squeeze a muscle like the quadriceps against the underlying bone and shake it.  It feels great to overused muscles, and the compression with shaking works well to ready muscles for use.  Next is to repeat the process on the other leg and end both legs with tapotement or percussion to invigorate the muscles.  

The upper body including rotator cuff, upper trapezius, and latissimus dorsi can be targeted along with range of motion through the neck and shoulders. Stretching arms overhead with traction and doing circumduction with the shoulder joint is important, as is trunk mobility.  Spinal twists while the client is laying on their back can open the mid-trapezius, latissimus dorsi, and obliques.    

Different massage therapists can design their pre-event massage different ways and each client's needs are specific to their body, but this shows an example of a typical pre-event sports massage for a basketball player. 

Contact us at: 619-917-4675 OR  massagelamesa@gmail.com 

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FROZEN SHOULDER

Anatomy

The shoulder is a ball and socket joint, which means that the head of the arm bone fits into the shallow socket of the shoulder blade. Around this connection is a bundle of strong connective tissue that holds the arm bone and socket together. This is called the shoulder capsule. To ensure easy movement of the shoulder, there is synovial fluid that lubricates the joint. Mayo Clinic explains that when the shoulder capsule thickens and some of the synovial fluid is lost, it causes frozen shoulder, or adhesive capulitis. Frozen shoulder is most common in adults from forty to sixty and happens more frequently in women than in men. There is no definite cause of frozen shoulder, but there have been some links that have been found between frozen shoulder and diabetes. Another cause is immobilization of the shoulder for long periods of time. 

Symptoms

Frozen shoulder symptoms are often described as gradually worsening. The two biggest indicators of frozen shoulder are pain and reduced range of motion within the shoulder. Stiffness and tightness of the joint are often symptoms that patients with frozen shoulder also experience. Symptoms are explained in three phases- freezing, frozen, and thawing. Freezing is the first stage of symptoms where the pain in the shoulder tends to get continually worse. According to Ortho Info, as the pain in the shoulder gets worse, the range of motion gradually deteriorates, as well. This phase can last anywhere from six weeks to nine months. The next stage, frozen, is when activities of daily living may be the most difficult. Although the pain may subside slightly during this time, the stiffness and tightness remain. This phase can last from four to six months. Thawing is the final stage and is described as the improvement phase. During this time, symptoms will decrease and activities will get easier and easier until the patient is able to return to a completely normal life. This process can take a long time- anywhere from six months to three years. 

Treatment

There is no instant treatment for frozen shoulder. The process of recovering from this painful condition is long and hard. The treatment plan will mostly be focused on increasing the range of motion through many different methods. Physical therapy and massage therapy are the most common recommendations of doctors. Physical therapy is helpful in getting the shoulder to move in a slow process. There are many home exercises that are generally recommended to patients on top of regular physical therapy appointments. Massage therapy is helpful in breaking up some of the knots, adhesions, and tension within the soft tissue of the shoulder, which helps to open up the shoulder and increase range of motion. According to the RMT Education Project, another reason that massage can be extremely beneficial in the process of releasing a frozen shoulder is by increasing blood flow to the area. Decreased blood flow to the shoulder has been described as one of the possible contributing factors to frozen shoulder, so by increasing that flow, it helps the shoulder to heal faster and prevent future incidents of frozen shoulder. 

Contact us at: 619-917-4675 OR  massagelamesa@gmail.com 

Book now by clicking HERE.