Diabetes and Massage

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11-17 June is Diabetes Awareness Week You may not realise, but massage can help if you are a diabetic. We won’t be looking at the causes and reasons for diabetes; there is a plethora of information on the internet available for you to browse at your leisure. What I want to focus on here is how massage can help, and if there are any techniques we need to modify or avoid with the diabetic client. First we’ll look at whether massage is appropriate for the diabetic client – your safety and health are paramount to us. In a treatment the first … Continue reading →

BMC Climbing Injury Symposium 2012

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I was privileged enough to be at the BMC injury Symposium this year, both as a participant and a speaker. It is a biannual event where climbing injuries and issues are presented and discussed by a number of interested parties from different areas of the climbing and medical world. We were very fortunate to have Volker Schöffl and his wife Isa – the authors of the original and fantastic book “One move too many”, and they presented a number of excellent sections on injuries, surgery and impacts of training on younger climbers. They spoke eloquently and with great detail on their … Continue reading →

L is for Lumbar

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It’s no secret that back pain is common among the general population – more so in recent times, where we find ourselves leading increasingly sedentary lives – or at the least, spending a lot more time in a sitting position, rather than up and about, out in the wild trying to catch our dinner or foraging for food! The lumbar region of your spine (lower back) is made up of five vertebrae and bears the majority of the body’s weight, it also happens to be the second most flexible region of your spine after the cervical region, your neck. There’s clearly a stability … Continue reading →

K is for Knee

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When we think of the knee (which is a modified hinge joint), and indeed any form of hinge, we would be mistaken to think that it is a simple joint – but it is far from that. Look at the snapshot on the left which shows a front on view of the right knee. You can see there’s a lot of muscles, tendons and ligaments and other (hidden) soft tissues all converging around this joint. Injuries to ligaments are probably the most common at this joint, and unfortunately often quite debilitating. In addition to ligament injury the knee is at … Continue reading →

J is for Joints

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Joints are the hinges in the body which allow for movement, some quite freely (e.g. the shoulder), and some with barely any movement at all (e.g. suture joints between the skull bones). The structures which limit movement at any joint are muscles, ligaments and tendons, plus the actual structural design of the bones forming the joint. Other factors which limit range of movement can be nerve length and activation, fascia and skin, edema (swelling), soft tissue apposition, joint fluid viscosity (how easy the movement is) and fluid quantity. The most common type is the synovial joint, an example being the … Continue reading →

Marathon training

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As the London and Manchester Marathon places have just been released, there are a number of first time marathon runners (and also more experienced runners) who are about to start training in earnest for the events early next year. For those of you who are planning on running a marathon, read on! We have worked with many marathon runners in the past and all have benefited from ensuring their training programmes include regular sports massage. Why is that? Well the simple answer is that regular maintenance massage can help to keep your muscles healthy and injury free, which is of … Continue reading →