1 hour in the Sports massage clinic– 05/11/2018

In this session, I massaged my clients back focussing mainly on the lower back where she stated she had pain.

What i did during the sesion:

During this hour session I massaged my clients back. My client has a bad back suffering from lower back pain for a while and has only today mentioned that it was disturbing her sleep and it was progressively getting worse.

I spent 5 minutes setting up the bed, 45 minutes massaging the client and 10 minutes cleaning down the client and bed space. I have not massaged this client before so keeping things professional was not a difficult task everything was done the way it should have been however, it could have been better if I had set up the couch before she arrived to ensure that I was ready for her and she was not waiting for me.

By beginning to massage the client and making my own discoveries, I noticed a lot of tension in the back around the medial border of the scapula and working out any adhesions within that area by thumbing ( a method of petrissage allowing you to focus on working deeper under the scapula)around the scapula.

My client had been suffering from lower back pain for a while I thought the best thing to do before massaging on her was to do a postural assessment to see if she has any weakness’.  I discovered that in her right leg she has a leg length discrepancy (right leg is shorter than the left leg) this could be due to structural reason for example a shorter bone, raised hip etc or it can be caused due to tight muscles and not stretching them out correctly. When relaying this information back to the client, she stated that she was advised to wear orthotics by a previous medical consultant when she was younger which she does not currently wear which could be why she was having pain.

This is why I have booked another session with this client to help ease the pain further and to see if the tension in the hamstring group can be released through massage of the back of the leg and going through stretches that she could do pre and post exercise.

Areas for improvement:

In today’s session my organisation skills let me down in a professional state. This is because I did not set the bed up before the client arrived and therefore she was sat waiting for approximately 5 minutes for me to set up the couch ready for her to be massaged. Had I of arrived in the clinic 5 minutes prior to the appointment time, I would have been able to set the bed up before she arrived ready to jump right in and no waiting around would have occured.

I communicated well with my client today as I knew she had large tender areas. After recognising these tender spots she was feeling a lot of pain so for future reference, when applying pressure on tender areas begin with an eased pressure and apply further pressure if they wish. This will help to reduce the pain in the client and will help to develop my communication skills.

Due to lack of towels today I did not have enough to cover all the areas that I wished to keep warm on my client as she tends to feel the cold very easily. This meant that after massaging her back and moving onto the legs I had to make the decision of covering up her back or the leg that wasn’t being massaged on at the time. In this situation I decided to cover up the back as it had recently been warmed up through massage so leaving it exposed would have lead to my client being even colder.

Things to remember: 

1. It looks more professional if you have the bed set up correctly before the client arrives
2. When working on the lower back it will keep the client warmer if you cover the upper half with a towel therefore they are not completely exposed.
3. If the client is suffering from a bad back keep checking that the pressure is good as you can hit tender points which you need to apply less pressure.
4. Bring more towels! It’s better to have an not need, than to need and not have.