Massage therapy: Be a repeater

I had the extreme pleasure of enjoying my first massage about 12 years ago.  Since then, massage has mostly been a sporadic gift to myself that I might use to celebrate a special milestone, or to help myself recover after a very stressful time.

I took a different approach at the beginning of this year: I began scheduling massage therapy sessions every other week, for a couple of reasons. I have a chronic neck and shoulder problem that has been bothering me since I was about 14 years old. I had become accustomed to a constant, low level of pain in my right shoulder and neck. Sometimes the shoulder would flare up so badly that I could actually hear the muscles in my neck squeaking when I turned my head.

I also had a pretty severe back spasm around New Year’s. That was the third time this particular muscle group had acted up on me. It wasn’t the worst episode: the first time, it affected me for about six weeks, even affecting my ability to work. This most recent time wasn’t nearly as bad, but it made me realize that I was turning into a five-foot-five stress ball.

I exercise a lot, but I also spend a lot of time writing on my laptop with generally poor posture. I juggle a few different jobs. I have three kids, a dog, a cat and a husband. I am a perfectionist. I have a low tolerance for disorder. I feel a compulsion to please everyone else around me. In other words, I am very susceptible to stress.

It was the low-back flare-up and my neck that brought me in for massage therapy at the beginning of this year. And although I had done massage before, I never particularly cared which therapist I saw, or where. But in this particular case, I happened to get matched up with a therapist who had a background in fitness and personal training, and was very skilled at interpreting the root causes of the muscle problems I was having. As with a hair stylist, dentist, doctor or manicurist, feeling comfortable with your massage therapist and respecting their level of expertise enhances the experience and makes you want to come back.

For the first time, I started working with the same person regularly, which produced many surprising benefits. For one thing, I began to feel safe and comfortable. Without having to worry about what they were going to do next, I could relax and allow my brain to unplug for a while.

The therapist also got familiar with some of my problem areas, and was able to quickly hone in on trouble spots. For example, we discovered that my piriformis muscle is a huge trouble-maker in my low back, and that my lack of upper-body strength was contributing to my neck and shoulder problems. Armed with that knowledge, the therapist suggested a series of exercises and stretches to help strengthen the weak spots and counteract the tight ones. I am working on those, but this is not a quick fix. It took several decades of postural mistakes to cause these problems, and they won’t go away overnight.

I have been working with the same therapist for about three months now. For the first time in recent memory, my right shoulder feels generally pain-free. It still flares up from time to time, but I haven’t heard the muscles squeak for many weeks.

We had a couple of memorable breakthroughs, like the day my right shoulder finally released and it seemed like a thousand pounds of pressure dropped out of my jaw. I have always been a tooth-grinder, but I never knew before that day that my tooth-grinding was connected to my shoulder pain. Once the shoulder released, the tooth-grinding decreased. It’s been about a month since I woke myself up with the sound of my upper and lower jaws compressing together so tightly that you could mistake them for a glacier moving across land.

We’ve done some excellent work on the right pirifomis as well, and although it is still a bit of a nag, I cannot remember ever feeling so good in my running stride as I do right now. I feel like a child when I run—both legs feel loose and light. I have a longer stride, and it is rare for me to feel the stinging burn in my hip and hamstring that used to be normal after a mile or two.

All the physical benefits are wonderful, and well worth the investment of time and money, but the psychological benefits are something else entirely, and the subject of another blog.

Resources 

This blog has been about my personal experience with massage therapy, but if you are interested in reading more general information about massage benefits, check out the following resources:

North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy: NAJSPT

The Sports Physical Therapy Section of the American Physical Therapy Association

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2953308/

The Mayo Clinic. Massage: Get in touch with its many benefits

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/stress-management/in-depth/massage/art-20045743

USA Today, The Benefits of Massage Therapy

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/weekend/health/doctors/2013/12/20/benefits-of-massage-therapy/4137819/

Only when chased: Learning to love the run

When I was younger, people used to ask me, “Do you run?” 

I would answer “Only when chased.”

In middle school, I used to write myself notes to get out of running one lonely mile in gym class. I hated running. I was bad at it. It took me a good 14 minutes to do a mile. I had allergies. I imagined I tasted blood in my lungs at the end of a mile. I had weak ankles. Sweating deflated my big '80s hair. I didn’t like how my face would turn red when I ran, and stay that way for hours.

An athlete I was not, but I had a decent sense of humor, so I wrote funny excuse notes. My eighth-grade gym teacher had to that no actual parent was writing these notes, but I made him laugh every week with my absurd stories: Valerie has contracted a rare lung disease that only flares up on Wednesdays, in response to the threat of running. Please excuse her today.

For whatever reason, the gym teacher let me get away with it, and on Wednesdays, I would not even bother changing into my gym uniform. I would ride in the golf cart with my forty-something gym teacher, and make sarcastic comments about school and my classmates. He would spit coffee while laughing. I would hold the clipboard at the finish line. While he called out times, I would write down the minutes and seconds of my sweaty, panting classmates. I somehow managed to get an A in gym without ever doing anything. 

In high school, I had teachers who actually made me participate in the mile.  I usually walked it, but sometimes I would sprint for a few yards. We stopped having compulsory gym in 10^th grade. I remember achieving my best mile time ever (to that point) that year. It was about 10min 30seconds. Once I caught my breath, I remember going on and on to my gym teacher about how impressed with myself I was. “I knew I could do it,” I remember saying. “I knew if I just didn’t quit, I could do it.” I also remember the look on her face, which was a polite version of “Do what?”

