I recently sprinted out to the garden, encouraged by the warmer weather, to move a mountain of earth to create my ‘dig for England’ vegetable patch.
I was far too enthusiastic in my task, so what does a remedial bodywork therapist do when she has mild muscle strain and aching shoulders?
Firstly I should have known better and taken it more steadily – resting every 10 to 15 minutes, interspersing the digging with an activity which uses different muscles and perhaps even done some limbering warming up exercises before lifting the spade and getting ‘stuck in’.
The effect of exercising hard or doing demanding physical work depletes muscles’ energy reserves and produces lactic acid which results in stiff aching muscles. Warming up beforehand increases the essential flow of oxygen to the muscles, increases metabolism to cope with the ‘waste products’ of muscle activity and allows the muscles to reach a steady state of functioning which maximises aerobic energy production.
But it was too late for recriminations, I was faced with needing to get myself limbered up and ready for my clients. I rested a while, did some gentle yoga stretches so that I didn’t ‘seize up’, had a warm bath, placed a heated wheat bag on the most aching muscles and finally did some self-massage techniques. But what I really would have recommended to myself as client was a deep massage using an appropriate aromatherapy blend and Hot Stones, concentrating on any trigger points of pain, all of which would relieve tension, help soothe the inflamed muscles and encourage a healthy blood flow.
I write this at the end of a day’s professional development workshop where we have been working on trigger points on back, shoulders and neck. It’s revision of a previous course and I can only say, it couldn’t have come at a more auspicious time – I now feel completely fit for work and out of pain.