Andrew Boyer Massage | Uptown, Chicago

I read an interesting article in this month’s Men’s Health (www.menshealth.com) today. One of their contributors, Grant Stoddard, tried out the Human Dynamo 4.2 (4.2 because that’s how many calories it takes to generate a watt), an exercise machine that acts as a generator for your home. (www.humandynamo.com) There’s a gym in Portland, OR (of course) that has whole banks of these for the members and is completely self sufficient power-wise. Pretty cool.

What he really thinks the added benefit is is for those business people who don’t have time to work out. If you want to watch the Dancing With the Stars you have to hop on and exercise. Burns extra calories and makes you fitter while making greener energy. What’s better?

What’s funny is he writes about how now that he’s in his 30’s he’s let himself go a bit and has added a daily 6 mile run in the morning which burns an extra 500 calories and keeps him generally in shape. But how great would it be to convert those calories burned into useable energy. I basically picture the sorority girl and emmaciated gay man saying, “I’m sooooooo fat,” when they are in good shape. Maybe this guy was a world class marathoner in his 20’s, its all relative, but I don’t know in what world someone runs 6 miles and only burns 500 calories. I was running short on time this morning and only did 20 minutes on the treadmill and, according to my heart rate monitor, burned a little more than 400.

So, Stoddard has one set up in his house by the inventor, Mike Taggett, and jumps on. He quickly realizes that he can’t power his home and spends the next day jumping on and off to charge the battery with the plan of watching tv that night. The news doesn’t get through the initial headlines before it flicks off. He discovers that getting through a tv show is a lot more work then he expected. He comments that he is more selective throughout the week he has the machine on what he needs to run and what he wants to watch.

He realizes that, although the machine itself is green, it effects the environment in other ways. To watch television he burned an extra 1,000 calories a day. To spend the extra calories he’d have to start eating more, which would require more agriculture, manure, pesticides, cattle, etc, not to mention trucks to transport the new food, all of which takes energy and wonders if he’s ultimately spending more than he’s saving.

I think he has a good point. At a place like a health club where people do cardio all day, and in large quantities, it can self sustain. It doesn’t seem like the normal person could run much more than the toaster. The idea is great though. Tagget mentions at one point that a world class athlete, like Lance Armstrong, could keep a tv on for like 3 or 4 hours, but how many people have Lance Armstrong to hang out in their house and pedal?

I think its a great step forward, though. What a great way to start creating energy. As equipment starts to get more sophisticated it might be possible to run parts of our home from cardio equipment. It’d be a great way to get in shape, although it could be weird while watching the World Series or something. I wouldn’t want to run my hot water heater on it or anything like that. It’ll be exciting to see where this technology goes in the future. We’ll have moveable floors so that which ever direction we walk we generate power. How Jetsons!

Wow. Some people can’t catch a break. Isn’t it interesting how some people seem destined to not perform well at the Olympics? I don’t know if they choke or just have bad luck. Dan Jansen famously couldn’t get around the speed skating track and after being a world champion Kim Zmeskal never seemed able to pull an Olympics together.

Lindsey Jacobellis seems to be in this group. After basically throwing the 2006 snowboard cross race she lost control last yesterday in the semifinals and boarded right through one of the gates for a DNF. Every NBC producer broke down in tears at that site.

In contrast to that there are competitors who rise to the occasion and bring their best competition with them. Evan Lysakec was one of these competitors. Four years ago he had a terrible short program figure skate and it took him out. Last night he left all that behind (something Jacobellis couldn’t do) and jumped, twirled, and cameled  his way to a personal best and just in second place.  It will be exciting to see the long program tomorrow night.

That’s what’s exciting about the Olympics. People peaking at the top of their game and bringing their best competition to the games. That’s what Lysacek is doing and that’s what Alexandre Bilodeau did the other night, and that’s why he captured people’s hearts. It doesn’t have to be for medals either. Kevin Van der Perren (who looks a lot like my friend Sean) was ecstatic after his skate and he clearly has no chance of medaling. For him, he skated great and had the Olympic experience. What more could he want?

Hello there massage friends. I’d like to take a quick opportunity to welcome all the new people who have joined my Facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrew-Boyer-LMT/82850286638). I know I give small hellos on the page to everyone, but it’s really overwhelming to see the support and the interest in my work. I look forward to bring you interesting information and getting to know you on an individual basis.

