WELCOME to Massage Extraordinaire's Blog

Ouch! The dynamic and forceful twists and turns of tennis unfortunately can lead to many risks of injury. Knees, lower back and shoulders are most prone to muscle strains for tennis players. Keeping an eye on proper form can greatly reduce problems in these areas. Understanding the causes of this can help develop strategies to improve functional movements that help reduce painful injuries and keep you on the court! Know the Source If you're having pain in your shoulders, the problem might actually originate with your hips. The legs pivot in the hip sockets, allowing the spine and shoulders to rotate and the arms to swing during the back-swing and the follow-through.  For a more powerful hit, tennis players often jump during the swing, which intensifies the stress on the body.  Ample ability to rotate the hips is fundamental to proper form for many tennis moves. If the hips are overly tight and not freely moving in full range of motion, other areas of the body compensat...

The alignment of your knees greatly affects your gait and your gait greatly affects the way your body feels. If you have genu valgum, known as knocked knees, or the opposite problem, valgus angulation, your body is going to eventually let you know that it is not happy with the situation. When that happens, it's time to act quickly to find a remedy! Just like the vehicles that we drive, when the alignment is off, the tires (or in our case feet) start to wear improperly. If your knees bend in, it puts more weight on the inner foot. For knees that point outward the opposite is true. The negative chain of events can unfortunately spread upward to hips, back and eventually the neck area when the foundation of our structure is compromised. To make matters worse, for every pound over your ideal weight that your knees are carrying around, the problem intensifies. Our bodies are amazing at adapting to less than perfect dynamics, but after a bit of time of being forced to comprise it...