massage therapy journal

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The Girl Factor

Any concerns over gender are counteracted by reputation and referrals. If a team member or friend has raved about a therapist’s effect on performance, chances are the client is open-minded by the time he walks through the door.

“So much of it is referrals—people come in with an idea about you already. I never had that problem of gender being an issue,” Ney says. “It was just whether a person was qualified and knew what they were doing.”

But what about sheer strength? Do men assume that a woman will knead like … a girl? Linden described one power lifter who weighed 300 pounds and competitively squatted more than 1,100 pounds.

“That’s a big guy,” she says. “He had an old adhesion, and when he came in after his coach had made the recommendation, he looked at me with terror in his eyes and asked me how much it was going to hurt. His coaches had told him about me.”

Not that strength isn’t a factor— Brutsaert points to the harsh day-to-day demands of sports massage, noting that cardiovascular fitness is more of a concern than strength. With lifting and turning and hard muscle, sports massage is harder on the therapist’s body than the typical massage. And Linden adds that she has met women who were not strong enough in their forearms or hands to work on the kind of dense muscle on professional athletes.

“You can optimize what you can do with leverage,” she says, “but if you have that much beef [to massage], you’ve got to have some strength.”

If there were questions from athletes, these women all agreed that one session was all it took to quell any doubts.

“I haven’t ever had a new player that doesn’t come in and say, ‘Oh no, she’s never going to be able to get in there deep enough,’” Calabrese reports. “Then afterwards they say, ‘Oh, gosh you were better than any guy I’ve had.’ It’s about your touch.”

“We get phone calls saying, ‘I want a male because my experience is women aren’t strong enough,’” Vandenbos says. “Then they’ll come in and say, ‘Wow, I never knew a woman could work that deep.’ [When] we take care of ourselves, we tend to be stronger and have more endurance.”

Ultimately, the work speaks for itself. Athletes and coaches measure success in performance.

“The proof is in the pudding,” says Linden. “If you have something substantial to offer and it resolves an issue for someone, they don’t care what gender you are.”

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