all right so today we're going to be doing the basic leg massage routine on the back of the legs so i'm going to first start by demonstrating the drape here now if you use a lot utilize a blanket first thing is to just get the blanket out the way and we're going to grab the edge of the top sheet and i find it just simple to fan fold the edge of the drape in and i'm just going to push that edge of the drape up to where i want the the drape to end up being i'm going to grab and pinch the edge of the drape right here about an inch below her knee i'm going to thread it through i'm going to keep this pinch right here i'm just going to slide it up towards her hip that's giving us the nice complete uh leg here uh and we'll also be doing the glutes today i forgot to mention that so now um so we'll start with doing the leg routine first here and you'll notice that the big thing about the the hamstrings is you want to pay attention to the topography it if if you kind of look at it and a lot more a lot of clients are more exemplified to this you know she's actually pretty uh pretty even here but a lot of times our clients legs angle down right so it's it's it's like running uphill versus downhill which if you think about it we have more resistance when we're running uphill than when we do downhill now i'll first like to start by gliding with my down strokes from the edge of the drape towards the knee the the reason behind this is that it just to me puts it in my client's mind that this is this is my resp my respect for you this is my you know my concern for you i'm starting from the edge of the drape i work down you know that i'm not going to go any higher if i started from here and i slowly come up it's like where where do i stop right so i just want to put my client's mind at ease so we're just going to start with some palm glides and as i come down the leg i just let my hands split and go to the sides of the knee now i'm going to give my cameraman here a real run for his money because i'm going to be changing angles a lot so like i said in this case we're going down the slope so we're running downhill we have very little resistance so this is really good for me to apply my lotion over the over the thigh now as you can see it's real easy because my palms actually stay very straight it's very good on my wrists this is going down the leg down the hill is usually the go-to method of the palm glides now when i want to come up the hill i'm just going to turn and so i'm just going to move her leg out to the side a little bit so i can get an easier angle with this this is where i can get those fist glides so now you can see there's more tissue bunching up and i can get a lot more pressure with this technique now one technique i do like to do with my fist glides is i just like to make this kind of steam roll this like steam roll i'll take my thumb and i'll just grab my thumb and i just have this little steam roll like rolling pin type thing going on here i can glide up and if i really want some extra pressure i can get some forearm glides in there and just gliding right on up and make sure i like to make sure i go straight to the ischial tuberosity right there where those hamstrings attach to on the pelvis there so then i can turn i'm just going to do this ocean wave technique across the legs across the back of the thigh basically just like wringing it out and i can take that muscle group especially if it's really small and just just grab it and just kind of move it and just kind of like tear it just like shingle it here you see you see what we got here just grabbing and tearing there now of course if my client's thighs are really big i can't get that in there then i'm going to do this little push-pull technique right here in the inner thigh especially right here around the knee i'm going to do this one-hand petrissage around that pez and syrinius insertion and then i'll do this little palm pull hitting those adductors just keep my fingers curled and i'm just going to pull on those adductor muscles here then i can work onto the outside of the thigh into the it band now what i like to do is i'll just roll the thigh a little bit and i can get low i can just glide that fist right on up to that greater trochanter and i got a nice low stance here i could even hook my elbow into my hip to really get that good pressure and make this really easy for me and then i'm just going to push just like we pulled on the inner thigh i'm going to push that it band up towards the back of the thigh that's really going to get a little bit of mild fascia work here so then i'm going to do this broadening petrissage here i'm going to start two hands back of the thigh i'm just going to let my hands slide down and then just pull them back up with a good squeeze so my body weight separate my hands and pull up now the hand on the inside of the thigh kind of has to taper off as i come up the thigh with this for obvious reasons i'll take this technique up and down the thigh i can even do this fulling technique we've demonstrated this before in the back routine i need a little bit more lotion where i'm just taking my fist and just kind of palm spreading just basically doing this kind of just just separating my hands it takes a little wrist effort so i might not want to do this all the time and then be very careful of the back of