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Engaging Muscles Massage

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Engaging Muscles Massage

When you feel a tight muscle, you also have an underperforming muscle (that you can’t feel). Your brain 🧠 calls upon muscles to tighten for protection.
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With 30 years of experience as a massage therapist, I address the muscles that are underperforming.

10/07/2025

People with hypermobility have instability in joint positions that ~99% of the practitioners who work with the musculoskeletal system don't think to look at.

When the muscles confirmed to be underperforming are addressed in a way that allows them to contract optimally, the brain recognizes the increased stability, making neuroplastic changes possible.

10/02/2025

Words of wisdom from the late, great golfer, Sam Snead.

"If the rules said that everybody had to play golf barefoot, I figure I'd hardly ever lose a tournament. I learned to play golf barefoot and it's more natural for me. It feels good out there, wiggling your toes.

When you step up to the ball, you're connected with the earth and you almost feel the roots go down."

09/30/2025

I noticed that you mentioned having a supportive shoe with a custom orthotic. Please look at the shoe you're wearing because it sounds like you have a custom orthotic in a stability running shoe that has an orthotic built into the midsole cushioning.

I mention this because without the artificial support of the shoe, custom orthotics don't allow your feet to initiate shock absorption (pronation). Rather than improve your mechanics, custom orthotics weaken your muscles and force your feet to move away from the area where you feel pain.

Because your feet can't initiate shock absorption on every step, your knees, hips, and spine have to take on more force.

Reply: I’m not sure there is any orthotic built into the midsole cushioning, and I remove the insole from the shoe before putting the custom orthotic in. But I’m a bit confused as I’m under the impression that my custom orthotics were designed to improve my mechanics.

I understand why you're confused. Practitioners who recommend (and sell) custom orthotics regularly claim that their version of arch supports improves mechanics (and that's not true).

If we take the shoe out of the equation, and you stand on your orthotics barefoot, the arch supports bring the ground up to meet your arches, making it impossible for your feet to pronate to initiate shock absorption.

Because the artificial support blocks the motions that allow your feet to pronate (go with gravity), your feet can't supinate (go against gravity) from a position of pronation, i.e., joint positions where your feet are flexed or loaded, something they are designed to do.

Feet that can't initiate shock absorption put muscles throughout your body at a significant mechanical disadvantage, and as a result, walking and running are much more inefficient.

Custom orthotics also have a negative impact on joints.

The science of biomechanics shows us that, when our foot is interacting with the ground on planet Earth, and our foot is free to move in the way it was designed to, there's a mechanical interrelationship between our rear foot (heel) and knee.

When our foot is in an environment that doesn't allow for natural movement, our lower leg, which is a component part of our knee, is forced to rotate out (supination), at a time when it's supposed to be rotating in (pronation).

The bottom line: When it comes to increasing compensation and, ultimately, increasing fragility, there’s no difference between the “custom” version of arch supports and the store-bought inserts that cost under a hundred dollars

07/13/2025

A trainer had this Division I athlete performing what he described as "functional isometrics," a heavy partial set with an overcoming isometric.

Translation: The athlete is lifting the load from a point in the range of motion where their muscles are stronger. After lifting the load a short distance, there's a hold, i.e., an isometric.

When the athlete performed the lift in the video, their heels came off the ground, and their pelvis extended as their lower back flexed.

Me: I get what you're doing. But watch the athlete's feet, pelvis, and lumbar spine.

The lift starts with their feet.

If they wore flat, flexible shoes that allow for ground feel, and focused on pushing their feet through the ground, they'd recruit more.

Doing the lift how they performed it will lead to a low back injury.

Trainer: I agree about the feet, but I have little to no control over the footwear in college athletics.

As far as the lift hurting the back, there inherent risk with everything. If there is a fear of injury, do not play sports.

Me: The little things are the big things! The athlete's low back is weak.

Do you care enough to tell the athlete to position their feet wider?

Do you care enough to tell them to keep their feet planted on the floor and push through their feet?

Do you care enough to prepare their lower back for the force on their spine?

06/26/2025

Today, I read this blurb from a prestigious university: "Sacroiliac joint pain is one of the most overlooked sources of low back pain, despite accounting for up to 30% of cases."

While statements like this make it seem that focusing on the SI Joint has to become a priority, muscles that are neurologically incapable of playing their role to the best of their ability are the biggest reason anyone experiences lower back pain.

When practitioners take statements like this to heart, it's just another recipe for chasing pain and symptoms, only to increase fragility.

06/22/2025

If you encounter a practitioner who recommends a piriformis stretch, no amount of education can justify stretching a muscle that, in most cases, is found to be underperforming.

