F.I.T.T. Principle

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Ever heard of the F.I.T.T. Principle?
If not, read on - it's important to anyone wanting to progress in their chosen sport.

So you have a training programme but are you following the F.I.T.T. Principle? Well you should be. It's a guideline that will help you get the best out of your training and it stands for

Frequency: how often you train

Intensity: the level of effort you put into each session

Type: the activity you are doing

Time: the duration of a session

Lets expand on those a bit, so you know what you're doing and why this principle is something everyone should adopt. With a word of caution, these are general principles - there's always going to be some people who do things differently, overloading or just beasting themselves!

Frequency:
How often you train for a particular activity is important. There are different frequencies for different things, think about weight training and aerobic training. With weights you really shouldn't train the same muscle groups every day. Neither would you want to do a hard hill session daily. It's all about balance and making sure you give yourself and the muscles worked time to recover adequately between sessions. Muscles get damaged when we use them, even without injuring them so you'd notice, and it's this microtrauma you need to give time to repair sufficiently so that your muscles stay strong and can perform optimally.

Intensity:
How hard you train in a session and how much energy is expended. I'm not going to go into max heart rates, zones and percentages of max - but it's all this stuff you need to factor into your training to get the most out of a session. Work out what you're trying to achieve - is it the 100m sprint record or an ultra-marathon? Training intensity needs to reflect your goals. You need balance here - sufficient intensity to tax your body but not too much so you end up injured or you're overtraining.

Type:
Cardio, weights, mixed sessions (circuits). Are you running, swimming, lifting weights, walking, doing strength and conditioning, circuits, yoga, boxercise classes? Regardless of your overall aim, be it a top 10 finish in a fell race or to beat your PB, you need to mix up your training.  This ensures all muscle groups are being worked, you won't get bored of simply counting down the mileage, and your body becomes stronger by being constantly challenged.

Time:
The duration of your training session will vary, depending on the activity and your goals. If you're working on improving fitness by walking you wouldn't get very far if you did 2 minutes walk, 1 minute rest and repeating 5 times. But for a hill session running these times up a 20% incline would be appropriate. In general, the higher the intensity, the less time you spend training.

Essentially what all this boils down to is that you have to be sensible about your training. No sudden increases in what you're doing. If you're a new runner, don't expect to be able to run 5 miles at marathon pace after only a few training sessions. Build up slowly - use the 10% rule - keep all increases to no more than 10%.  This might seem overly cautious, but it ensures your body adapts to changes and helps to prevent injury.

Rehab exercises for ankle sprains

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We've already written about ankle sprains and how to possibly prevent them through strengthening and proprioceptive training. I recently came across some rehabilitation exercises which can also help.


Make sure you are past the acute stage of injury and can fully weight the injured ankle before undertaking these exercises. Do the exercises in bare feet to start with, and on flat, even, ground. Start with stepping in the configurations shown and build up to hopping.

Continue with the direction and step configuration for 1-2 minutes on each leg

Using the different change of directions places multiple stresses on various structures of the ankle, thereby providing all round strengthening. Ensure you do each configuration starting on each foot.

It's hard to say do these for X number of days or X times. Only you know when your ankle feels stronger, and in addition people heal at different rates. Don't rush your rehabilitation - it's better to be conservative, reducing the risk of re-injury. Saying that, you have to put in some hard work and integrate rehab exercises into your daily training (and rest) programme.

Once you are ready to move on you can start to introduce changes in terrain (e.g. grass, sand) and then do drills with running in a circle, figure of eights, plus hill work and different cambers. Finally, remember the hedgehog for proprioceptive training - see the other blog linked at the top if you need a reminder!

Marathon training

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As the London and Manchester Marathon places have just been released, there are a number of first time marathon runners (and also more experienced runners) who are about to start training in earnest for the events early next year.
For those of you who are planning on running a marathon, read on! We have worked with many marathon runners in the past and all have benefited from ensuring their training programmes include regular sports massage.

Why is that?

Well the simple answer is that regular maintenance massage can help to keep your muscles healthy and injury free, which is of great importance to long distance runners.
Of course it is more complicated than that - depending how much you want to know about anatomy and physiology. But for you, the runner, massage therapy is a must if you want to help prevent injuries, improve your running times and have greater energy.