the don't put any pressure any pressure i go with the back of the knee is just like skin deep pressure just kind of flush it out here my next technique would be to just do this like circular motion right around the knee itself basically the same type of technique we were just doing with the spread and just going right around the knee now it's up to you when you want to come into the the glutes i usually like to start with a warm up on the on the thigh here before i come into the glutes because i feel like just going straight to the glutes for my client is just especially if they're a new client you know you don't want to you got to ease them into some glute work so and then i always ask permission before i do so is it okay if we work on the glutes and she's fine with that so how do you drape the glutes well to make it smooth for you when i do my glide up i can just kind of scoop that drape and just push it but if i need to i can physically or manually do it and i just need the side of the glute exposed and voila so now i need a little bit of lotion and then i just basically glide and just i have to change my angle so i can carry my glide coming up but you see i change my angle to be directly into those tissues and i can do this too with my forearms and really get those forms right around that greater trochanter that's pretty much our focus is right around the greater trochanter and i'll even come up as high of getting that edge of the sacrum so with the edge of the sacrum in mind i'm going to do this shingling technique where i'm just doing this fist over fist i'm going to start from the edge of the sacrum i'm going to pull down right there above the greater trochanter again i can do my fulling technique and just kind of twist those fists in there now we are able to do some forms of petrissage petrissage is of course going to be a good on a big muscle group like this but how you uh how you apply it is important me my personal preference is to do the two-fist method so i'm going to take my fist i'm just going to squeeze squeeze the glute because if i try to do it with my fist my my palms like this it's like i'm grabbing her booty and me personally i feel like that might be a little awkward my client so if i just take my fist it kind of just melds into with any of the other fist work i was doing so it's just real easy and i can just kind of strip around that greater trochanter you can find the other muscles sometimes i'll even find those the uh gluteus medius and minus minimus right here and i'll just kind of roll the thigh in and out over it just get a little little motion in there i could even take her leg i'm going to cross her leg over just cross her ankle over which is going to put the medius and minimus in a nice little stretch and i can just kind of focus that out so once i'm done with the glute i'll put the drape down and just real quick to show you that you don't actually have to undrape the glute to do a decent massage because i can still it just takes practice i can still glide very well over the drape you can see i got one hand here pinning it down that just keeps my sheet nice and taut which makes it easier for me to glide but then i can still do all my same techniques compressions right the the the petrissage i can even hit a little of that fulling there so you can still do tons of techniques through the drape if your client isn't comfortable with with their glute being draped and i'll always ask too if they're comfortable with that drape before i you know proceed so i'll then move from the glute down the leg and i'm coming into the calf here and the calf is pretty much going to be a resemblance of the thigh itself so again we still have our hill right so now our hill is this way we're going down the hill so i'd like to do my fist glides up but if i get low enough i can do nice easy palm glides that's fine so fisk glides are going to be good now the only thing is the difference between the calf and the uh hamstrings because the hamstrings can take a lot more pressure i can't do as much pressure on the calves as i could the hamstrings i could literally stand all of my body weight on her hamstrings and it probably wouldn't bother her so i'm going to do this alternating petrissage on the calves now normally we might not be able to do this on every single person's hamstrings just because of how big they are but calves usually aren't too big to do this technique again here's my ocean wave petrissage just just just just wringing it out like a like a nice little sponge and then i can do my broadening technique that i was doing on the on the thigh and then i'm going to do that inside petrissage you know get right there around the medial tuberosity of the tibia and just get that petrified right in there and then just like we did on the it ban i can just kind of roll the lateral side of the calf muscles here now when we're working the calf muscles you got to remember what muscles are there obviously our big bulky one on the on the outside or more superficial is that gastrocnemius which is the two belly muscle here so if i kind of just strip right through in the center you got to be careful because there's a lot of vasculature here i can hit into what's called the soleus which is the muscle right underneath it another technique i can do i like to do sometimes especially for you