Today’s tip is about how to help a headache without medication. First, remember that this is for entertainment, and if you have any medical questions they should be directed to your physician.

How many of you are familiar with reflexology? The Reflexology Association of Canada defines reflexology as: A natural healing art based on the principle that there are reflexes in the feet, hands and ears and their referral areas within zone related areas, which correspond to every part, gland and organ of the body. Through application of pressure on these reflexes without the use of tools, crèmes or lotions, reflexology relieves tension, improves circulation and helps promote the natural function of the related areas of the body.

What does that mean? Well, for thousands of years in China people have been mapping the areas on the body on the feet, hands and ears. Today, 9/10 you’re going to hear people talk about reflexology in terms of the feet. People believe that be pressing into areas of the feet you can affect change in the rest of the body.

I know some people who can start touching your feet and tell you where the pain in your neck is or that you have tendonitis in your elbow, without you telling them anything. It’s pretty amazing when people are attuned to it.

There is also a physical manifestation in that calcium deposits form in the areas where there are problems. The reflexologist presses into these to help break them up with either their thumb or a point stone.

To be warned: an intense reflexology session can be amazingly painful. Don’t think you’re going to get a gentle rub for an hour. My mother has foot issues and got a session once not fully knowing what it was and did not enjoy it.

When I learned the basic reflexology I know I didn’t learn much about how the ears factor in. You’ll have to speak to someone more trained than me about that. The feet, however, are for more chronic issues, and the hands are for acute problems.

So, headaches. A friend recently mentioned to me that he had one and couldn’t get rid of it. Over the wonder if instant messenger I tried to explain to him what I’m about to outline, and he couldn’t figure it out at all. Hopefully, the visual aids help.

Side tip: this makes a great party trick. I have been at more than one event where someone near me has complained for a headache, and I’ve sagely said, “Give me your hands.” Squeeze some points and in not a long time they come up to me to say that their headache is gone. It’s pretty cool.

“Ow, I have a headache. Now what?” Look at the palm of your hand. You know that meaty area between your thumb and pointer finger? Many people tend to press or hold this area of their hand without even knowing it during times of stress. There will be a point where it’s pretty tender between the carpal bones. Take a deep press and squeeze. It’s going to hurt. Now, when I say take a deep breath, I don’t mean hold your breath. Take a long controlled breath in and as you press let out a long controlled exhale.

Then move to the opposite side of the hand between the 4^th and 5^th carpal bones, or ring finger and pinky finger. Right in the meat of it there about a third of the way up from the wrist. Same thing, deep breath and squeeze.

After those two places you then want to squeeze the pads of each finger. I tend to go thumb to pinky, but that’s not an exact science. Don’t press on the tip of the finger you want to press into the pad that is on the same side as your palm. I usually do this with the tip of either my thumb or pointer finger of the opposite hand. I can kind of feel a dip in the tissue right in the center and that’s what I aim for.

Do the other hand.

I hold each reflex point for about 10 seconds. Maybe a bit more.

There you go! Try that next time you have a headache and don’t have any ibuprofen around.

As usual you can contact me at andy@andrewboyerlmt.com, my Facebook page, or follow me on twitter @andrewboyerlmt. If you have questions about self care you want addressed please don’t hesitate to ask.

I’m a terrible blogger. I know there are people out there this and following the workouts, so I apologize for falling behind. Here’s my big catch up day.

Without further ado…

As you can see I way over estimated my ability on the shoulder presses.  I think the real weight would have fallen somewhere between 20 and 25lbs. Then you can see in the superset that again I couldn’t do the push up part. *Quick note: If I list 0 in the rep column that means I tried and couldn’t do it. Not that I didn’t do it at all.

The single arm reverse pulls are a little embarrassing, but I was using the lowest weight on the cable machine. Oh well.

You’ll notice that I skipped walking lunges again, and I don’t feel guilty about it.

Then I did my cardio on the treadmill. Nearing the end of Hex. Very exciting stuff.

So, we’ve moved into the second of twelve weeks. The workouts definitely took a step up. As I mentioned before, I’m kind of useless when it comes to body weight exercises, so you’ll see that I did fewer reps in the warm up for things like push ups. I probably could have pushed through 20 reps on each set but those would basically have been work sets and not warm up. I decided to go until I felt warm and just to the edge of work being done.

