Soma Massage Blog

Biceps Brachii: The Most Misunderstood Muscle

When someone says the word “muscle” to you, what do you think of?  Maybe the pecs, maybe the calves, but if someone were to ask you to flex your muscles, your go to muscle would be biceps brachii.  Maybe because it is very visible, maybe because we’ve all seen what happens to Popeye after eating his spinach, but for some reason biceps brachii is the muscle we all think of when we think of muscles.

Here’s the thing though: We don’t really need our biceps.

Biceps brachii has three actions: it can flex the shoulder, it can flex the elbow, and it can supinate the forearm (turn your palm upwards).  Well, we’ve got three other muscles that can flex the shoulder (pectoralis major, anterior deltoid, coracobrachialis).  We’ve got two other powerful elbow flexors (brachialis and brachioradialis).  And we have a muscle to supinate that’s actually named supinator (supinator).  So what do we need this biceps for, anyway?

Looks good at the beach.  Makes you look swole.

Does that mean if your plane is crashing and you need to jettison extra weight you should get rid of your biceps?  As amusing as that sounds, no, that’s probably a bad idea.  Your biceps does connect your torso to your forearm by originating on your scapula (at the supraglenoid tubercle and the coracoid process) and inserts just past your elbow on your forearm (at the radial tuberosity and the bicipital aponeurosis).  This means that if you’re transferring force from your torso to your forearm, say like when you’re throwing a baseball, the biceps plays a key role in doing so.

So biceps is good for something.  Great.  But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.

Since biceps is multiarticular (crosses two or more joints) it is susceptible to insufficiencies.  It can become actively insufficient when it tries to perform all its actions at the same time.  Imagine lifting a heavy weight by both flexing your elbow and your shoulder, versus just flexing your forearm.  Basically the muscle becomes weaker when you take .

Biceps can also become passively insufficient when it is elongated across all of its joints at the same time, thereby limiting your range of motion.

But the one you’re probably most familiar with is bicipital tendonitis.  Tendonitis, quite simply, is the inflammation of a tendon.  Tendonitis can be caused by trauma, or it can be secondary to other pathologies (like arthritis), but most often it is caused by overuse.  Too many repeated overhand motions.  Athletes such as baseball players, tennis players and swimmers are all common recipients of bicipital tendonitis.  And we can help with this!

Of course, initially, we treat this with ice and rest.  Let the body heal itself.  But in the later subacute stages of injury (about three weeks in) we can start massaging to help the healing process.  This would involve releasing tension in the biceps, thereby lessening the tug of the muscle on its inflamed tendon, as well as cross-fiber frictioning to the tendon itself to bring extra blood flow, stimulate the healing process, and make it so the body lays down a nice, mobile bit of scar tissue that won’t limit the client’s range of motion once healing is complete.  Follow this up with a stretch to the muscle and tendon (and it doesn’t have to be the most profound stretch in the world, just enough to lengthen the fibers) and an eccentric contraction (muscle contracts while lengthening) of the muscle to reset the muscle length.  Follow with an ice massage to help control the localized inflammation you just creating with your frictioning, and have them come back twice a week for about four weeks.  If there is no improvement after four weeks, they may need to revisit their doctor.

To learn this treatment and more, talk to someone from our admissions department right now by clicking here!

Massage Therapy and Health and Wellness Coaching

Massage therapists know that massage has many health benefits from stress reduction to pain relief, and many Americans have chosen to make massage therapy a part of their healthy lifestyle regiment. But, what if there was a way for massage therapists to offer more in the realm of wellness care? A health and wellness coach can be the key to helping clients manage and maintain their health, and massage therapists are seeing that blending massage therapy and health and wellness coaching has increased their clientele and revenue.

Health and wellness coaches work with clients to help them establish goals, maintain motivation, hold them accountable and focus on their successes as they change and manage their lifestyle so that it embodies health and wellness.