Once forced PE was over, if I linked up all the miles I ran between ages 16 and 30, It probably would have added up to about 10. Combined. I ran once or twice in college. Maybe five or six times between my first two pregnancies. But I really did have allergies. I could only sustain a running program for about two weeks before I got a sinus infection and was out for three weeks. It’s hard to get any better when you keep getting sick.

I was about 32 when I started running fairly regularly. I lived in Warrenton, Virginia, at the time, and we had a trail—the Greenway, which was once a railroad track. In its infinite wisdom, the town had decided they would never need that whole commuter railway thing, so they dug up all the tracks and paved the former railroad bed. It was a smooth, level mile. This was where I spent most of my running time—being lapped by speed walkers and moms with triplets in strollers.

I was 34 when I decided to do my first 5k race. It was sponsored by a high school track team that had done a poor job promoting outside their own community. Only about 100-150 runners showed up, most of whom were still in high school. Although it was in November, the morning turned exceptionally hot, and I was sweltering in overwarm clothing. Instead of the nice, flat out and back railroad bed I was used to, this 5k course around Robinson High School had actual hills. Steep ones. The high schoolers bolted at the start line. Left in their dust, I tried too hard to keep up, which wore me out and forced me to walk more than I wanted to.

I was not exactly the last person to cross the finish line, but I was pretty close. I think the last guy was actually pushing an oxygen tank, and he was right behind me. My finish time was about 49 minutes. If you have ever done a large 5k, you know that 49 minutes is a decent walking time, and there are usually lots of people coming in somewhere around the one-hour mark. But this was not a large run. Pretty much everyone was finished and they were all hanging around, waiting for the stragglers—me. As I labored across the finish line, it seemed like every high school track kid in Fairfax County was lined up to cheer me on. “You can do it!” They shouted. “Almost there!” They said. “Are you ok? Call 9-1-1!”

I admit that a mean little part of me wanted to smack them for being so obviously worried. But there were far more people than I could effectively smack before the police arrived. And I had to admit that my face was an unhealthy color somewhere between heart attack and aneurism.  

Although this was not my favorite 5k race, I am happy to say it was not my last. Luckily, I had a pretty slow time from which I could improve. I still struggled with the same problems: allergies, sinus infections, no really good places to run. But I kept at it. I ran on the treadmill or I did the stair stepper at the gym when I could.

I got a stress fracture in my left foot (my only running-related injury ever). That got better; then I fell down some stairs and sprained both ankles. It took a while before I could even walk, let alone run. But I did. While practicing a dance aerial called the “pancake,” I injured my second toe so badly that it still lists to the right. (For the record, I did have it x-rayed. I am quoting my doctor’s diagnosis directly here: “Eh, I think you’ll be all right.” So I can’t say I broke it or dislocated it, or ripped a tendon. I just don’t know. But if your toe is forever crooked, and every time you tripped for a year and a half, it brought tears to your eyes, you can bet you messed something up pretty good.) That got better and I sprained my ankle again.

Every time I hurt myself, I went through a progression of recovery: first I was in the pool swimming, then I started walking, and finally back to running.

This year, the happiest coincidence of my life changed everything completely. I discovered that I should not be eating wheat. Once I stopped that, my allergies went away completely. Now I can spend time outside without the sinus infections. After about six months, my bones started getting stronger, so I didn’t hurt myself as easily. What a difference this has made in my life—to be able to run outside on a regular basis without getting sick, and to live an active life without spraining, straining, bruising and fracturing my poor little bones!

I recently started using the TRX suspension trainer, which helped even out my left-right muscle imbalances and made my legs stronger for running. We got a treadmill in our basement, so that I can keep running even when it’s windy, cold, snowy or dangerously hot.

Now, at 41, I am routinely running three days a week. For the past few weeks, I have done one five-mile run per week. Two days ago, I managed to run 3 miles in less than 30 minutes for the first time in my life. All this from the woman who used to write herself notes to get out of doing one single mile in gym class. I am actually seriously considering running a half-marathon in May. Me!

Now, much like my high school gym teacher, you may be hearing me say, “I did it, I did it,” and thinking, “Did what?” There are a lot of people who run faster than I do. Although the speedwalkers and the women pushing triplets in jogging strollers don’t pass me up on the trail anymore, other people do. There will always be folks who are faster than me, younger than me, stronger than me. But that’s the thing about running. Even though we’re in the same race, I’m not really competing with them. I’m competing with me. 

I am out there running against 12 year-old me who held the clipboard for my gym teacher because I didn’t want to get my hair messed up.

I am running against 34-year-old me with the tomato red face, surrounded by well-meaning high school track kids who thought I was going to have a coronary on their finish line.

I am running against chunky me, allergy me, and sprained-ankle me, and stress-fracture me. And at the same time I am competing against all these “me”s of the past, I am also at peace with them and able to be proud of them and love them, because they’re the ones who got me here.

I may never win a race—unless if I manage to find the one that is sponsored by the 70 year-old Women with Walkers foundation, and they do a bad job of promoting the event outside their community, so that I am competing against a bunch of septuagenarians with assistive equipment—however, I have seen some of these ladies book it around the mall. I think they could take me.

Coming in first only happens for one person in each race. Even winning your age group is pretty limited. Running, walking, exercise in general, is all about getting better every time. It’s about training your mind to focus on the task at hand, and learning not to give up when you feel a stitch in your side. It’s about understanding when your body needs a break so that you can finish, and when you can push through and do something you never thought you could. It’s about getting stronger—not just in your bones and muscles and lungs and heart, but in your mind, that precious organ that makes everything else possible.

So now do I run? Absolutely. But only when chased--by yesterday's accomplishments and a strong desire to do better today.