Treating clients with their clothes on, using little or no oil will make you less vulnerable to repetitive use injuries.
Hi I'm David Morin. For years I delivered thousands of massage treatments using oil or lotion.
When I started traveling with a University track & field team though, it became common to treat athletes clothed, whether on the training track or in the locker room. The Primary reason was to protect the athlete from cold drafts that can tweak a hamstring in half a minute.
Working through a cotton shirt became easier for me than using oil and trying to get enough pressure while my thumb was gliding away from me. I could easily place a forearm or heel of hand anywhere it was needed and deliver sustained pressure without strain to my body. It became a win win solution for the athletes and for me.
When I brought this form of treatment into my private practice, my clients loved being able to stay warm and comfortable in roomy cotton clothing without having to undress. Geriatrics were especially appreciative. It was great to know that my client was comfortable and there was no sheet to fall away at just the wrong moment.
There are so many pluses to working on a clothed client; lets talk about some of them.
There's a lot of time saved between treatments when a client doesn't have to dress or undress... It's easy to have a client turn over... it's easy to have a client get up to test what was hurting, and it's so much easier to perform table stretches and teach your client remedial exercises for their condition. Each of these little things add up to a major advantage over oil massage.
Clothes on treatment rather nicely resolves modesty and gender issues allowing you and your and client to focus completely on the treatment of injuries. And it greatly facilitates the side lying position which allows you to deliver a superior treatment and to better maintain your own body posture. We'll talk about that more in another video, stay tuned for it.
You'll save energy being able to treat effectively, with sustained moderate pressure, using your forearm, heel of hand, fingers and our Thumbsaver, a rubber tipped wooden instrument that truly does save the thumbs. This is not that red rubber tip that fits over the thumb yet requires you to use all the same thumb muscles. Clients cannot tell the difference between a thumb and a Thumbsaver in the hands of a trained Medical Massage Therapist.
I ask clients to wear a well-worn, cotton T-shirt and sweatpants, because both offer a modest amount of friction; You can take a position and press through the clothes, and your fingers will not slide. It take less force coming from you to deliver the same level of pressure to your client. Less force means you are less vulnerable to overuse injuries.
Another benefit of the clothes-on approach is that it frees you from using oil or lotions. From a practical standpoint, its a treat to not have that continual cleanup and expense.
You will be surprised how many clients do not want to undress in order to be treated for a musculoskeletal injury. Clothes on treatment brings a more clinical focus to your practice and that's a valuable career-changing transformation we'll talk more about in other videos. Stay tuned.
I'm David Morin for health Matters Seminars
http://therapyedu.net