That inability to do push ups will carry onto the other sets. Again, I try. I push and push and just get closer and closer to the ground. Then I cry a bit and take a drink of water. I’m in awe of the person who has the strength to do a weight that he can do 16 flys and then turn around and do 20 push ups. If you can do that let me know. I’d love to hear what kind of workouts you do and maybe post a picture so we can all see the massiveness that is your chest.

It’s crazy how much these workouts kill the muscle groups.  I could normally do sets of 95lbs on bench press, but I can’t even get through 4 sets of 10 a that weight after everything else I’ve done. It makes me a bit nervous to then go massage, but it all works out. It kind of sucks to be reduced to an armless infant, but it does energize me through the rest of the day.

There was one BIG realization I made during this workout. I’m a pretty big guy, 6′2″ 200lbs, but I’m not particularly strong. I’ve never been able to do 3 sets of 1o reps with 45lb plates in bench press. Often times when I’m working my way up in weight I think about getting to a weight that to others won’t look wimpy. This same thought goes into my cardio and how fast I’m going, etc, etc. I try to tell myself that the people around me don’t know what I’ve done, what I’m lifted, or how long I’ve run for, but no matter what I tell myself it I can’t get past it.

This day, during this workout, it really sunk in that it doesn’t matter what people see or what they think about my exercises. As I mentioned, this day worked my chest so much that I could barely do bench press. This is the perfect example: people don’t necessarily know that I had done  five other chest exercises first. I finally said f*** it, I don’t care. And finished off my workout well.

The funny thing is that I don’t watch and judge what other people are doing. We’re all there, that’s what matters, getting healthier. I don’t know why I’d be worried about what others are thinking, since I don’t think that about them. That helped as well. It’s been very freeing.

I lost the actual paper from this day before I was able to scan it, so the finer details I’m not 100% sure of. I needed the gravitron to get through the various pull ups.

Narrow grip pull downs are hard at Cheetah. The wide handle is bolted onto the lat machine and the smaller handle doesn’t fit on another machine. I end up kneeling at the cable pull and doing it there. The odd thing is that the weights are deceptively easy. I could get through higher weight than I thought I could. That’s nice.

The obliques on the BOSU are tough. I found myself continually sliding off it and tipping over the other side. It was kind of comical. Finally when I put my synthetic shirt down I managed to stay in one place. Eventually I managed to get an ab workout in.

This is easily one of the hardest leg workouts I’ve ever done, if not the hardest. The first exercise is the superset of drop lunges and squats, and pretty much after that I struggled to walk. You know that’s going to make for a good day. As I moved onto the single leg extensions I could feel the strength just draining and had to continually lower weight.

It was wild when I went to do the squats. As I stepped back from the rack I thought my legs were going to give out from under me. The actual reps weren’t that bad, but I was worried.

Many of you know that I have a lingering back injury. It generally feels pretty good, but keeps me from rowing this season. If I have a full day of massages and get lazy with technique I start to feel it as well. I started to do some of the deadlifts and definitely got some pain in my back, so I just opted to skip out on those. It’s not worth making my injury worse, especially not before the health care bill goes through.

My fear with skipping the deadlifts is that they are designed to target the hamstrings, and although a lot of the exercises in this workout are multi-joint that hit the whole leg, they mostly hit the quads. I’ve seen too many people tear hamstrings in my days, and the main reason that happens is from an imbalance on strength between the quads and hamstrings. Maybe skipping the single leg extensions would be wise? Suggestions from anyone?

When I was done walking down to the locker room was hard. I had to go slowly and make sure I held onto the banister. It wouldn’t have been surprising to fell down them, and there are a lot of stairs at Cheetah.

This was a tough shoulder workout, but nothing too memorable. Definitely by the end I was struggling to lift my arms up. I do remember the series of reverse flys were hard. I had that deep burning feeling. Almost to the point of over working them.

As you can see, the body weight exercises at the beginning were a little sad. It is frustrating that I don’t seem to be improving with these. I feel like I should be slowly adding to the number of push ups and such.

Generally, I think I did a good job at gauging the proper weights. I adjusted down on occasion, but it felt good. My friend Wes Waggener, who is an excellent personal trainer, told me once that its more important to get through the proper amount of reps, so if you can’t get through them just drop the weight and keep going. I tried to do that through this.

It was funny… the way this is designed you do all biceps before triceps. By the time I got through the first half my arms wouldn’t hang straight. They had a pretty severe bend from working my biceps. After I did triceps they straightened out again. I always find things like that amusing, especially since I talk to people about balancing muscle groups all the time. Like the guy who spends all day doing bench presses to have a big chest but never does a row, so his shoulders round forward and he looks like he has a hunch.

