Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1492048
L i s te n to T h e A B M P Po d c a s t a t a b m p.co m /p o d c a s t s o r w h e reve r yo u a cce s s yo u r favo r i te p o d c a s t s 19 • With your fi ngers sinking into the relationship between the adductors and the quads, your thumb palpating the communication between the adductors and the hamstrings, and your palm getting a good read on the adductors, continue to fl ex and extend your client's knee to get a feel for each of these interactions. TALK IT OUT To up your awareness, you can have your client chime in both physically and verbally. Ask them to actively fl ex and extend their knee against your resistance, giving you more information about how the knees behave with each other. Also ask your client to tell you how each of these movements feels, giving you a better sense of how things are going internally. From here, you can do all the work you have been trained to do. Compression, friction, pin and stretch—it's up to you. Just remember that the adductors aren't very well acquainted with the happiness that comes with letting go. This will be new for them. They will need some time to adjust. Allison Denney is a certifi ed massage therapist and certifi ed YouTuber. You can fi nd her massage tutorials at YouTube.com/RebelMassage. She is also passionate about creating products that are kind, simple, and productive for therapists to use in their practices. Her products, along with access to her blog and CE opportunities, can be found at rebelmassage.com. And vice versa. But the adductors? If they relax for even a minute, all hell breaks loose. OK, maybe not all hell. But small amounts of hell over an extended period of time eventually translates into a lot of hell. There's too much that can go wrong with the hip complex. If those adductors aren't dialed in and in control, a little shift can equate to a downward spiral of pain. So the adductors learn early that being in control is a necessity. And they perfect it. Which is great. We need someone to be in control. But, as I always say, a person's (or a muscle's) greatest asset is also their biggest downfall. In their secret efforts to master the art of puppeteering, the adductors fall victim to the inability to let go. And letting go, as you might have heard, is the key to happiness. But teaching the adductors to let go is like asking DNA to stop writing code. It's not going to happen. The best we can do is shine a light on how being a control freak can be a little destructive. Just a little . . . STEP BY STEP Try this: • With your client in the sidelying position, have them slide toward you so that their back is close to the edge of the table. Preferably they are wearing exercise shorts, because draping with groin work can be cumbersome. Have the client bend their top leg toward their chest and extend their leg that is on the table. • Standing at their back and situated at the hamstrings, hold the ankle that is on the table and passively fl ex their knee, bringing their foot toward your hip. With your free hand, grasp the adductors and tell them they can let go—this might not come easy to them. VIDEO: "ADDUCTORS: PART DEUX" 1. Open your camera 2. Scan the code 3. Tap on notification 4. Watch! For massage therapists and bodyworkers worldwide, the challenge presented to us when a client walks (or limps) into our offi ce with tight or torn adductors never fails to keep us guessing.