Know Movement

07/13/2024

Clearly I don’t do a great job of updating my business account 🫣 so here is a bit of an update!

When I’m not in my office working, I am typically performing my job on the road with I have been working with Maxxis for 3 seasons now, which has been a great opportunity to meet and work with both fantastic athletes and staff.

This past week I was with Maxxis in British Columbia for the BC Bike Race which is a 7 day mountain bike stage race.

In cycling, there is a term used for Massage Therapists which is: Soigneur, a French word for “healer.” When working with a team, a lot of the things you do is behind the scenes, but I don’t think that takes away from the importance of the work.

It creates a very unique position where regardless of if the athlete had a good or bad race, at some point of the day it’s just you and them on the massage table for 60 minutes. Sometimes it’s talking about the race, sometimes it’s about whatever random questions I come up with to ask them. It’s a time for them to (hopefully) decompress from race mode and for me it’s about trying to not have someone in their head for that period of time. Helping them to heal the mind and body, so they can be ready for the next race.

I enjoy working with professional athletes, not because of their job, but because of their mindset. They are looking to get the best out of themselves day in and day out. This means that they are doing all of the little things for their body not just for a singular race, but the entire season. What can this look like? Proper sleep, training, routine bodywork (either by a therapist or themselves,) strength work, rehab, and nutrition.

Whether you consider yourself an athlete or not, we can all have the same high performance mindset when it comes to our own health and wellness by paying attention to the small details.

04/26/2023

Celebrating one year of officially opening Know Movement 🎉🎈

Thank you to everyone who has trusted me to work with them through sore muscles, injury, or movement! I cannot thank you enough for your support. It has been one of the best years for me as I got to develop many new relationships, learn from each of my clients, and grow to become a better therapist.

I am looking forward to (hopefully🤞) many more years of helping others achieve their goals, and seeing what this business can become down the road! Cheers 🥂

09/13/2022

Hip pain can be difficult to pinpoint when it comes to the root cause. You have 36 muscles that attach to your pelvis, plus ligaments connecting from your lumbar spine into the sacrum. Now let's toss in the major joint of the hip: the femoroacetabular joint. This joint is a ball and socket joint which provides us some of the greatest range of motion; with that range of motion comes a price. Learning how to properly stabilize your pelvis is key to preventing hip and low back pain. The layers of connective tissue that surround our hip joint is thick and fibrous. Working on this tissue through manual therapy is important. It is equally, if not more important, to be working on this tissue through mobility exercises daily.

Do you sit for longer than 30 minutes a day? More than likely, your hips are tight. This anterior hip tightness can begin to wreak havoc on your pelvis. This lead to a host of issues such as inhibited glutes and then overactive hamstrings to overcome the work the glutes can no longer perform. This is just one scenario that can occur from lack of hip mobility.

So what can we do? Move! I personally like to follow this pattern:

1. Loosen the tight tissue
2. Mobilize the (now soft) tissue
3. Activate the opposing muscle group

Begin to open up the front of your hips through either foam rolling or similar techniques. Next, try a hip opening mobility technique, something that is dynamic. Finally, work on activating your glutes. We must first open up the front side, in order to access our backside. You can use this formula and apply it to any of the muscle groups in the body.

While hip pain can be a product of many different things, one full proof method to being proactive in your own hip health is to move through mobility exercises in all directions. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

07/05/2022

While on the surface, Know Movement is a massage therapy service, there is more to it that I offer. What I hope to communicate is my aim for your sessions is to offer you in-depth, quality, and specific work to areas you are having trouble with. As a client of bodywork myself, I knew I needed specific attention to areas that were heavily loaded with training and life. Some days that meant specific tissue work to shoulders or ankles, and other appointments that meant I needed full body work like a standard massage. This is what you can expect when booking a session at Know Movement. Your current needs drive the design of the appointment. We currently offer 60 minute and 90 minute sessions, where manual therapy and movement analysis is combined to provide both immediate relief and continued solutions to help alleviate pain, and break problem movement patterns. Head over to www.weknowmovement.com to schedule today.

06/21/2022

06/16/2022

Movement is medicine. There are times, especially when dealing with a nagging injury or pain, that moving doesn’t feel medicinal. When we’re at our best, all movements should be pain free; our joints and tissues working cohesively. Fluid movement doesn’t just happen out of the blue, much like we don’t just wake up one day and have a successful career, it takes work. It requires dedication and continued discipline to stay on track to meet our goals. This same strategy is what is needed in order to maintain our bodies and allow them to work at full capacity.

While Know Movement is just a business, what I hope to create is a movement that changes how you (and others) think about your own bodies and how they move. For example, if you’re dealing with back pain, next time you go to pick up something off the floor: did you think about where that motion was initiated from, or did you just pick it up? When you’re about to go for your next run and you’re already feeling stiff, do you just shrug it off and decide the first few miles will be a little slower till you loosen up, or do you take a moment to perform mobility work? Most people just accept these aches and pains, but I personally feel our bodies deserve a bit more. We only get one of them, so we need to help take care of it.

My challenge for you is this: if you’re dealing with a nagging issue, spend 5 minutes to address the tissue surrounding the problem area, even if that means 5 minutes less for your workout. Get into a healthy habit of spending 5-10 minutes pre and post exercise to give movement to your body, allow it to loosen up before you start adding load. Be preventative in tissue care. Be your own advocate for healthy movement. Make a change now in how you approach exercise, training, daily life, or whatever you may do. Movement is medicine, but you need to be willing to commit to it for it to work.

06/13/2022

One piece of advice I hope to instill with others through Know Movement is this: how often have you paid attention to your feet?

So why an illustration of a knee and yet I am discussing feet? How often is knee pain a common occurrence throughout our lives and through sports? Quite often! And how many times is it attributed solely to your quadriceps and IT Band? Countless! While tight quads and glutes can be a culprit, have you given thought to why they're chronically tight? Sometimes the cause of these issues resides downstream at your ankles and feet.

Are you able to move properly through your ankle? Or are you making up for lack of dorsiflexion by utilizing hip flexors and quadricep muscles to clear the ground while moving? Maybe that knee pain isn't just "out of the blue," or "will go away with a few stretches and glute activation exercises." If you never address the source of what feeds into this cycle, your knee pain will continue to come back time and time again.

If you're unable to get in to see someone to work on this tissue, start working that tissue yourself! Next time you're laying on the couch, use this downtime to perform some clockwise and counterclockwise ankle circles to open your joints up. Follow this with some soft tissue work by rolling the bottom of your foot with a lacrosse ball. Your feet, knees, and hips will thank you!

06/08/2022

06/08/2022

06/06/2022

I am excited to officially announce Know Movement. For those of you who know me, you may be aware of my dedication to understanding the body and how it should move. This understanding and pursuit of knowledge, helped me with my own recovery from injuries and to learn healthy movement. Know Movement allows me to use my own experience and knowledge to help people move better through manual massage work and education.

For more information about Know Movement and myself, please visit: www.weknowmovement.com.