Highlights of This Weekend’s Sports Massage Class

I attended a Sports Massage class this weekend at the Academy of Massage Therapy and Bodyworks in Pottstown. I had been looking forward to this class for months and it did not disappoint. I thought I’d write down a few thoughts on my overall impression of the class and how effective it was. Later this week I’ll post a bit of an overview of what we learned.

The class was fantastic. One of my favorite instructors at the school ran this class and she was very well prepared. It was her first time teaching this subject but you wouldn’t have known that if she hadn’t told us. She developed a great set of material to teach from.  It will be a great sports massage reference of mine for years to come.

The session was well attended, with 11 students of varying backgrounds and experience levels. There were 9 women, myself and one other male therapist.  We had a wide age range represented. There were currently practicing massage therapists in a variety of different settings and a couple of individuals with PT and nursing backgrounds.

The instruction was basically 90% hands-on, which I loved.  Sports massage is quite a bit less intimidating to most folks, as you do most of the work fully clothed, so there was no need to spend much time acclimating ourselves to one another.  We jumped right in!

I find that I learn a great deal more kinetically and massage definitely lends itself to that!  I found the class very effective and felt like I could immediately apply what I learned. I picked up several techniques for helping to relieve other’s pain and stress or help them improve their performance.

One of the highlights of the class for me, other than all of the great material I’ll summarize later, was the opportunity I had to discuss the business side of things with the practicing male therapist attending the class. He put many of my fears to rest, in terms of entering this field as a male, even though he said he initially had many of the same concerns.  He said he hasn’t had much problem building a practice in this area as a man and actually considers it a benefit!

This and other connections I made with fellow therapists during the course of the weekend helped to re-enforce my decision to pursue this field and demonstrated why massage has become so appealing to me.  The people I come in contact with make me feel right at home.