Working with Legs in Sports Massage Therapy

Video Transcript

"So what we are going to work on now is the legs. Draping is very important when you are working with the legs. What I have done is put one on the mid-section and once again he will have one going horizontal over his front part. What I am going to do is I am going to comfortably grab the leg. You keep the one horizontal where it is it but the one that is kind of vertical we are going to tuck it under. Make sure the private areas are covered up. Once again we are going to apply the Shea butter to his leg. It is very important that I evenly distribute it throughout the leg. One is to relax them, two is to connect, and thirdly to see if there are any other areas that I need to concentrate on to help the massage. A very crucial area to the legs are the shins and the calves. These are very important to people who exercise. They are constantly pounding and this is taking a lot of load and with runners, shin splints are very evident. With anyone who does any sprints or anything or climbing the calves are very important. What I do is I work them at the same time and what I do is kind of cuff the calf and put my palm on the shins and I just pull out, pull out and press down, pull out and press down, pull out and press down, pull out with my fingers and press down with my palms, all the way down to the Achilles tendon which is this real hard tight tendon that connects the bottom of your foot and your calf together and I stretch. Once again I pull out and push down, pull out and push down, pull out and push down and then I stretch. How does that feel? Last time, pull out and press down, pull out and press down. It is very important that you use as much of your hand that you can because the leg muscles are very large and that is probably why you get so tired when you work those legs because it is such a large muscle and it takes a lot of energy. So from there we are going to work our way up to the quads."