Massage Therapists who Do Specialty Work: Important Questions to Ask

So now your looking for someone to help you out of your pain you have had for a while. Who do you go see to help you get out of pain? I will give you the same advice from my orthopaedic doctor, who had retired when I was ready to get my shoulder surgically repaired:

"Go to someone who works on this particular part of the body at least 3 times a week."

The same goes for massage. You can open up the yellow pages and see most massage therapists will list either "deep tissue" or "sport massage." What does that tell you as a consumer? Nothing whatsoever.

Just to give you an idea, every massage school in America teaches a basic "deep tissue" and pre- and post- sports massage techniques to each student that attends. Maybe the therapist has taken an additional weekend seminar or two, but it still doesn't tell you if he or she can help you with your problem.

Is there one particular technique that is better then another one for a particular type of injury? The answer is no. I'm sure almost every therapist will say that their particular technique is the best. Any technique will work with 85-90% of clients who come in. You as a client should not care what kind of technique a therapist is using. It is like the rubber chicken therapy. What you haven't heard of the rubber chicken therapy for pain relief? It goes like this: Clients don't care what you do to get them out of pain as long as you get them out of pain like you told them you would. Sometimes it takes more then one technique to get you out of pain.

Look in the yellow pages under massage therapy and most therapists will list the technique they use such as "deep tissue" or "precision neuromuscular" or "soft tissue release". So what does this mean to you? To be honest almost nothing, It tells you that he/she spent some time studying that particular technique, but it still doesn't tell you if it will get you out of pain.