London 2010 marathon runners

Sports Massage works with the muscles, tendons, fascia and all soft tissue structures in the body which are put under stress when running. After a run, your muscles will have suffered microtrauma - tiny amounts of damage which you are not able to detect. It's unavoidable, but how you deal with it is what matters because microtrauma is one of the paths which can lead to injury. Essentially, microtrauma is tiny tears in muscle fibres as a result of overloading or overuse. It's the same result that happens when you have a muscle tear, though perhaps not as obvious or painful - so underlying the trauma there will be bleeding, inflammation, swelling and formation of scar tissue.

Through soft tissue therapy we can prevent the build up of scar tissue by breaking down any adhesions (what you might feel as knotty areas) and keeping muscle fibres aligned along the functional lines which are needed to stay injury free and to keep you running strong.

The danger of not dealing with microtrauma and vulnerable areas is, as we've mentioned, injury, but also muscle imbalances elsewhere in your body. Joints then become stressed and biomechanically inefficient which can lead to tendons becoming overly stressed and less efficient movement patterns. An example of injury which can be the result of untreated and repetitive microtrauma is tendinitis. For runners, one area which often suffers is the Achilles tendon.

Repeated microtrauma = weak & damaged muscle fibres = chronic muscle strain = injury

If muscles are chronically strained then the collagen (which helps to build muscles) is reabsorbed and results in the weakening of soft tissues in that area.

Weak soft tissues = injury susceptibility

Massage is also good at improving circulation in your body. If you have poor circulation then you'll feel sluggish, lack energy and generally not be enjoying your runs. When we say circulation, we're talking about blood (which carries oxygen and nutrients essential for optimal muscle functioning) and lymph (interstitial fluid involved in the removal of waste products and bacteria).  The interesting fact about the lymphatic system is that it has no built in pump; it relies totally on one way valves and other systems in your body (muscle contraction, arterial pulsation) to assist the movement of fluid. Massage therefore, can help with lymphatic flow by encouraging it to return into the circulatory system appropriately.

Better circulation = improved energy = better running

The challenge of running a marathon is quite a big one for most people. Motivation to run the 26 miles (42 kilometres) has many origins. The risk of injury is the same for everyone (well more or less the same - there's intrinsic and extrinsic factors which have to be taken into account). If you choose to put your body through a rigorous and lengthy training plan then you must respect your body enough to look after it along the way.

Sports Massage can benefit all runners, regardless of background, support or motivation. Here's an overview of some of the benefits Sports Massage can offer you:

• Injury prevention
• Faster personal bests
• Greater flexibility and increased range of movement
• Functional muscle balance
• Improved circulation
• Faster recovery times
• Pain relief
• Greater energy
• Relaxation
• Improved posture

The best way to look after your body and keep strong for running is to have regular monthly maintenance massage - let us, the experts, keep you healthy and help you to prevent injuries.

Sprained Ankles - is there anyway to avoid them?!

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I've been reading a lot about sprained ankles recently, mainly from fell runners (what a surprise), though it's also quite a common thing for people to do even in the city, on pavements, and other such seemingly innocuous surfaces.

The reasons for spraining, or, at the least, turning an ankle are many and varied, from "having weak ankles" to "running over tussoky moorland" and "turning round a corner with shoes that are grippier than you expect" (that'd be me).

Its been a while since I properly turned either ankle, the last time was a few years ago, and when it went, it went quite significantly, I won't go into gory details, but I was a good few miles from home, and very glad I had a mobile, and that Dad had his mobile switched on (a minor miracle, but never mind that here).
In the past few years I have NEARLY sprained my ankle innumerable times, catching it just as it is about to go, or being able to retain balance where I thought it impossible, or simply by letting the rest of my leg give way and letting the other leg take up the slack as I head groundward - this seems to work quite well, but you need to be quite alert to do it without face-planting.

I knew someone who had particularly weak ankles, I swear she could twist her ankle in a pair of Converse on a flat piece of asphalt. Did she just have weak ankles? And more importantly, was there anything she could do to strengthen them in order to prevent constant pain and concern about going over on them?
Equally, if you are prone to twisted/turned anklage, what can you do to prevent it from happening, and ruining your normal running/walking/water skiing schedule?

First, let's look at the ankle and which bits of it are the bits that you physically "sprain" as you turn your ankle. There are generally 2 ways in which the ankle can go when you sprain it, inversion (inward, big toe eventually becoming vertical to your little) and Eversion (outward, little toe going higher than your big).

