Sunday, May 16, 2010

Hamstring massage!

I went to Sollievo (a massage place in Davis Square) yesterday afternoon to try to fix my knee/hamstring. Starting in February, my left hamstring right behind my knee has been really tight and painful after any practice, workout, or tournament. I have been on and off about stretching and foam-rolling and now that our college season is over, I went to this massage place to see if they could do anything. I didn't have any particular reason for picking Sollievo except that had a groupon for $45 for a 60-minute massage back in January and I bought one for me and one for Bryan.

I told the lady my background and she basically kneaded my entire left leg, from my lower back, to glutes, hamstring, and calf. She said that my knee and the muscles around it were really tight (I don't know if she was just saying that or if she could really feel it). There is this place right above the knee and a little to the left that she pressed on for like 3 minutes straight and it's still kinda sore to touch today. But basically, after an hour, I can finally hold my leg straight for the first time in 3 months! I can sit in a chair and extend my left leg parallel to the ground! It feels kinda amazing :D I'm going to take the rest of the week off and just stretch and foam roll and hopefully I can be tip top shape for the rest of the summer :D

As for a more comprehensive review of Sollievo, the masseuse was really nice and asked a lot of questions to make sure that she wasn't hurting me or whether something felt good or not. It was actually a bit more talking than I would've hoped for but it's good that she wanted to know how I was responding to what she was doing. She spent like 40 minutes on my hamstring and like 15 minutes on my shoulders and muscles right under my armpit (like, what is sore after you do pushups) and that felt awesome too. And then 5 minutes on my back, which was kinda worthless because she didn't push hard enough.

On a random side note, Bryan's masseuse told Bryan that his calves were so tight and, "do you rock climb or something??" Hahahah