06/18/2025

Whether you want to erase pain, improve performance, or prevent an injury, the smartcut is to do what changes your brain. 🧠

As it turns out, your brain responds to and is molded by the experience of increased stability.

While stretching, foam rolling, and releasing muscles can feel productive, the increased mobility (joints) and flexibility (muscles) doesn't hold.

Committing to only doing what increases stability will allow you to function better than you did before the pain or injury.

06/16/2025

To lift your arm to 90 degrees, your scapula (shoulder blade) rotates thirty degrees. Muscles that are responsible for moving and stabilizing your scapula and clavicle (collarbone) have to receive the optimal amount of neurological input for the scapula, clavicle, and arm to move at the right time.

When the goal is to eliminate muscle tightness throughout your neck and shoulders, the muscles that attach to your vertebrae (numbers 1 to 7) are the biggest rocks.

After you've addressed the first seven muscles that are found to be underperforming, move to the next biggest rocks that go from the scapula to the arm, or in the case of the biceps brachii and the long head of the triceps, the forearm.

06/09/2025

I recently worked with a woman in her sixties who plays competitive soccer four days a week and works seventy hours a week.

At the start of her session, she raved about a pre-game massage she had received ten minutes before her soccer game the weekend before we met, something she had never done before playing.

She got injured in that game and wasn't sure when she'd be able to play again.

No matter how I explained that releasing muscles and stretching increased instability and made her more vulnerable to an injury, she couldn't wrap her head around the fact that stretching and releasing muscles was not as valuable as it felt.

Today, she told me that two of her hamstrings are torn.

06/08/2025

The best running and walking shoes for all arch types.

1. No drop from your heel to front foot.

2. It can be twisted in opposite directions.

3. No arch support or toe spring.

4. A wide toe box.

5. A firm cushioning system.

Unfortunately, there aren't many shoes that fit this description. 🙃

05/26/2025

When the goal is to sell a surgical procedure that, in most cases, could be avoided, a “lateral release” of the knee is more persuasive than saying, let's cut your lateral retinaculum.

A lateral release is a surgical procedure recommended for knee pain that’s thought to be due to misalignment of the kneecap and/or a maltracking of the kneecap.

For decades, most practitioners have mistakenly focused on the kneecap (the train) when the root cause has always been the track (the femur and tibia) not moving at the right time.

To keep the train riding smoothly and comfortably on the track, it’s imperative to recognize that it's less about the train and more about how efficiently your muscles decelerate, accelerate, and control the track in three planes of motion.

The billion-dollar problem is that most practitioners lack the skill set to differentiate tight muscles from muscles that are underperforming.

Note: You can’t have tight muscles without also having underperforming muscles.

When your quadriceps, gluteus maximus, and tensor fascia latae (TFL) are functioning to the best of their ability, for instance, your brain will recognize stability, and the tight muscles will relax because they no longer have to make up for what the underperforming muscles aren’t capable of providing.

The Anatomy

Your lateral retinaculum is a non-contractile fibrous tissue that’s designed to provide support for your lateral knee.

The fibrous tissue that makes up your lateral retinaculum is a combination of superficial fascia and deep fascia.

The superficial fascia of your lateral retinaculum attaches to your patellar tendon that’s superior to your kneecap (patella). It also attaches to the tibial (distal) attachment of your iliotibial band and the distal division of your vastus lateralis, a quadriceps muscle located on your lateral thigh.

Like your vastus lateralis, the superficial fascia of the lateral retinaculum attaches to the lateral edge of your kneecap and the patellar tendon that’s inferior to your kneecap.

Sidebar: The tissue that goes from your kneecap to the tibial tuberosity on the proximal anterior tibia is often called the “patellar ligament.” It’s been referred to as a ligament because it’s consistent with the definition of a ligament, attaching a bone to another bone.
While it’s true that the tissue attaches a bone (the kneecap) to another bone (the tibia), its primary role is to transfer the force of the quadriceps contraction to your tibia, making it a tendon.

Joint Structure

The back of your kneecap is convex at the top, with the remainder being mostly concave. Whereas the surface of the trochlear groove that your kneecap rides on is concave at the top and convex on both sides.

Although it’s an anomaly, the outside surface of the trochlear groove can be shallow, making the kneecap more susceptible to a dislocation.

Muscle Imbalances

For decades, practitioners have claimed that the vastus medialis, a quadriceps muscle located on the inside of the thigh, is weak.

Throughout the same time frame, practitioners have also claimed that the vastus lateralis on the opposite side of the thigh is tight.

The First Inconvenient Truth

To reinforce what I mentioned earlier, the vast majority of practitioners lack the skill set to differentiate tight muscles from those that are underperforming.

Most practitioners are guessing when they say that the vastus medialis is weak and the vastus lateralis is tight.