Inversion. Most common way to sprain your ankle

Eversion, less common way to sprain your ankle (its more likely to break than sprain)

Inversion is much more common than Eversion for several reasons. The medial malleolus (inside ankle) goes much further down the leg than the lateral malleolus (outside ankle). Also, the lateral ligaments (outside) are smaller than the medial ones (inside). To be brutally honest, if you Evert your foot so hard that it sprains, you are more likely to break the bone than you are to sprain the ligament - that's how strong it is, not really soft tissue damage.

When you Invert your foot there are 3 ligaments that are likely to "go". The Anterior Talofibular Ligament and the Calcaneofibular ligament. There are a few more ligaments around the area, but they are less likely to sprain.

Highlighted - CF= Calcaneofibular ligament (7'o'clock position), AT= Anterior talofibular ligament. (3'o'clock position)

Ligaments hold bones to other bones. They are not like muscles and cannot be strengthened by lifting weights or making them move in a certain way. Ligaments are made of collagen fibre and have a "crimp" in the fibres which give a certain amount of "give" in them to allow some movement. They provide support for boney structures but have very bad blood supply - hence are very slow at healing. Once the ligament has been stretched beyond its "normal" length, it never goes back to its original length. Hence a once sprained ankle has a certain laxity to it that a never-sprained ankle does not have, in other words, it is weaker.

So, when you step on an uneven surface and you "go over" on the ankle, it is the ligaments which hold the various structures of the ankle which are the things which end up being damaged, sometimes to the point that they can't recover very easily - especially if they keep getting run on without any support. I think its quite important to emphasise here that it is not weakness of the ligaments, or even necessarily laxity of the ligaments which make an ankle more or less likely to twist or turn, they are merely the bits that end up hurting.

All the text above is to say that if you keep twisting your ankle, its not lax ligaments, it's your MUSCLES that are weak or not firing fast enough to stop you from going over on the ankle.
Let me explain.
When the ankle begins to Invert (big toe up, little toe down) it is the structures on the outside of the ankle that are in danger of being damaged. The muscles that prevent excessive inversion are based around the outside of the leg - they are Peroneus Longus, (sometimes called fibularis longus), Peroneus Brevis, and, to a point, Extensor Digitorum Longus (which I haven't bothered drawing, so don't worry about it). If these muscles are not firing optimally - and by that I mean, they are not reacting fast enough to stimuli around your foot as you walk/stand/run, it is more likely that you are going to turn your ankle.

Peroneus Longus (blue) and Brevis (red) stabilise the foot from this side as you can see from where they insert- Brevis on the 5th metatarsal (outside of the foot) and Longus on the first- going right underneath the sole to the other side)

You cannot do a lot about tightening ligaments without some fairly radical surgery, but you can make the reaction time of the muscles surrounding the joint faster by increasing the firing rate.
The issue about being mobile AND being stable is interesting because the muscles that are involved in ankle stability are involved in deceleration during the gait cycle. As the foot hits the ground, they are loaded eccentrically, to provide deceleration - however, if more stability is needed, the muscles need to be CONCENTRICALLY loaded almost immediately afterward - it's the transition from controlled lengthening contraction to controlled shortening contraction that would seem to be one of the more important things which will help with unstable ankles.

It is actually the reaction time of the peroneals - measured in milliseconds which provide the stability which the unstable lack.
There are of course a number of other factors in ankles that tend to twist more than others, including a tendency to over pronate, bunions etc. However, I suspect that weak, and slow reacting peroneals are a major issue in terms of unstable ankles. A lot can be said for encouraging these stabilising muscles to be developed and their proprioceptive reactions sped up.

How to do that?
What you are basically doing is improving your proprioception. Proprioception is the knowledge of where your body is in space in real time - or, put another way, knowing where your foot is and what it is doing as it hits the floor, be it on smooth asphalt, or unstable boggy hellhole. 

The best way to do this is on a balance board or a hedgehog - balance on it, one legged. If you can't do that, practice until you can.

Hedgehog

Then practice until you can do it for a minute without thinking about it.
Then practice until you can do it for a minute with your eyes closed.
At that point, you probably have a pretty good sense of what your muscles are doing, and should have a better chance of not twisting your ankle every time you go for a run on dodgy ground.

If you don't have a balance board or a hedgehog, buy one.
Alternatively you could roll up a towel and use that as an improvised balance tool. However, its not quite as good (unstable) as something that has been made to be unstable.

Please don't get confused and use one of these.

