18/04/19

Sports Massage Clinic 

1 hour 

What happened during the session:

During this session, I spent 20 minutes massaging the client’s hamstrings, 30 minutes massaging the client’s quadriceps and 5 minutes performing and MET on the hamstrings in a SLR. The remaining 5 minutes of the hour session was spent wiping down the client and the equipment used.
This client comes to get treatment regularly, focusing mainly on their legs each session and the occasional maintenance of the back and shoulders following a previous injury. This client plays rugby and this week needed maintenance on their legs primarily on their quadriceps after a game and training earlier in the week. At the beginning of the week, this client played a game of rugby and trained legs in the gym so when they came into the clinic on Monday their DOMs were too painful to work deep into the muscles and to feel the full benefits of the massage treatment.
As the client had previously used heated products as a form of pain relief such as deep heat, I decided to use a hot balm with this client as it had been over 72 hours since their last training session. I could apply effleurage, petrissage and tapotement techniques spreading the medium, kneading, rolling, wringing, hacking and cupping to help increase blood flow to the area and to aid in the recovery from muscle soreness ready for the clients next training session and game.

Areas for improvement:

The clean down procedure this week was not up to scratch as the client still felt oily after being wiped down and I could not get all the grease out of the couch. Luckily after this session, the clinic was not too busy and I had more time to ensure the wipe down of the client and the equipment was done correctly. For the next session, this could be improved by allowing myself more time to perform the procedure of cleaning down correctly.

During this session, I felt like I lacked in communication skills, the client was comfortable and relaxed catching up with work and emails on their phone and therefore I felt that interrupting them to ask if the pressure was okay felt as if I was being rude and this is why I left them to it. For future sessions, I would have to interrupt the client to ensure that the treatment that I am providing is beneficial to the client.