The truth is, the vastus medialis and the vastus lateralis work together to control motion of the hip (pelvis and femur), knee (femur and tibia), and ankle (tibia, fibula, talus, and calcaneus).

In most cases, the vastus medialis and the vastus lateralis are neurologically incapable of performing their role to the best of their ability.

Until the neurological input to both of the aforementioned quadriceps muscles is restored, exercises involving movement won’t increase the strength of those muscles.

In other words, I don't recommend an exercise until I've confirmed that your muscles can contract (pull) to the best of their ability.

Athletic Tape and Bracing

For decades, practitioners have used a version of taping that, according to them, helps the kneecap track properly.

Unfortunately, they’ve made the same claim about using a brace.

The Second Inconvenient Truth

I’m confident when I tell you that to have a train that can't ride efficiently and comfortably on its track, your brain perceives instability at your hip, knee, and ankle long before a practitioner resorts to a brace for your knee.

In other words, there was pre-existing compensation that went unaddressed before the knee brace. So, of course, compensation increased after the knee brace came into play.

Custom Orthotics

For decades, practitioners have resorted to custom arch supports for kneecaps that aren’t tracking properly.

Although it’s a severely flawed thought process, their reasoning goes something like this: If we bring the ground up to meet your arches, the artificial support for your feet will help your kneecap track better.

The Third Inconvenient Truth

Regardless of the height of your arches, when you bring the ground up to meet the arches of your feet with custom orthotics, your feet, which are designed to initiate shock absorption, can no longer fulfill this role.

In the real world, there’s a mechanical interrelationship between your ankle and knee.

Custom orthotics force your feet to roll out at a time when they should be rolling in, throwing off the knee, and causing the train to falter on the track.

The bottom line: Custom orthotics and store-bought inserts increase compensation, adding insult to injury.

05/12/2025

Before the 2022 season, Bryant signed a seven-year, $182 million contract. I shared this a few months after the 2022 season began. Since then, Bryant's been on the IL nine times and played in 170 games over three seasons.

When cortisone injections no longer provided relief, Bryant had major back surgery that he's currently recovering from.

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Wednesday	8am - 9pm
Thursday	8am - 9pm
Friday	8am - 9pm
Saturday	9am - 5pm

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https://www.engagingmuscles.com/

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Prior to each session, I first want to see what each and every muscle that crosses a particular joint is capable of. To do this, I’ll put your joints in positions where one muscle is emphasized more than any other muscle.

The goal: I’m asking each one of your muscles a super specific question. As you might have already imagined, it’s a challenge that each one of your muscles hasn’t been presented with.

The question goes like this: When all of the other players are taken out of the equation, are you (read: a specific muscle) capable of pulling your weight?

When the answer comes back as NO, then, I know the muscle in question is not performing to its full potential. See, when your muscles are presented with a super specific challenge, you’ll know whether or not they are capable of meeting that challenge.

No matter what you expect from your body, it could be walking, running, weight training, golf - you name it ______________, since your activities involve motion, muscle’s are required to pull.

In order for your muscles to pull efficiently, they have to be capable of generating an adequate amount of internal force.

The long and short of all of this: In order to pull optimally, you want a certain amount of feedback that’s freely flowing between the muscle and your brain.

If you’ve ever had a kink in a water hose, then, you can relate to what I’ve described.

When muscles demonstrate they’re not capable of performing at the level that they should be - that’s feedback. Feedback, that explains why any one of your muscles is tight.

To say the same thing in a slightly different way, if you have muscles that are tight, you’re also going to have muscles that are under-performing.

The key is to differentiate the muscles that are tight from the muscles that aren’t capable of pulling optimally.

Until I address the muscles that are under-performing, those same muscles aren’t going to get stronger. So what does that mean for the muscles that are tight? Well, until the under-performing muscles are addressed, the tight muscles will continue to tighten up (again and again...).

As bad or as annoying as tight muscles can be, the reality is, below your conscious awareness, those same muscles are doing their best to protect you from more pain or an injury. So when you stretch or foam roll or do anything else that is geared towards targeting muscles that are tight, it doesn’t matter how good it feels at the time, your brain is going to figure out how to tighten up muscles in such a way that they can protect you.

Which explains why stretching and foam rolling only allow for short-term results.

In essence, addressing the under-performing muscles is the difference between addressing the symptom and getting to the root cause. It allows for the weeds to be pulled out by their roots.

If you’ve ever stretched or foam rolled, then, you can most likely relate to what I’ve described.

I treat muscles with a unique form of deep tissue massage. You’ll remain fully clothed throughout.

If you would like to make an appointment, here’s the best place to reach out to me: contact and connect