I'm not saying that this is the be all and end all of how to stop twisting your ankle - a lot of that comes from observation, but much more actually comes from being able to quickly react to what is under your feet at any one time - the best way to do that is to train the muscles to react fast to what is happening underneath them.

Now, a lot of people with unstable ankles do this for a while, and then, when they think they are strong enough, or (more often) they get bored or forget, they stop.
Your body adapts to what is going on around it and what is happening to it. If you are not stimulating the muscles by doing exercises like this, and they are not being stimulated by walking on unstable ground, they are not being worked and will go back to the way that they were. Unstable and unsupporting.
If you want stable ankles, and to be able to run effectively without twisting or turning anything in the supporting structures, keep at it. Yes it might be tiresome, yes it might be annoying, but being laid up with an ankle the size of a melon is a whole other level of tiresome annoyance.

A word about strength training on balance balls etc - don't bother. You won't get any better at balancing, and you won't get any stronger. If you want to get stronger, just weight train. If you want to be more stable, work on that on its own, you generally don't need anything heavier than body weight unless you are training specifically for something (like racing on balance balls with heavy weights, but I can't imagine a race like that catching on so well).

Also, there are the times when you fall down stairs, stick your leg in a hole, fall off a pavement when tired (or drunk). The balance exercises will help to a point, but it won't make you invulnerable. (sorry)

Injuries Part 3: Intrinsic Factors

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In Injuries Part 1 there was a brief introduction to my experience of recent injuries and an overview of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The latter, extrinsic factors, were covered in more detail in Injuries Part 2. I'll now take a look at intrinsic factors that could contribute to injury.

Fitness: if you're unfit (either cardiovascular or muscular endurance), lacking strength or flexibility then you're letting yourself become one step closer to being injured. A fit individual who has adequate recovery and rest days in their training programme, has good nutrition intake and limits alcohol/drugs is preparing their body as best they can. If you're not resting sufficiently then your muscles are likely to be suffering from repeated microtrauma which does not repair properly, leaves muscle fibres laid down haphazardly and at greater risk of injury.

Technique: if it's poor you'll be prone to injury – simply because your body is designed to function well when you are biomechanically sound. Over-use or muscular imbalances reduce the biomechanical efficiency. In running for example, muscular imbalances can lead to over-pronation and increase your risk of ankle sprains.

Body Composition: if you're overweight your joints are going to be stressed. There's no easy way to say it – you just have to move more and eat less (or eat better). Burn the calories and ditch the weight so your fat to muscle mass ratio is optimal. There is also the concern for individuals who are too lean – repeated stress through exercise or just a repeated action on atrophied muscles is not good – the muscles are just not able to cope. Remedy this by increasing strength and fitness suited to the sport or exercise you are undertaking.

Anatomical Variants: skeletal alignment abnormalities (some say they feel “wonky”) can come from either training incorrectly or because of genetics factors. Leg length discrepancies is a common example – either your legs are structurally different lengths when measured by a trained professional, or you have imbalances (either above or below the hips) causing your pelvis to be unbalanced. Either way, postural deviations lead to faulty biomechanics, and as said above, this puts you at greater risk of injury.

Gender: Whether you're male or female, we cannot change this, nor the fact that there are differences in how the bodies of the different genders function in terms of aerobic capacity, muscular strength, body fat percentage and hormonal activity. Whilst there are always exceptions way outside the normal range, on the whole these all impact on exercise and training.

Age: if you're young your body may not be fully developed – a classic injury for young lads who play a lot of football is Osgood Schlatters disease – too much stress on the tibial tuberosity (where the quadriceps muscles attach below the knee) occurs because of excessive quad use and the patella tendon becomes inflamed. Its most common in young lads due to rapid growth and enthusiastic high level playing of football. In teenagers there are growth spurts to contend with and the body changing rapidly. In mature athletes changes in endurance and flexibility occur, some declining and some increasing – particularly if someone has been involved in their sporting activity all their lives. They'll be more accustomed to the level of activity, have the knowledge and endurance to sustain those for longer and have the experiences behind them to know how much they can push their bodies.

Past Injuries: whenever the body is injured it has the potential to leave scar tissue, not necessarily visible on the surface of the skin, but deep fascial restrictions that can lead to muscle imbalances and dysfunction. These are not always that apparent, but left untreated can lead to pain, discomfort and injury. Some injuries, for example sprained ankle ligaments, will also leave structures (particularly the ligaments) weaker than they were originally and the risk of re-injury is higher. Strengthening weak muscles can help: don't think a few exercises once a week will help - this takes time and dedication for your rehabilitation to be effective.

