Bodyworks DW Medical Massage Midtown is Moving!

 

Your favorite NYC medical massage therapists are moving to a new, expanded studio in midtown West 🙂

We’ve had a good run in our 1 room midtown east studio, meeting new clients, and providing our top quality medical massage therapy to those of you who live uptown. However, along with the ups of our midtown location, there have been some downs. Noisy neighbors. Less than great lighting in the waiting area and hallways. A long walk from the waiting area to our treatment room. And from what we’ve been hearing from folks, “too far East.”

It was time to expand and find a space with the same chill vibe as our home in Fidi. After a couple of months of searching around near our current space, we just didn’t see anything we liked. So we started looking at other neighborhoods. Turns out midtown west is rather underserved for high quality massage therapy.

We searched around and finally found the Arts Building at 336 West 37th Street. It’s a really great loft building, with a variety of fun tenants. They’ve got high ceilings and hardwood floors throughout, and nice old architectural details like exposed brick in the hallways. We liked them, and they liked us. So we signed on for a new space to call our medical massage midtown home in suite 540!

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The Benefits of Sports Massage: NYC Client Experiences

Germain Phanord, LMT at Bodyworks DW, writes about the immense benefits of getting a medical sports massage at Bodyworks DW. Read below!

Benefits of Sports Massage: NYC Client Stories

New Yorkers are a special breed. We pound it out at the office, then pound it out at the gym. Or yoga studio, pool, court, field, etc. Sports massage in New York helps reduce your pain by improving circulation of blood and lymph throughout the body. And especially to sites of current or former injuries that have restricted blood flow (ischemia). This assists your body in removing metabolites and other toxins.

Your heavily exercised muscles lose their capacity to relax over time. Which requires more of your effort and energy when moving. The lack ability for muscles relax is linked to soreness, and predisposes you to injuries. Especially muscle pulls and tears!

 

A regular routine of sports massage therapy is very effective in combating these effects.

Sports massage frees your muscles to move your joints more openly and efficiently. It also introduces new sensory information into your system. A system that is normally locked into its own patterns.

There are many benefits of sports massage. It can help you recover from injury and prevent new injuries. It helps make your complex human machine perform optimally with less pain in any activities. Running faster, jumping higher, and hitting balls harder all with greater endurance are just some of the benefits of sports massage.

 

There is such a thing as “too deep”

At the studio we see lots of common injuries like stiff necks, rotator cuff injuries, runner’s knees, and Achilles tendinitis. During your massage, you may find some of the work uncomfortable. It may even have painful moments, depending on your threshold and how tight your muscles are. Keep in mind this discomfort should always be bearable.

If you have to tense up just to handle it, that’s not actually going to give you a better result. The best work is done at a level that is slightly uncomfortable and you can breathe through it and keep your muscles relaxed. It is not uncommon to find that your muscles ache for a day or two after a sports massage. Keeping well hydrated and mobile will help this pass quickly. You’ll feel more freedom of movement after and see better performance than before!

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How to Take the Benefits of Medical Massage Home with You

 

David Weintraub, LMT and owner of Bodyworks DW, writes

David Weintraub

about how you can take the benefits of your medical massage home with you. Stay ahead of your pain!

Medical massage in New York with a NYC licensed massage therapist should be a regular and valuable part of your self care routine. Let’s face it...New Yorkers are not known for doing things gently. We work long hours, slam weights at the gym, and then maybe hit back to back yoga classes. And while this additive approach to health does have it’s benefits, it’s not restorative and our bodies need time to heal. Here are some of our best at home and at work practices for taking the benefits your medical massage home with you!

A great medical massage helps to relax both your muscles and your nervous system. It gives your brain time to switch out of your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight!). And engages your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) in a way that has benefits for long after the massage.

In a perfect world we would all get massages every other day and feel fantastic 🙂 Given the reality of time and money this is simply not going to happen. However, there are plenty of practices you can take on to extend the great results of your massage between sessions. These will assist you in feeling great, allow you to go longer between massages, and help keep you from getting injured.

Restorative practices to take the benefits of medical massage home with you

Lying Down with Your Feet up on a Chair

This is the number 1 homework assignment we give to all of our stressed out massage clients! It’s super easy, and it’s a great excuse to chill out a bit every day. We spend so much time sitting, our muscles get locked up in a sitting position. Which helps us sit, but is terrible for just about everything else we try to do.

Lying down with you lower legs on a chair puts us in the same position as sitting but without needing to hold ourselves up in gravity. It passively shortens our psoas muscle (main hip flexor), quads, hamstrings, and calves. When you shorten a muscle but don’t make it do any work it gets to completely relax. It usually takes 4-5 minutes for your nervous system to chill enough to truly let go of your muscles. We recommend doing this for 5-8 minutes every night before bed to help you get a really good night's sleep!

All of our clients who have taken this practice on notice really huge results in about 2-3 weeks. Decreased low back pain or tension, better sleep, easier mood. Check out this video to see what it looks like and give it a try!

Contrast Hydrotherapy

Contrast hydrotherapy is a great way to take the benefits of medical massage home with you. It involves alternating applications of heat and cold to an area (or your whole body). The heat opens up blood vessels and tissues and relaxes the nervous system. The cold constricts the blood vessels and tissues and excites the nervous system. Alternating back and forth between them creates a pumping system for the area. This draws out damages such as bruising and brings in new blood with nutrients. The contrast creates a greater therapeutic result than either heat or cold alone.

Local contrast hydrotherapy for acute conditions anywhere on the body

1. Apply a heat pack to the area for 5 minutes
2. Apply an ice pack or rub an ice cube into the area for 1 minute
3. Repeat this 3 times, ending on ice

Local contrast hydrotherapy for carpal tunnel syndrome or ankle sprains

1. Get two washbasins large enough to be able to place your whole forearm or feet into
2. Fill one with hot water (as hot as you can stand)
3. Fill the other with cold water (as cold as you can stand)
4. Dunk you whole forearms into the hot basin so that the water is above the elbow (or your whole foot so that the water is above the ankle)
5. Hold for 5 minutes
6. Dunk area into the cold basin for 1 minute
7. Repeat 3 times, ending on cold

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