know runners and you know people with plantar fasciitis is just kind of just grab that that achilles tendon that calcaneal tendon here and just just give it a little little motion a little a little bend a little twist here so then what i'm going to do is i'm going to lift her bend her knee and i can sit you want to come around the corner here i'm going to sit on the edge of the table now i usually suggest that if you're going to be doing multiple clients in a day have a stack of towels you can use you know one for obviously for every client you know don't make it gross and use same towel for multiple clients but i'll put that towel right here on my shoulder because i want to kind of just rest her her ankle right here that way i have a little bit of support and i can hit the the calf here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to do this curl finger i call it the the heart the love technique right here because i have my fingers curled like i'm making a heart like i love you and i'm just going to take those fingers and i'm just going to strip down this calf muscle so i'm going to come right here in the center and that's going to get that soleus especially since with the the knee bent it's actually going to soften up the gastric muscle and allows me to get deeper into the soleus muscle here and i'm just going to strip through the center i'm going to strip the outside and honestly i could just strip every cubic inch of her calf especially if their calves are a big focus they're going to really like this technique then i want to do praying hand petrified from like i'm praying here i'm going to interlace my fingers i'm going to squeeze i'm going to use my fingers to pull my the heels of my hand together and just going to squeeze this calf muscle here then i like to think that i'm in the philharmonic orchestra and i'm playing a maybe a standing base or a cello and i like to do what i call the cello sweep here i'm just going to take my forearms i'm just going to just slide just like slice them like i'm cutting across using like a bow across the strings of a cello or you know standing base or whatever orchestra instrument you would prefer that requires a maybe a violin right a little smaller but whatever then i can just straight up boom bring the knee or i bring the ankle and heel towards her her glute and that's going to stretch out her quads now she's definitely got some flexibility here so she probably ain't feeling much of a stretch here with this technique because her her heel is on her glutes and you know could definitely go a lot further so i'll show you what we're going to do to deepen that stretch here in a second but first i want to do a pin and stretch on the um on the hamstrings muscles itself so what i'm going to do is i'm going to press into those hamstrings and with this knee bent that's going to put the muscles into a passive contraction then i'm going to just lengthen out that knee which is going to stretch out the muscles underneath my pressure i'm going to loosen up my pressure press in and then stretch it out and you can see as i'm starting to glide a little bit so this is like a pin and glide technique i'm going to take this technique all the way up real good sports massage technique all the way up to the to the ischial tuberosity there and as i get all the way up to the ischial tuberosity once once i do it you can saw that i did it slow i did you know section section section and now i can kind of just do the whole length of the muscle here i'm going to get right up to the glute and i'm just going to make like a little lever here i'm going to press right in basically right around the greater trochanter i'm going to start with her leg turned outward external rotation of the hip and i'm just going to press in with the fist here into the glute and i'm going to turn it out and this is going to be a pin and stretch on our glutes and you can do this one through the sheet and honestly this one's so good that i mean this this could be the you know bulk of your glute work this could be the only one that your client might even really want or the only one you really do on your clients just gets that movement in there it gets that compression in there and just oh it's just really nice really really good technique so now i can come into that deeper stretch for her her quads so again if they have more availability to do this then we can get a little deeper now this next stretch is something technically different even if even if they were still getting good stretch and their leg was here and they were still feeling good stretching the quads by taking the the the ankle and putting my my knee on the table i can lift her leg i'm just going to put her knee on top of my knee now i'm going to grab the edges of my drape and i'm going to pull that drape tighter for her just so she feels a little more comfortable and then i can bend the knee again so not only are we getting the quads with a deeper stretch we're actually bringing it into the hip flexors and what i'm going to do is i'm just going to stabilize her hip here so i'm going to hold right here at the low back and the hip and i just kind of give it this little a very gentle press down which is really going to isolate into the the hip flexors here and don't rule it out that just minor movements add so much more depth to