Day 189 - Sports Stretching (14 Days Left)

We had a lovely break from anatomy for our sports massage class tonight. After an hour of lecture about sports massage, its history and benefits and that sort of stuff, we got to see a demo of more stretches to do with our clients. Then we got to practice it ourselves. As far as I'm concerned this may be my least favorite modality, but the jury is still out on that. They may have to order pizza for these deliberations.
Because we're doing stretches and there are so many stretches to do, it's hard to remember them all, so that is somewhat frustrating as the practioner. However, as the receiver, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Once again, because I sit all day in basically the same position, it's really great to have muscles moved around into different positions.
So, we'll see what the next three classes offer about this sports massage thing.
Now, on to more interesting stuff. This whole program is part of the requirements for being a Licensed Massage Therapist in the State of Maryland. The other requirements are passing a written national exam and a Maryland State jurisprudence exam. In addition, it's best to carry liability insurance through one of the national massage associations. Needless to say, studying for all these quizzes and exams doesn't stop once I get my certificate from the school. I still have a good couple weeks to a month or so of studying for the national exam.

This past weekend, I joined the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA), and tonight, I submitted my application to take the national exam through the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (NCBTMB), along with my check for the exam fee.

With those two items down, I feel like I am right on track to where I want and need to be with working toward becoming fully licensed.
When I think about the period of time immediately following my graduation from this program, the only word I can describe that time is "detox." After living, breathing, and studying massage, anatomy, pathology, business, and the like, I will almost need to purge my system of all of that for a week or so afterward.

Day 111 - Getting a Little Taste of Borscht

After calming down from last night's class, I found out that several other classmates were frustrated. Well, I guess we'll work together to achieve our goal: learning this anatomy information.
But in the meantime, we were in Russian Sports Massage (let's just call it Russian) tonight, combined with another class. Our instructor, who likes to make things run as smoothly as possible, had us actually do LOTS of bodywork tonight, even when we haven't learned all the strokes, just to get us used to the pattern of work in this modality.
My partner worked on me first and was still learning "the ropes" and was not overly thrilled with what he was learning from Russian.
When he got on the table, I tired to convince him otherwise, since I wholeheartedly enjoy this modality. He quite enjoyed the massage he got while I was practicing and I think I've converted his thinking.
Now, on to Friday and preparation for clinic on Saturday.