If adding health and wellness coaching services to your practice is something you are interested in, then consider The Soma Institute’s 110 hour Health and Wellness Coaching Program.

The entire program is taught on-site at The Soma Institute’s Campus in Chicago, Illinois making it a fully interactive program. It is one of the few coaching programs in the United States that is entirely taught on-site.

Massage therapists that enroll can earn continuing education hours while completing the program.

After successful completion of the program, students will be certified as a Health and Wellness Coach through The Soma Institute.

Find out more here!

Your Swivel Chair Is Trying to Kill You

The human body is not built for sitting in a swivel chair for eight hours a day.  And yet that’s what many of us do.  Thousands of years of hunting and gathering has not left us with bodies designed for staring at a computer, filling out TPS reports and wishing a plague upon our copiers.  Will our bodies one day evolve into a structure better suited for office work?  Or will the office work evolve to be better suited for our hunter gatherer bodies?  Nobody knows for sure.  What we do know is there are a few things you can do to mitigate the unhealthiness of our day-to-day activities.

1. Get up, and get up often. It’s often said that sitting is the new smoking.  Staying stationary for the better part of your day wreaks havoc on your body’s systems.  Blood needs to move around your body to oxygenate your tissues, and it can’t do that if you’re not moving.  Once an hour, get up and move around for a few minutes.
2. Stretch it out. While you’re up moving around, stretch out your body, especially your hip flexors.  Those muscles are most likely to adapt to a shortened position after sitting in a flexed position all day long.  Stand up, grab your foot (as if trying to kick yourself in the behind) and pull your leg back.  Then touch your toes to stretch out your hamstrings, as your knees are flexed, too.
3. Sit up straight. Tension neck syndrome, upper crossed syndrome, or head too far forward syndrome, call it what you want, but it’s making us all look like cavemen again.  We were doing great, evolving upwards as we should, until we all got smart phones and laptops, and now we’re hunched forward all the time.  Remember, you can look down with your eyes without bending your head forward, and whenever you think of it, tuck your chin back into your neck, like you’re trying to make a double chin for yourself.  This opens up space at the base of your cranium, giving a small but significant stretch to your suboccipital muscles, which are often short and tight.
4. Get a massage! It’s been proven in study after study that workers are actually more productive after receiving a 15 minute chair massage.  Massage has many benefits, from increased circulation to decreasing pain levels, to activating your parasympathetic nervous system, better known as your “rest and digest” function.  When your body is in parasympathetic mode it gets to reboot itself, and you come out of a massage refreshed and more energetic.
5. Drink more water and eat healthy food. If you have coworkers who like to bring in baked goods for everyone this can be challenging.  Bring your own healthy snacks and keep them at your desk.  Fruit, nuts, carrots, etc.  If your coworkers insist you have a piece of their birthday cake, you can fake a phone call and run away screaming “Not Grandma!”  Or you could fake an allergy after asking what’s in it.  “Vanilla?  That could kill me, Cheryl!”  Or you could be honest and say you’re trying to monitor your sugar intake, and you wish them a happy birthday all the same.

Turn And Face The Hamstring Strain

The weather is gorgeous, you’re out with some friends at a picnic, and someone breaks out the Frisbee. And you love Frisbee. You’re really good at Frisbee, especially those wacky catches where you spin and snatch the Frisbee between your legs or behind your back.  You jump up from the picnic blanket, which you’ve been sitting uncomfortably on for the past hour, and you notice your foot has fallen asleep and your legs are both a little stiff.  You decide to ignore this, though, as its just Frisbee, and your body will warm up eventually.

Everyone is taking it casually, but not you, because you know what you are capable of.  You don’t excel at your office job, your car’s an old jalopy and your dating life is covered in moth balls. But this is Frisbee, and you are the king of Frisbee. The third throw to you is way out of reach.

For most people.

But not for you, you think, as you launch yourself full speed in its direction. Just as the Frisbee is about to hit the ground you dive, launching yourself headfirst into the grass and rescuing the discus before impact. You hold it up in the air.  You are a hero.

