What To Expect During Your First Massage Appointment

 

Sports therapy treatment can be a bit daunting. What should I wear? What will happen during the treatment? Will it hurt? We’re going to demystify some of the questions which will have crossed your mind at some point when considering coming to see us at Fire & Earth. 

During the treatments, our therapists will do everything they can to help reduce your pain and restore normal function, whether this is with hands-on massage techniques, movement assessment, or corrective exercises. 

 

To ensure we have the best opportunity to help you, ensuring we can see and feel the areas of the body that need attention is vital. For both men and women, ensuring you have shorts (for the lower limb) will allow us to successfully treat your hip/thigh area. If it’s for an upper-body massage or assessment, we will ask you to remove your top. Therefore, for women, please ensure you wear a sports bra or a bra that shows us the shoulder blades and spine easily. Some women prefer to remove their bra, which is fine as we have towels to keep you covered. 

 

Additionally, to protect your clothing we do ask you to bring your own towel. This will be tucked into shorts/tops to ensure the massage oils and lotion does not contaminate your clothing. 

Regardless of whether you’ve booked a deep tissue sports massage, sports therapy, or a physiotherapy appointment, all of our appointments start with a 5-minute conversation to help us gather as much information regarding your concern as possible. We’ll discuss past medical history (previous surgeries, illness’, injuries etc), health and lifestyle questions (sleep, hydration, exercise routine) and signs and symptoms of current problems (how long has it been there? Pain levels? Pain type). 

 

If possible, leading up to your appointment, keep a diary of your symptoms across a week and make a note of any aggravating factors that can help us arrive to a correct diagnosis and treatment plan. 

A deep tissue sports massage is used to affect and change the muscular tissue or relieve tension within the tissues. When the body becomes ‘tight’ it’s for a few different factors (weak muscles, fatigued muscles, or protective spasms). It’s then our job to reverse this tightness, which can be a little uncomfortable. 

 

However, our therapists communicate with you to ensure that the pressure applied to the tissue is within a comfortable range and to not causing you unnecessary pain. Our aim for the treatment is to help reduce pain and increase comfort so we won’t cause unnecessary discomfort throughout your treatment. 

 

So, with your questions answered around your first appointment and what to expect, please book in today and let us get you back to a pain-free and more comfortable life.