Also tied into past injuries, though something that we can't necessarily do a great deal to prevent, is musculoskeletal disease, e.g. arthritis such as ankylosing spondylitis which affects the joints of the spine. Adjustments to both training and exercise are most likely to be necessary. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) is a whole issue of it's own, and we've blogged about it elsewhere. Needless to say it's a big issue and not to be underestimated.

Psychology: your mental attitude towards training, exercise and injury play a big role. Whether you're motivated to undertake rehabilitation seriously or not can impact significantly on the outcome – try returning to exercise too soon, before your body is repaired, perhaps because you're overly keen or frustrated and re-injury is more likely. Pressure from parents, coach or peers can also lead to some people not fully listening to their body, pushing too hard and getting injured and then returning too quickly. A good coach shouldn't put pressure on an athlete, but they could inadvertently do so if they're fired up and focussed on winning a championship for example. This all ties in to how confident you are and how you deal with, or react to stress. As an inexperienced youth you're more likely to want to please the coach or your parents, or not let them down because they've invested time and money into your training.

Competition with others - be that fighting to keep your place on a team, or your position in the championship, or just competition with yourself when you want to beat a PB – all add up to more pressure to get back into the game sooner....or they could be the cause for over-training in the first place which can lead to injury.

None of the intrinsic factors work in isolation (either with themselves or the extrinsic factors). An inexperienced and young female track runner might just want to prove her worth in the championship race and push herself too far, or be pushed by others. Here we have Technique / Age / Gender / Psychology already as factors that might lead to this athlete being injured, and that's before we know if she's got any musculoskeletal imbalances (Body Composition) or Past Injuries, or whether she's received suitable coaching so she is strong and well trained for the sport she's playing (Fitness), the surface she's running on (Environment) or whether the Equipment she is using fits/is suitable.

To summarise, the factors which could influence whether or not we suffer an injury are:
extrinsic: environment, equipment and training/competition
intrinsic: fitness, technique, body composition, anatomical variants, gender, age, past injury and psychology

Injuries Part 1

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There is nothing more annoying than being injured. I know. Currently I'm suffering from an ITB issue - excruciating pain on the outside of my knee when I try (try being a very poignant word) to run down hill. Frustration at not being able to run in the hills seems even more frustrating as I've only been living in Derbyshire for the past 3 months. Seeing the hills so close is mighty tempting.

And that is where I went wrong. Too much, way too soon. The excitement of having hills on my doorstep overrode the common principle of increasing mileage slowly (10% per week is a good guide). So for me coming from running not that far, maybe 8km at best in London on the roads mostly, 10km in the fells was a bit optimistic. I for one should have known better. Now I pay the price with a slow recovery. I think this was the same over-excitedness that takes over common sense of others when they set off on a new challenge.

Now I'm one for being overly cautious about returning to running too soon, though I think I'm in the minority - most people preferring to return to training too soon and doing more damage than they had originally - and a subsequently longer period of inactivity. Given this, it always jumps out and surprises me when the pain kicks in again after what seems a remarkably long rest period. So where am I going wrong. It is slowly dawning on me that rest alone is not sufficient to get me back to fitness. I need to focus my recovery on not only rest, but also strengthening my glutes and my left psoas (hip flexor) which was considerably weaker than on the right.

So what are the possible factors that can contribute to or lead to an injury? We can break that down into two parts: internal and external factors. Internal factors, or intrinsic, are all things that are within us, inside our body or the stuff that is our natural make up. We can change some of these, and some we can't. In this category we have fitness, technique, body composition, anatomical variants, gender, age, past injuries, and finally psychology. The factors that may contribute to whether we get injured which are external, or extrinsic are those which come from outside of us: the environment, equipment we may use and the training and competition we undertake. It's safe to say we have a much greater degree of control over the extrinsic factors - but equally they're all interlinked.

I've given you an introduction the issues surrounding injuries, with some insight into the experience I've been through recently. I did my first rehab running session yesterday, going out for 30 minutes but with 5 mins warm up, then 1 min walk/1 min run for 9 sets, and the remainder of the time walking to cool down. I'm pleased to report that there was no pain in my knee and with the exception of it being a hot and humid evening the run was very pleasant. There's been plenty of foam rollering and sports massage too, which both contribute to a good rehab strategy. For those of you who are interested, I'll write more about the extrinsic and intrinsic factors soon.