But what was that popping sound? Did anybody else hear that? And why is your leg not moving? When you try extra hard to move it you notice a sharp increase in pain to the back of your leg. You lie there on the ground, helpless, because you know the one thing you’re good at won’t be an option for a while. You’ve just strained a hamstring.

Your hamstring muscles (so called because it’s where butchers would string up pigs, fyi) are a very common place for strains. On many people they are overworked and ischemic.  On people with bad posture (hyperlordosis) they are overstretched and weak. It’s just plain hard to keep your hamstrings in good working order, and then any sudden overstretching or overexertion can lead to a tearing in the tissue.

Other factors that can lead to a strain include:

1. Not warming up properly (see above).
2. Limited flexibility (do some yoga).
3. Overuse (too much yoga).
4. Poor biomechanics (that’s not yoga).

If it’s a moderate to severe strain (more than just a pulled muscle) you’ll likely see the area bruise and swell up quite rapidly. The next step is RICE (rest, ice, compress and elevate) for the next few days, and then use the leg minimally for the next two weeks or so.

Two to three weeks in we enter the late subacute stage of healing, and this is where massage can greatly benefit the healing process. Your body likes to throw down massive amounts of scar tissue following injury, which is great for sealing up lesions, but terrible for maintaining range of motion. Our job is simple:

1. Identify the lesion site via palpation and response from the client
2. Work around the lesion site peripheral-central-peripheral.
3. Cross-fiber-friction to the lesion site to ensure a nice, mobile scar following the healing process, allowing for full range of motion.
4. Treat any compensating structures (the low back from vaulting, the other leg from being overworked, etc.)

Eventually recommend to your client that they talk to their doctor about beginning an exercise program to regain strength in the torn hamstring, likely beginning with isometric contractions, as you’re least likely to injure yourself during a contraction where the muscle stays the same length.

And next summer, try some dynamic stretches as a warm up before dinging across space and time to become your picnic’s Frisbee hero.

This Graduate Seems To Be Showing Off

Jess Labunski graduated from Soma about two years ago, and she has not wasted any time in getting a successful massage career started. We recently got her to answer some questions about her career for us.

 What drew you to massage? 

I was always interested in a career in the health field, but it took me awhile to discover that massage therapy was my true calling. I knew I wanted a job that gave me the opportunity to improve quality of life and function, and additionally had an interest in working with athletes. As I researched massage therapy more in depth I started to realize how much the field was expanding and becoming an essential part of rehabilitation programs. I saw the growing prevalence of massage therapists as a part of sports medicine teams and was instantly interested! The final piece to the puzzle was finding a school like Soma that taught me everything I needed to know in order to get started on my new path.

What are you doing now? 

I am currently working for Athletico, a physical therapy company that originated in Chicago and has expanded throughout the Midwest. I am based out of the Elmhurst and Gold Coast locations, and practice a combination of clinical, therapeutic, and sports massage techniques. In addition to the work I do in the clinic there are a number of athletic groups I help keep in shape. This includes the dancers at Joffrey Ballet and Hubbard Street Dance for seasonal performances, and the rhythmic gymnasts for team USA in preparation for the Olympics this summer. Additionally this spring I became the core massage therapist for the Chicago White Sox, and work with the team before every home game. I love the diversity that all of these different work environments have brought to my career thus far!

Where do you hope to be in five years?

If you asked me this question 3 months ago, my response would have been that I would like to be working with a professional sports team. Given my recent opportunity with the White Sox, this goal has shockingly already been met and this year has become a breakthrough year for me. Now, as I look at the next 5 years, I would like to focus more on expanding my knowledge and skill set through continuing education. My goal is to learn as many therapy techniques as I possibly can to contribute to my own treatment style. In this profession you realize pretty quickly how unique the human body is, and with every bit of knowledge you acquire you also gain the ability to customize a treatment plan for an individuals' specific needs.