Alternative Health Blog

As founder and head trainer at the Athletes’ Performance Institute in Phoenix, Mark Verstegen sends clients home from exhausting workouts Monday through Saturday with one essential and common item: The Original Body Stick. All of the elite athletes who train here for upcoming seasons in pro football, major league baseball and international-caliber soccer are encouraged to pack the self-massage tool in their workout bags.

Verstegen and his other trainers instructs his clients to use the Body Stick on the muscles exercised that day—the quadriceps in the front of the thigh, hamstrings in the back, abdominals, shoulders, whatever was pushed to the limit. The Body Stick is about two feet long with ergonomic handles that you grip to roll the center of the stick (a plastic covering with spindles or bumps that massage the muscles) back and forth.

“Just a few minutes a day can decrease your soreness and pain levels, especially after a workout or any strenuous physical activity,” says Gary Robbins, who oversees all cardiovascular training at Athletes’ Performance. “It helps move lactic acid out of the muscles.”

The body stick costs about $40 or maybe half of an hour session with a therapist. You can get started on the same concept with self-massage, taking time to knead the muscles, maybe even closing your eyes to concentrate on feeling the deep-tissue massage you are trying to accomplish. Mark Verstegen swears by massaging the muscles after high-intensity exercise sessions rather than, say, letting ibuprofen do the work.

Massage therapy is one of several natural techniques you can seek out as treatment for pain, stiffness and soreness. It’s no coincidence that 41-year-old American swimmer Dara Torres competed in her fifth Olympics last weekend, winning silver medals in the 50 freestyle swim and the 4 x 100 medley relay to make it 11 total medals. Torres gets a deep-tissue massage pretty much every day of training and even before and after races.

There is good science behind massage therapy, too, which will be the topic of Thursday’s blog post (Aug. 21).

Along with massage therapy, you might consider reflexology (a healing method that works the feet as “nerve centers” for the body), chiropractic or EFT (emotional freedom techniques) that is best described as acupuncture without the needles. All of the these ideas require some commitment of time and, in some cases, money. But anyone with chronic pain will acknowledge that are glad to commit both if natural pain relief is the result.

EFT at its basic level involves  repeating an affirmation (“Even though I have significant stiffness and pain in my neck, I completely accept and love myself”) while tapping on meridian points that are indeed adopted from the acupuncture system of energy flow throughout the body. The taps are firmly executed with the fingertips and sometimes a karate-type chop.

The practitioners of EFT are growing in number, ranging from clinical psychologists to life coaches to even some physicians. One important tenet of EFT is that we hold emotional issues (anger, grief, resentment, lack of self-acceptance) deep in our bodies. This practice is designed to help work out those emotions in the same sort of fashion as the body stick pulling out the lactic acid. EFT is steeped in the belief that emotions contribute a far greater amount to health and illness than believed by most scientists.

If you see the emotional connection to pain, EFT might prove a powerful and natural pain reliever in your life. Same goes for massaging the muscles after moving boxes or massaging the knee joints after a brisk walk or run. We can play a part in healing ourselves through our hands and minds.

Coming Thursday: The research portfolio of massage therapy.