Please forgive me, I know this one is long. Pick what you need out of it and enjoy.
Many people ask me “How often should I get a MetaTouch Massage” to this I answer “It depends.”
When you should get a MetaTouch massage depends on a few different factors:
- Your physical condition.
- Your level of activity.
- Your stress level.
- Your history of injuries and when you want to!
Your physical condition can be determined by many different factors. Eating habits, amount of exercise, your job, and family life all make up your physical condition. All these play into how you deal and manifest stress. Have you ever noticed when you go through a stressful event, you don’t only feel the mental strain that it can cause but also the physical representations of that stress. Some of the most common symptoms experienced are: Fatigue, headache, TMJ (jaw pain) or illness. Illness occurs when you are stressed, because your body’s ability to fight off normal bugs can be greatly compromised making you more susceptible to getting sick. Getting a massage during these times can assist in lowering your stress level while at the same time strengthening your immune system so that you can fight off all the bad stuff that is thrown at you.
Level of activity I can’t tell you the number of different responses I get when I ask “What type of exercise do you do and how often?”
Here are some examples, see which one, if any you fit into:
- “I walk”
- “I’ve been doing the same routine for the past 30 years and I like it!”
- “I run, bike, swim, lift weights, yoga, hike, Pilates, knit sweaters and on SundaysI rescue small animals.”.
- “I used to exercise….”
- “All I do is push ups and sit ups, every day.”
1. First, walking is wonderful, but it should not be the only exercise you get. If you walk around the block once a week, you might be getting your blood to pump, but the rest of you is slowly atrophying into a giant ball of Jell-O.
Change it up; add some resistance exercise along with cardio. You’ll see results much faster.
2. For the guy who has been doing the same routine for the past 30 years, he has trained his muscles to ignore any benefits the exercise might have had at one point. His body has reached a plateau. Pushing 5 lbs today will not be as hard as pushing 5 lbs 10 days from now. Always safely challenge yourself. It is the only way you will effect change.
3. Our over achiever better be eating a lot, because the amount of calories she is burning will put her into an early grave without the right food intake. If you are working out like a mad person and are not matching it with the correct nutrition, than you could be burning muscle instead of fat. Your body also goes into a hording mode to conserve the food that it’s taking. It stoes everything because it doesn’t know when its next meal will come You see this condition in people that only eat one or two meals a day and wonder why they are gaining weight.
Working out every muscle every day can be detrimental as well. Your body needs time to recover. This recovery time is when the muscle fibers heal and grow. Lactic acid is flushed out and the body gets ready for the abuse you are going to put it through. So the lesson is, pace your self, eat and get a massage. For those of you who are training for a marathon or triathlon, massage can help bring you to the next level. MetaTouch treatments can help repair the damage that you incurred during workouts and speed your recovery exponentially. This allows you to train harder and longer with less injury.
4. Just because you used to run 30 miles a week, 3 years ago, doesn’t mean that you get to sit on the couch eating bon bon’s and expect to be in peak physical condition. Your body atrophies, or loses muscle, within 36 hrs of not moving. Imagine what 3 years has done! Massage can help get all the stagnated blood moving around, while assisting the body to return to a balanced state. This can make the transition back to exercise an easier one. Get off your butt!
5. So you like push ups and sit ups. There is a slight problem with this workout; you are only addressing one part of the body while neglecting the rest. When one only trains the “front” you can get what I call the “turtle posture”, this is when everything rounds forward. Branch out, for every chest move do a back. For every contraction do an extension. This will help your body stay in balance and healthy.
Your Stress Level:
Massage and stress have gone together since the dawn of time. You’re stressed, get a massage. It will relax and calm you so that all the tension will melt away. Massage also helps reduce pain. Pain can manifest mentally as depression, anxiety or anger. So just think of massage as a natural form of Prozac.
History of injuries:
If you have chronic injuries, massage and MetaTouch treatments can help keep them from flaring up. This will allow you to live a more normal life even when suffering from chronic pain.
When you want to:
If you want a massage, get one, you deserve to take care of yourself. In this day and age massage is no longer a luxury it is now a necessity. So call us and get what you deserve, a MetaTouch Massage! 310-397-3422
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Shoot me an e-mail, I’ll do my best to post on the topics important to you.
