Kinda Like Torture

After over a week of knee pain and feeling discouraged and depressed that I seemed to be having a set back, the pain disappeared. It made me think that it really was the tape that was helping me. It seems like such a minor thing, but apparently it is working.

My insurance company is starting to cover “alternative” care including chiro, acupuncture, natural medicine and massage. I think it’s fantastic! There’s a limit to how much I can use this year–I think 12 visits total or up to $500. I need to find out for sure because I plan on taking advantage of this.

I bring this up because I recently got an orthopedic massage for my knees. I’ve never had one before and didn’t really know what it was. I guess I was just expecting a regular massage. It was a lot different. The therapist examined me briefly (I’d arrived with a diagnosis and treatment from my sports doc and physical therapist) and then he got started.

Basically, it’s focused massage with manipulation. He explained that when there is pain in the body it’s due to an imbalance and overcompensation. Makes sense. I definitely notice that when my knees hurt I walk differently and sometimes that throws off my hips or my back starts to ache. He said that knee pain like mine is usually due to a tight “rectus femoris“–basically my quad. The IT band injuries cause knee pain on the side of the knee, Runner’s knee is related to the quad and that’s why the pain is in a different spot.

He also said that it’s often related to whatever is going on in the back of the body (i.e. tight hamstrings and glutes). There was definitely some traditional massage involved, but it was more deep like a sports massage. And in between massaging, he moved my legs and did lots of stretching. It was odd at first and boy was my lower body TIGHT. He did this move where he’d be stretching my body and he’d tell me to push my leg (or knee or whatever) against his hand and try to move his hand while he was pushing toward me. We’d do the pushing thing for about 30 seconds then relax, and he’d be able to manipulate my body into a deeper stretch.

When I rolled over and he worked on my hamstrings, he immediately found the huge knots in my hamstrings and my glutes. I almost passed out while he used his elbow to press on the knots in my glutes. It was really, really intense. My muscles twitched and screamed and then finally released. It was the oddest feeling, but it seemed to work. By the end of the session he was able to bend my leg so that my foot touched my butt. Seriously. I am usually not that flexible! The other stretches he did with my legs showed amazing improvement by the end of the session. At the start he could barely move my legs into some stretches and by the end it was nothing!

When the session was done, my legs felt like jello and as the day progressed, I could definitely feel the soreness in the spots he worked the hardest. I go back in a week and I really hope a handful of these types of sessions will work out the kinks in my muscles that are irritating my knees.

When I got home Michael was making a delicious and healthy dinner: scallops! It’s been AGES since we’ve had scallops. Am I the only one that thinks “Top Scallop” whenever I watch “Top Chef”?

Anyways. Dinner was kind of a hodge-podge of random things in the fridge. We had some brussels sprouts with a piece of bacon, the leftover polenta from the weekend, and I had some more pickled green beens. Totally random, but it was all tasty.

Dinner was around 600 calories total–including the snacks and nibbles I ate while it was cooking. The scallops are delicious, so fast and easy to cook and only around 100 calories.

My body definitely felt sore as time went on. I’d spent the day drinking gallons of water to try and minimize the soreness but it was inevitable. I’m really glad that I have tried orthopedic massage. I liked that it involved stretching and he showed me some moves I need to be doing on a regular basis. Luckily most of them I already do–I just need to do them longer than 20 seconds at a time! The therapist also recommended icing my knees and using a heating pad on my quads at the same time to try and loosen up the muscles. My hope is that a month from now, I will be able to say that orthopedic massage helped me! It may not cure me, but I’ll be happy with help!

QUESTION: Have you ever had an orthopedic massage? Did it help you?