More to come…

Hello again! I must apologize for being absent for several weeks now. Some personal things and some travel kept me distracted, but now I’m back with the much anticipated sequel to Streeeeeeeetch. As usual this is for entertainment and should not be taken as medical advice. Always consult a physician if you have any questions.

This time I want to talk about stretching with heat. As you remember from last time, stretching helps with range of motion, flexibility, circulation, and stress relief. It can also help with preparing you for strenuous activity.

One suggestion I have to enhance your stretching is to add heat to it. Heat causes vasodilation (expanding of the blood vessels) which allows more blood to flow into the muscles and increases oxygen intake. That increase allows the muscle to have a wider range of motion then just cold stretching alone.

Think about what you often hear when in sports now. You should warm up by jogging or doing general calisthenics before stretching. Doing that warm up increases the temperature in the muscle, increases blood flow and allows the muscle to move farther.

I personally do a lot of my cool downs after working out in the steam room at the gym. I prefer to have that heat to loosen the stressed muscles as I stretch. I suggest to clients all the time to do that same thing and often advise you office-types with stressed out necks and shoulders to stretch in the shower when getting ready for work in the morning. Just stand with the shower beating down on your upper back and neck and do some head rolls and gentle ear-to-shoulder stretches.

As much as I love my friend Ellie (www.elliekaufman.com) and her ashtanga yoga, I loved bikram yoga. Spending an hour and a half in a humid, hot room stretching felt amazing. I have some tightness in my hips and hamstrings that throws off my low back and general posture, and after my bikram class I was drenched in sweat but my hips felt open and loose.

So, my suggestions are to do a good stretch in the shower, or if you’re one of those people who are lucky enough to have a steam shower you can use that as well, twice a day. You’ll be in the shower in the morning anyway, so take a couple extra minutes to get you ready for your day and then at the end of the day before bed. It’s been shown that if you stretch before bed the effects will continue as your body heals while sleeping. Because you aren’t adding stress to your body the effects can be prolonged. Then if you workout during the day I suggest doing a good post workout stretch in the steam room there. You should also do two to three short stretches throughout the day while at work. All that should keep you feeling loose and flexible.

What politician committed the fashion faux pas of showing up at an event wearing the same outfit as Queen Elizabeth II? The first person to post the correct response will receive half off their next hour massage.

To get up to the minute updates on the workout blog or any possible last minute promotions join my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrew-Boyer-LMT/82850286638 or follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrewboyerlmt (@andrewboyerlmt).

If you have any massage or self-care questions you want me to address feel free to email me at andy@andrewboyerlmt.com or post something on either Facebook or Twitter.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

As you will see Day 4 was all about back and biceps. It took a long time, and I did it at a new gym.

I did this workout on a guest pass to the new XSport on Elston. It is much larger and busier than Cheetah and equipment was harder to come by. I didn’t know where the exercise bands were, so I adapted the tube pulls and tube rows on the cable machines. To do supersets was tough. I went to do a set of smith machine pull ups and came back to find the cable machine being used and continue to be used for a while. The same problem occurred with the neutral grip pull ups. A girl was using the one machine going from exercise to exercise, so I just moved on.

There are a couple instances where I underestimated the weight I should use. In those cases I try to shorten my rest time. I did that with the wide grip pull downs.

This day didn’t require cardio, but I an easy ten minutes to cool down and check out what kind of equipment they had. Pretty standard treadmill. Didn’t feel like it had a ton of fancy options though.

It’s always interesting to workout at a new gym. I did enjoy it being busier. Just more activity around you. Part of that is that there are significantly more fit guys there, which is good for eye candy, but also good for motivation. Being surrounded by athletic people working out hard and throwing around a lot of weight makes you (or me at least) want to push through that one last rep or stick it out when I feel like leaving. At the same time it is harder to get to equipment and there are more people to stand in front of weight racks and needlessly sit on benches and what not.

At Cheetah I basically never have to wait for equipment. I’ve also been going there for almost two years at roughly the same time, so there is a little community of people who I know from there and am used to workout around. Not that we’re friends, but we have the cordial, “hello”  or head nod in the locker room, and if we see each other at Market Days or something we say hello.