your stretch if i just take her foot and i curl her toes it's going to really increase what she feels here right she's already nodding like oh yeah that changed it up and i can just hold here for a moment real easy now i always say that you want to incorporate stretches slowly use this more simple stretches with clients until they come become very comfortable with you because some stretches just could weird clients out so another pretty easy common stretch i like to do is right here from this position i'm going to grab the inside of her knee here i'm going to hold this drape tight i'm going to come right through see how i'm getting this this lateral motion here this external movement of her hip and i'm going to bring her thigh into this abduction right and now this gives me different access to work the glutes even and i'm getting a stretch you see i like to pull the drape down so she feels nice and comfortable there gets me a real different angle to hit the glutes here and i can even give a light press and stretch those adductors now she seems like she can get a little more movement so what i can do is i can just gently push yeah there we go gently push your thigh in a little bit more and just get that deeper stretch in there now when i want to come out i'm going to grab her thigh or grab her knee here i'm just going to slowly just start coming out the way we did and i'm going to lift her thigh and just follow the rotation of her hip here another stretch we're going to do i'm just going to put the drape back up so it came undone here so i'm going to take her legs slightly off to the side of the table i'm just going to press my knee or thigh onto her foot and i'm going to put her foot into dorsal flexion which is going to stretch out those mostly the gastrocnemius of the ham or excuse me the calves here and i can just apply a little bit of pressure to get that technique i'm just going to add in with that stretch take the leg up to the table here and we're going to incorporate the entire leg with some glides i can come all the way up i'm just being very gentle when i pass over the knee so i'll put some pressure here lighten up my pressure skip over the knee put my pressure back in and just continue up now i can do this with the palms i can do this with my fists i can do this with my forearms i can you know just take it take it all the way here and i could take the technique both up and down and we're going to end with a little bit of footwork here so i'm going to bend the foot again and that same little little love heart technique we did again i'm going to get those curled fingers and i'm just going to strip and get a little bit of lotion and just strip right there you should see her knee lift off the table a little bit when i get this pull so what i'm going to do is i'm going to grab at the like right next to the heel with those curled fingers i'm going to lift my hands up which lifts her leg up and then her weight is going to let her foot pull down for this technique another technique i like to do for the foot while it's elevated like this is to just wring it out like a sponge so i'm going to keep my hand nice and flat right here across her toes because i want to crush her foot and try to do that it's going to feel real uncomfortable i like her foot to be flat and then just rotate it just keep that foot flat and just get that rotation in there our shoot our our feet are kept and cramped in shoes all day right especially if you wear heels like that's terrible for your feet so just just incorporating movement into the feet is amazing uh and with that in mind with the movement what i can do is i can just pinch each knuckle each metatarsal phalangeal joint and just kind of give it a little shimmy shimmy shake and i'll just do that for each set of knuckles and just incorporate that movement right movement is is the key here i'm going to place the foot onto the table again i'm going to start with the praying hand petrissage right here on the heel so again that praying hands petrissage we just did i can do a nice little scrub technique generates nice heat right here on the heel and then with that heat in my hands i'll just spread it right up the calf and and notice i mean i'm just i'm literally right here on the edge of the table now the table is actually pretty high for me so normally i could i could still be sitting on the edge of the table for this then i'm going to pick up her foot and i'm going to do forearm glides because i want to really take out a lot of the work for my hands and my fingers for the foot area i'm just going to just come straight across right here around the uh the knuckles straight across through the center of the foot and right up through the heel stand up and i'm just going to take my fist i'm just going to slide right down and i can even do a little shingle here just just just sliding down on that foot so usually my my finisher is traction so i'm just going to hold her leg and i'm just going to pull on that hip and you can see as i pull her legs actually starting to straighten out so as i'm pulling i can grab for that thigh and i'll just pull that drape over and just merge as seamlessly into covering up her thigh and then boom i'm right on the other side to repeat what i did so that's our basic leg routine so go ahead and try it out and let me know what you think