Let me guess what your go-to tool is for deep pressure?
Forearms.
Am I right?
Mine was.
But then my neck started to bother me, my elbow felt funky, and my already unstable left shoulder said I don’t think so.
So, I went searching for another way to deliver deep pressure.
Guess what I found?
You got it–fists.
Well, not exactly balled-up, punch-you-in-the-face fists.
More like relaxed, I’m-going-to-fall-asleep fists.
Why a relaxed fist?
Because I want to take all unnecessary tension out of my hands AND my fists don’t need to be tight to deliver deep pressure, aka, transfer my body weight onto the client.
We’re doing massage here, Mark, not fist push-ups.
Funny you should mention fist push-ups.
When you do a fist push-up a lot of your body weight is distributed through your arms onto the floor, right?
Your fists (and feet) are the contact points between you and the floor.
And that’s exactly how I want to do deep pressure massage with my fists (minus the feet part…lol).
I want to lean my body weight onto the client so that my body weight is doing the work and my fists are simply the points of contact.
It’s really not hard to do.
These 3 steps will make it even easier.
Massage with your Fists in Three Steps
1. Make a lose fists, not a tight fist.
Okay, so we already talked about a loose fist, but it’s worth mentioning again because my objective is to save all body parts, not just one or two.
Tightening your hands for no reason is extra muscle stress that you don’t need.
If you’re a chronic hand tightener when doing massage, read this: Massage Body Mechanics 201: Relax Your Hands.
2. Lean to generate pressure.
You’ll probably need to lower your table to get enough leaning distance between your fists and the body part you’re working on so that you can effectively transfer your body weight.
Don’t overthink this step.
You already lean when using your forearms, right?
Leaning with your fists is pretty much the same thing.
Just like leaning with your forearm you can lean with your chest parallel to the table.
Or you can lean with your chest perpendicular to the table.
It’s not hard to do.
It just takes getting in some reps to get comfortable with leaning.
Here’s a video that will get you up and running with leaning to generate pressure: Deep Tissue Basics of Massage—The Lean.
So, now you have enough information to massage with your fists when doing deep, static pressure.
The only other thing left to do is to glide with your fists.
You can lean and glide with your fists in small areas effectively by remaining stationery.
But if you want to do a long glide (like up the back) then you’ll need to…
3. Move your feet.
Moving your feet allows you to keep your shoulder, elbow and wrist in alignment as you glide and transfer your body weight onto the client.
In this video I show you how I move my feet when massaging with my fists and knuckles:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omwk-NyVjZU[/embedyt]
Massage with Your Fists Checklist
Fists are a great forearm alternative for deep pressure.
To get competent at massaging with your fists you’ll need to…
- Use relaxed fists.
- Lean to generate pressure. (Low table.)
- Move your feet.
Boom.
Now you can have happy everything:-)
Need more deep pressure help?
My Delivering Deep Pressure Without Hurting Yourself class is here.
It’s an online home-study class (3 CEUs) with lots of videos and guidance.
It’s based on the discoveries and strategies that I used to save my body and massage career.
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