So, there are some thoughts on two different gyms. The other good part about XSport is that I happened to wonder through their spa and asked if they were hiring. I got an interview and am currently waiting to hear about a job offer. Then I’d be working out just at XSport since I’d get rid of my Cheetah membership to save money.

Don’t worry friends, I won’t abandon my private practice. I just want a couple days a week to fill the time on slow days.

I’ll keep you updated.

It’s 12:42am and I have to get up at 4:15 to go drive the launch boat at crew practice, so I’ve decided that after laying in bed for a while to just stay up straight through. Since I got behind already on keeping up with the workouts I figured I’d blog tonight.

As you can see day 2 was a leg day. I didn’t fill it in, but I did do the warm up. As I mentioned last time I did it on the Nike treadmill so I could watch the video on my ipod. I finished off an episode of Duck Tales. For some reason the internal computer on the treadmill froze, so I apologize to all the runners at Cheetah who may have wanted to use it. When I was done with my lift and went to do my cardio it was still frozen. Oops.

The 45lbs for the dumbbell squats refers to 45lb dumbbells, so 90lbs in total. That felt pretty good. Got my heart rate up. I could do heavier next time through.

You’ll see that I opted not to do the walking lunges. One reason was that my gym doesn’t have a good space to do them and the other was that I HATE doing lunges. I don’t know why, but I really don’t enjoy them. As much as I want to get back into shape working out also has to be fun, so if I won’t enjoy it it’ll make it harder to get to the gym. I could barely walk the next day, so I think I got my legs pretty good.

The other exercises went as planned. I can tell a change already in strength since the first time I did this day I got through the stability leg curls but it was a struggle. This time I got through pretty well.

For cardio I went to a different treadmill. I can set a goal heart rate and the treadmill will adjust speed to hit it, so it’s easier to hit goals. I just watched video straight on the ipod, so the image was just small.

The total time for the workout was 1:24 and I burned 1098 calories.

Day 3

As you’ll see day 3 was chest and triceps. You’ll also see my inability to do body weight exercises. It didn’t make sense to me to compromise the first, weighted exercise just to get through doing push ups. Even when it got to the point that I knew I couldn’t do any I still tried and just kind of pushed until I fell to the ground.

With the Smith Machine press it was hard to gauge how much weight to put on since I’d already done several exercises. The 70lbs refers to how much weight I added to the bar since I have no idea what the bar weighs to get the total. Clearly I didn’t estimate well since I couldn’t do the reps the workout says.

I was short on time so I didn’t do the tricep kick backs and ran for 20 minutes. Went back to the Nike treadmill and watched some more Hex. It’s getting quite exciting, and it’s becoming more clear that the devil spawn isn’t a very nice guy.

The total workout time was 1:38 and I burned 1021 calories.

We’ll see how tomorrow’s goes since I’ll be working on no sleep. Fun times.

If you really want to follow my total fitness goals you can check out my eating habits at http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate and look for adbrunner.

I’ve decided that I want to get back into shape for my 30th birthday, which is in March. I’ve talked with several people who have gone through this 12 week “muscle building” workout. That makes me feel a bit like a tool just typing that, but they’ve had good luck, so I thought I’d try it.

I actually tried starting the workout before but about a week in went home to Maine for about 9 days and wasn’t able to get to a gym there, so I decided to start over and share my experiences. This has to do with self-care too, right?

It seems like the basis of this program is a lot of super sets. Super sets are when you do a set of two different exercises back to back with out a break. When you look at what I did you’ll see an “S” next to the exercises and that indicates the super set.

As you can see this first day isn’t too long of a lift, and is a lot of warming up smaller stabalizer muscles.

I once read that when told to “max out” on a lift that you should do no more than 20 reps, so you see that’s why I stopped at 20 on the push ups. You’ll also see that the number I could do rapidly decreased. I’ve never been good at exercises like push ups and chin ups.  You can see that reflected in the number of reps in the chin ups, inverted pull ups, and gravitron dips.

Then the ab section is really hard, and I wasn’t able to do 4 sets. When I did this workout the first time a few weeks back I could only do 2 sets, so I stepped up a bit.

The cardio section tends to be on different machines, but I will probably do mostly treadmill runs. I convert video and put it on my ipod and watch it while I run. I can watch the video on any machine, but my gym, Cheetah, has a treadmill that I can connect my ipod to and watch video on a larger screen. It’s quite nice. Right now I’m working through the BBC show “Hex.” It’s a kind of fantasy based on the conflicts between good and evil, and the warriors of God and the Devil. It’s pretty good. If I finish an episode I usually finish off the run with “Duck Tales.”

