- Welcome back, everybody.
I wanna show you some anatomy today
of the hamstrings and the calf muscles,
so we drew 'em on for you,
which, Mike did an excellent job.
We're gonna start with the biceps femoris
or biceps femoris.
It originates right here at the ischium,
which is your sitz bone.
So you can really feel it right here on your clients,
and a lot of times, this causes back pain.
When the biceps femoris is tight,
it pulls down on the back.
So you wanna find the origin right here at the ischium.
It comes down, and the short head of the bicep
originates in the linea aspera of the femur,
and it inserts on the tibial side.
And remember, the tibial bone does not bear any weight.
The second muscle of the hamstrings
is the semitendinosus will be the pink one,
and this one inserts at the pes anserinus,
which is means pes anserinus
is three muscles attach right there
is the gracilis, sartorius,
and the semitendinosus with a t.
The next one is the semimembranosus.
It originates also at the ischium
and it goes down,
inserts again into the tibia.
Now for the gastrocnemius,
the gastrocnemius originates right here
at the femur and it goes down,
it kind of splits right here,
it goes down to the Achilles tendon,
all the way to the calcaneal tendon.
And the soleus originates right here also,
and it goes down the sides.
It's underneath the gastrocnemius.
Soleus means flat fish.
So it looks like a flat fish underneath the gastrocnemius,
and this is the pink one.
We drew just the edges and it also
inserts at the calcaneal tendon
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Okay so now I'm gonna show you some techniques right here.
You usually start with your effleurage
to warm up the muscles.
You do a few, I like to do three,
three sets of each.
Three sets of effleurage and a couple of petrissage,
warm up the muscles really good.
And then you can start with some figure eights.
This really gets the biceps femoris here.
You can even do one at a time with your knuckles.
You can scrape down.
This is a really good one to get cross fiber.
You can come across also the adductors
and the edge of the semimembranosus
and the semitendinosus.
And for the gastrocnemius I like to separate it, too.
Go up, skip the popliteal, and continue on.
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To get to the soleus,
you put your thumbs on both sides
of the gastrocnemius and just go all the way up.
So you're kind of like squeezing,
like if you're squeezing a pimple,
your thumbs are pushing towards each other,
and this really gets the soleus.
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And to get the circulation towards the heart,
I like this one, too.
Really you get the blood back towards the heart.
If you're working with somebody that has diabetes,
you wanna do it a little bit slower
because their veins don't fill up as fast.
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Somebody with back pain, you wanna make sure
and get the origin of the biceps femoris
and semitendinosus and semimembranosus,
'cause when the hamstrings get really tight
they start pulling down,
and they can put pressure on the low back.
So this is really important for people
with low back pain that you also check
the biceps femoris and and all the hamstrings.
While you're here just go around the trochanter.
you know, go cross-fiber.
Get the hamstrings and the adductors here.
The adductors are all inside.
Remember one thing guys, what I like to teach
is muscles in groups,
and so I'm gonna give you a tip
of how I teach my students,
that to me instead of reading 20 muscles all at once
and get confused of where they are
and what they do and how they function
put 'em in groups.
I always say, there's six deep hip rotators.
five adductors, four quads, three hamstrings,
two lower leg muscles, and one major hip flexor,
which is the iliopsoas, which is really two in one,
but I like to call it one.
Or you can go one, two, three, four, five, six,
or six, five, four, three, two, one,
whichever one you like better,
but remember six deep hip rotators, five adductors,
four quads, three hamstrings, two lower leg muscles,
and then one major hip flexors.
So let me explain to you a little bit
the difference between a strain and a sprain.
The strain with a t, the t has to do with a tendon.
So strain, tendon; sprain, ligament.
Ligaments attach bone to bone,
strains attach the muscle to the bone.
So if you have a type one strain
that means that it's not too bad.
You can do some work on,
use your rice acronym,
you know rest, ice, compress, and elevate.
If it's a type three that means that the muscle
tore completely off the bone
and you don't wanna do too much work on that.
You might wanna wait 72 hours,
especially if it turned purple.
That means that there was a really bad tear.
So you wanna make sure that they've
gone to the doctor and that you've
waited long enough for it to to start,
that you're not gonna do any more damage.
When they have a type three strain
you definitely do not wanna do any stretching,
because if the muscles already torn off
from the insertions and you go and do stretches,
then that's not good.
So make sure you know the difference
and that you're being careful.
And also you can do this techniques on somebody
that has restless leg syndrome.
So people with restless leg syndrome,
it really helps their muscles relax.
People, they get charley horses.
They get a really bad cramps usually
right here in the gastrocnemius.
So you wanna take it one inch strips
and really treat the gastrocnemius real gently.
You know, find the trigger point and work it out.
See how it splits right here naturally,
and then you go back because right here
there's nerves and veins and arteries
that go through here and you don't wanna do any damage.
You never wanna put any pressure here
on the popliteal.
So you can skip that,
go up the gastrocnemius and then just keep going.
For bigger people you can use a forearm.
You know, use pressure with your forearm.
Watch your body mechanics, too.
I'm pushing with my legs,
so I'm not doing this with my arm.
I'm pushing with my legs.
Another thing that you can do is raise their leg,
pin and stretch.
And if you want them to offer a little bit of resistance,
you can do that, too.
Like push against,
and then stretch it out.
Push again.
So this is some of the techniques that you can use,
and you can be really specific,
and I like to work it all.
Muscles work in groups.
So you wanna make sure that you work the biceps femoris,
semitendinosus, semimembranosus,
gastrocnemius, and the soleus.
And you usually start, treat the origin,
the belly, the insertion,
origin, belly, and insertion.
You can do many strokes here,
and I like doing this one,
'cause this really gets the blood flow back up
towards the heart.
When you're using pressure you always
wanna go towards the heart.
You can come down a little bit
if you're not using pressure,
but when you're applying pressure,
remember in the limbs it's always towards the heart.
You can do cross fiber, you can do knuckles.
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Remember the pes anserinus right here
where the semitendinosus inserts,
you also have the attachment of the gracilis
and the sartorius.
so you wanna make sure and address around the knee.
Give them some circular motion
and just work all these tendon attachments.
I do a lot of cross fiber,
and I think that works for me
to really get the muscle to relax,
and keep the pain tolerance level
to what the client can tolerate.
Don't go too deep.
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And don't forget to learn your muscles in groups.
Remember the one, two, three, four, five, six.
One hip flexor, the iliopsoas;
two lower leg; three hamstrings;
four quads; five adductors; and six deep hip rotators.
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Until the next time, create a good day.
So this is one of the reasons why as massage therapists
what we do is so important.
The sensory organ of touch,
which is our largest organ actually,
the skin triggers so many sensations,
and it's so important and it's making sense now
with this ASMR.
So as massage therapist we're already doing
some of this ASMR techniques,
and if you've given up and do not include
nerve ending strokes,
then maybe it's time to bring 'em back and incorporate 'em.