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BULL RIDING & BODYWORK The 23-year-old has been climbing onto bulls ever since. He eventually turned pro and was the 2009 Rookie of the Year on the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) circuit, bringing in more than $160,000 in winnings that year. If Nance, a native of Paris, Tennessee, cowboys up and is lucky, he'll stay on a bull for eight seconds. That's eight seconds of getting tossed, jostled, twisted, pounded, thrashed, and pummeled. If he's extremely lucky, he won't break, dislocate, or strain anything. men who spend their days clinging to the backs of one-ton, ornery bulls. "It's not your 8-to-5 job," says Michael, 40. "Every guy you work on is different. There's a lot of lower back and sciatic work. A lot of pulled groins. A lot of hamstrings and quads. But mostly, it's backs, shoulders, necks, and arms." For Nance—who aspires to a career in chiropractic medicine once his bull- riding days are over—it's his right hip that's giving him problems. "My lower back gets out of place and my hips wind up getting out of alignment," he next place. So you see a lot of guys with lower-back pain. You see guys in their 20s who feel like they're in their 40s and 50s. But because they're still young, their tissue is more pliable. They're responsive to massage." Rich finds that the more successful the bull rider, the likelier it is he will seek out massage therapy to help him stay in top physical condition. "These are pretty tough guys," he says. "Things we would whine about, they just go on with it. But at the highest level of the sport, they Bull riders typically have a lot of holding patterns in their bodies because of the monotonous stress of bull riding. Deep-tissue massage, trigger-point release, and myofascial release all help reduce those holding patterns. But no matter what he does, by the next day, he's going to be stiff and sore. That's just in the job description of those in Nance's line of work. Meet massage therapist Stacie Michael. She's Nance's secret weapon, and one of the keys to his success as a bull rider, as far as he's concerned. Michael lives in Edmond, Oklahoma. During the week, she practices sports massage and works at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Edmond. But on the weekends, she hits the road to go where the bull riders are. She travels the country, sets up her massage table at bull-riding events, and offers to work out cowboys' kinks. And there's a definite need for these young says. "I can get a massage on my lower back and my hips, and I ride better afterward. It makes me a lot more loose. I think it even helps my reflexes." Nance is not alone in appreciating the value of massage therapy for bull riders. Mike Rich, the executive director of Justin Sportsmedicine Team, an organization tasked with the ringside medical care of bull riders and other rodeo athletes, recommends massage to every cowboy. Rich is an athletic trainer and physical therapy assistant. "It greatly benefits them to get in and get everything to relax," Rich says. "It may not feel so good, but it gets good results. They don't want to tighten up. After a ride, it's important to get some blood moving. These guys get jerked around, and then they get in a car and ride for eight hours to the 56 massage & bodywork september/october 2011 really try to take care of themselves. They're more like other professional athletes. You don't just tough it out and hope it goes away." EMOTIONAL TOUGHNESS Ryan McConnel, 24, from Colgate, Oklahoma, was ranked among the Top 10 bull riders in the country last year, and he's on track to repeat his success in 2011. Count him, too, among the bull riders committed to regular massage. "I love to get a massage around my shoulder blades to let everything get loose again," McConnel says. "My shoulders are in bad shape, and I tend