Look tomorrow for Day 2, which is a leg day!

Hello, friends, I’m back with your latest self-care tip. This week I’ll actually be talking about self-care and not massage. As usual, remember I’m not a doctor and this is for fun, and you should consult a physician if you have any health questions.

Today I plan to discuss the benefits of stretching and give some tips on how to make it better for your body.

I consulted the website for the Mayo Clinic (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stretching/HQ01447) to see what they had to say about the benefits of stretching. They point out that stretching helps with range of motion, flexibility, circulation, and even stress relief. The site points out that all these things help with general daily tasks like bending to tie your shoe, lifting boxes, or even running to catch a cab.

Stretching also helps prepare your muscles for the demands of sports and strenuous physical activity.

More often than not (in my experiences) low back soreness can often be traced back to shortened hamstrings. There is a lot going on around those lumbar vertebrae, and they are comparably small joints for how much muscle there is and how much stress is put on them. Hamstrings attach to the ischial tuberosity of your pelvis (that’s the bony part of your butt also known as the “sits” bones). There are three muscles in the hamstring that attach there and when they shorten there is a lot of pull down on the pelvis. This throws the alignment of the pelvis out of whack which puts tension on the low back as it trying to help get the pelvis back in order. Then the pain forms in the low back.

The same can happen with the quads, but generally the strength imbalance happens with the quads being stronger than the hamstrings, not the other way around.

Now, when stretching you want to keep some things in mind. You want to keep a nice, smooth motion. Ease into the stretch, don’t just drop into it. Quick motions to the extreme of your range of motion causes the muscle to constrict because it’s trying to protect itself.

In the same idea, don’t bounce in the stretch. You want to sit into it 30 seconds to a minute. You also want to repeat stretches more than once. Do them 3-4 times. You should also be able to sit farther into a stretch as you hold it longer. For example, if you’re sitting on the ground stretching your hamstring, bend until you can start to feel the stretch, slowly count to ten, move a little farther into the stretch, another ten, and so forth 3-4 times.

Just as with massage (see my last tip for my thoughts on this topic), stretching should not hurt. You want to feel the stretch, of course, but no pain.

I’m also really big on body positioning while stretching. In that same stretch on the floor for your hamstrings you want to make sure you keep a nice straight back. Rounding the back over changes the stretch. You want your hips square and shoulders level. Keeping proper form will keep the stretch on the muscles you’re targeting.

I consulted some colleagues to get their thoughts on stretching from other perspectives. One is a personal trainer and one is a yoga instructor.

Jason Annelin (who is my own personal trainer and on staff at Lifetime Fitness at Old Orchard www.lifetimefitness.com) says that that the top three things he thinks people should remember are: warm up, hold the stretch, and don’t bounce.

My friend, Ellie Kaufman (www.elliekaufman.com), had this to say, “And the most important things when stretching… hmm…1. Move slowly, with the breath. Inhale extend, exhale deepen. 2. Don’t stretch completely cold. Either warm up a bit first, or do both at the same time by doing sun salutations. Although in this weather… 3. As a general rule, although there are some applications for passive stretching: Activate the muscle opposite to the one you’re stretching. For example, contract the quads when you’re stretching your hamstrings. Keep your belly pulled in when stretching the low back. This helps you go deeper and also helps prevent injury.”

This last point I love. I tend to use it in passive stretching (meaning that I stretch you), but it’s great to keep in mind for active stretching as well. For the scientists out there, what engaging the opposing muscles does is it forces the muscle you’re stretching to release. So, to keep Ellie’s example of quads and hamstrings. The quads straighten the leg. By engaging them and trying to straighten the leg your hamstrings automatically let go because they have to to let the leg extend.

So, there some thoughts on stretching. Next week look for ideas on adding wet heat to your stretches and what that can do for the body.

As always you can join my Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrew-Boyer-LMT/82850286638 or follow me on Twitter @andrewboyerlmt.

This week’s trivia question: What is the world’s largest forest, and what country is it in? The first person to correctly answer this will get 50% off their next hour massage.

Everyone else, for this week only, will get an hour massage for just $45. That’s today to Friday, July 3.

If you have any questions feel free to message me on Facebook or email me at andy@andrewboyerlmt.com.