Traveling with the Team: Sports Massage

Although this isn't what I would probably write about for my first real post, it did just happen this past weekend, so I thought the timing is right.

My sister plays Ultimate Frisbee. Passionately. This past weekend she had a tournament in Denver, CO. Fortunately for her, she has a brother who is a massage therapist and has thoroughly indoctrinated her into the benefits of massage therapy for the past 10 years. The cool thing is, she took it upon herself to arrange it so that 10 of her teammates all pitched in to fly my wife (who is also an MT) and I to Colorado and put us up in a hotel for 3 days for us to work on them. Granted, we didn't make any money on top of that, but my wife and I had been hankering to go to Colorado anyway. There were a couple of things that I'd like to point out about this trip.

First, massage can be a great tool to use to travel. This is one example, but traveling to take a Thai Massage class in Thailand can be another example. If you look for the opportunity, massage can really take you places. Incidentally, I laid the groundwork for this trip last year simply by proposing to the team that I could do sportsmassage and coming down to one of their local tournaments.

Second, massage is one of those things that is almost infinitely barter-able. I have traded massage for merchandise, discounts, services fees, business advice, and even paid for more than half of our $20K wedding that way. You can use your skills to trade for most anything you can think of (if only the DMV took backrubs...). Use your imagination.

Thirdly, this trip also emphasized the dynamic educational relationship that MTs have with their clients. Most of the people that pitched in to pay for us to go had some appreciation for massage, but had no idea that sports massage was something different. Most of them had the impression that it was just about feeling better afterwards. As my wife and I started to educate them about the value of pre-event massage and how it was different than your typical spa massage, I could see how their viewpoint changed. Some of the best comments that we received were "After that massage, I had the best warmup ever", "I felt so much looser. It was great", and "My calf didn't cramp up on me at all today". I could see their level of respect rising.

Finally, this leads me to my last point. It is vital that we Massage Therapists really know how to speak to our clients. Speak to them in their language and in terms of what they care about. Carry it a step further and use words and terms that they can remember and talk about themselves. It is great for your business when your clients can describe what your work has done for them to their friends - the way you'd like it to be described! You create an evangelical client that will spout your praises to everybody they know.

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