Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/867515
74 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k s e p t e m b e r / o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 2. LOCK AND STACK When I first started leaning, it felt very natural to stack my wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints and lock my knee(s) (Image 1). It also made biomechanical sense to me. When you're leaning on a client, it's similar to holding a push-up position. And it's easier to hold a push-up position with arms locked than it is to hold with arms bent. It was only later that I learned that leaning into a client while stacking and locking joints had actually been investigated. Edward Mohr conducted a field study where he tested various stances, table heights, and techniques. 1 He found that stacking and locking joints while properly leaning required less effort to produce a specific amount of pressure than other techniques that didn't utilize stacking, locking, and leaning effectively. 3. SEGMENT THE STROKE The leaning, stacking, and locking worked great, but I found myself tweaking my shoulder and neck at the end of a long stroke. That's when I started to rethink what makes a stroke relaxing, especially when working at a deep pressure. My opinion in the past was that a relaxing stroke is done at a slow pace and covers a long distance. But over time, I realized it's difficult, if not impossible, to maintain consistent, deep pressure over the course of a long stroke. To save my body, I started to test out segmenting a long stroke. For example, instead of doing one long back stroke, I did three smaller ones—upper, middle, and lower. The result was that I could easily maintain consistent deep pressure because now I was never out of position to lean into the client. But how did it feel to the person on the table? When I tested the segmented stroke out on clients and other MTs, no one complained. In fact, they loved it. My next challenge presented itself when I got to the end of the short stroke: How was I going to transition to the next short stroke without making the whole thing seem choppy? 4. PERFECT THE PAUSE No matter how I tried to transition from one short stroke to the next, one thing remained constant—I paused before I made the transition. At first, this concerned me, but when I looked back over how I delivered massage for the past 20- plus years, I realized that I paused during a massage stroke more often than I thought. For instance, I would pause when I found an area that needed more work. I'd also pause when pressing on a particular area that felt good to the client. And I would pause my stroke when a client would take a deep breath in and out. Pausing in and of itself was not disruptive to the massage. It was moving to be in position for the next stroke that turned out to be the challenging part. 5. MOVE YOUR FEET One time my wife, Lisa, and I were doing a couples massage together. When we walked out of the massage room, she turned to me and said, "Damn, you're noisy." Lisa was referring to the sound of my footsteps as I moved around the table. And she was right, I was noisy— but fortunately not the kind of noisy that seems to disturb clients. The reason I move my feet a lot, especially when doing really deep pressure, is because I want to be in a position to effectively and efficiently lean with all my body weight into the client. As I experimented moving from one short-stroke area to the next short-stroke area, I discovered that no matter what my feet did, the stroke was still relaxing as long as I maintained consistent pressure. 1