How to Massage the Calf

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Gretchen Rivas with Relax to the Max Massage Therapy and today we are going to talk about how to massage the calf. The calf muscle is very strong and it carries a lot of weight for people especially for runners and athletes it can get very sore and tender and needs a lot of work so when you are working on it you want to put some oil on there, any type of oil that you can ingest you can put on the body so if you don't have a particular massage oil just grab vegetable oil out of the kitchen. It is fine to use that. What you want to do is come up through the gastroc muscle and come down on the sides of the calf and get in there and do a little bit of cross fiber friction on this leg to kind of break up any fibers or adhesions that may be in the leg and then come up through here. You have got to be real careful in this area right there. Yes, there is a tender spot right there for him. You want to watch out for those because those can be really tender on people. Just kind of work in those muscles. There is a muscle up under the gastroc and you can go in like this and it helps you to get to that soleus muscle and you work all that and it helps loosen that up. Now when you turn the leg over you can go and you want to massage down the front of that tibialis muscle through here and kind of come up and you can rub your thumb through that area there and that will help open up, especially if they have any pain from running or any interior part of the leg and then you just smooth it all out and make it feel real good, and that is how you massage a calf muscle."