Lynne

Climbing and Massage

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Why on earth would you want sports massage if you are a climber? Is there ANY relevance at all?
well....

When you exercise your muscles use oxygen, and give out metabolic waste products. For muscles to operate efficiently, they need to contract and relax - a bit like a pump, getting new oxygenated blood in, and getting old blood out and back to the heart and lungs again. Climbing is an interesting one as the muscles are generally contracted for large amounts of time, and not relaxed so much - which means the pump - which works to a point, is not as efficient as it can be.
The tighter the muscle contraction is held, the less oxygenated blood can get in to the muscle to give it nutrients it needs - and the less waste product it can transport out.

This is where your Pump comes from after a hard session - blood which sits in the muscles and doesn't get out - if you don't stretch at the end of a session, and the metabolic waste products are not released from muscles for a while, they can cause cramps, pain, and DOMS - delayed onset muscle soreness. That's the pain you feel up to a couple of days after a hard session.

Massage helps get rid of these issues. It is not only good for helping with circulation - which is a very superficial part of the massage process.
I know some of you will have heard of Duputreyans condition- for those of you who haven't- look here http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=1312 Massage - specifically a technique called Soft Tissue Release (or ART if you are American) can help as a preventative measure against this rather nasty condition.

I know a lot of climbers (myself included) who have had issues with the rotator cuff - a minor issue in saying I have a problem with the rotator cuff is which part of it?! There are from 4 to 12 muscles involved in the rotator cuff - depending on who you talk to. We can help- looking not only at the muscles, but also the fascia surrounding the joint complex.

Once injured, it is somewhat difficult to get it back to the exact working order that it was it previous to the injury. Preventative work may well be the way forward - maintenance massage once or twice a month, working out the kinks in the muscle and fascia through the areas that you use the most, getting an assessment as to how the tissues feel - whether you are working too hard, what feels tense, and what is painful - this self-knowledge will give you more of an idea of your body's overall health.

As a remedial modality, massage can help in rebalancing the muscles in the body. Be it for general posture, assisting in creating more body awareness and general proprioception, or even assisting in gaining greater flexibility. We can help you get better, or just get BETTER.

Back in the day- Mark Twight, Dr Death himself, advocated massage in his book, Extreme Alpinism, saying "deep tissue massage aids recovery. Treat yourself to a massage every 10-15 days. Shun those touchy-feely masseuses. Find someone who can dig, restructure and strip apart bound-up muscle tissue."
And more recently in his writings as director of Gym Jones- "Recovery is 50% of the process of training...Respect recovery... Deep tissue massage focused on restructuring muscle and fascia is a very effective monthly tool."

Eric Horst- writer of "How to climb 5.12", and more recently, "Training for Climbing" has said "Sports massage helps reduce the number of small and generally unfelt spasms that regularly occur in muscles. These spasms may go unchallenged by regular stretching and warm-up and left unchecked, may rob you of co-ordination and induce mechanical resistance and premature fatigue."

And our own Dave McLeod has said in "9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes" - "Consider experimenting with other stress relieving activities such as sports massage, stretching or yoga... don't underestimate the cumulative, long terms effects of poor recovery and management of training stress. It will put a lid on your improvement if you are ignorant of it. Treat your body nicely and it will return the favour."

Perhaps what Mark says is the most important. If you want to improve, if you want to get better, and, perhaps more importantly stay injury free, getting a massage isn't going to be about a relaxing, chillout massage. These are all very well for feeling nice and fluffy, and excellent if you are taking time out.
However, if you are training hard, and not resting enough, your muscles will be bound together with abnormal crosslinked fascia, it is likely that they may not be working efficiently, and your ability to get the maximum amount of power from them is compromised. Those muscles need to be worked on deeply, restructured, and made to be more efficient.

At Global Therapies we are versed in a number of types of massage from the relaxing, soothing "touchy feely" to the deep tissue restructuring, and fascial release side. We have the knowledge, we have the experience.

Sports Massage and Remedial Massage is beginning to become more popular at Climbing centres across the country - The Castle and the Arch down in London, Big Rock in Milton Keynes, The Barn in Devon.

We are proud to be helping climbers around the Manchester and Derbyshire/High Peak area recover more, and become better, harder climbers through recovery, restructuring and injury proofing. Don't wait until you break yourself, get a maintenance massage.