Injury and Trauma - Testimonials

Hello Howard,

My friend at work (Jerry) had a severe cramp in his right Gastrocs' in 2000. This caused him to limp around for many days and it would flair up from time to time. This was long before I started massage therapy.

I would occasionally work on Jerry's shoulders and neck from time to time. Shortly after your class in upper body MYO, Jerry "sprained" his ankle. He said he laid on the floor for about an hour, unable to get up.

Well, he limped around for two days at work, before I cornered him, manning a very large fire extinguisher ( it was precautionary, there was no fire). He leaned on the fire bottle and I picked up his bad leg like I was shoeing a horse. Remembering the problem from 2000, I was guessing it was the same muscle pulling tension on its tendon in his ankle area.

I had him pull his toes toward his knee cap stretching his Gastrocs while I stoked distal to proximal. It took three tries for us to get coordinated. Each time I kept going a little deeper and each time I kept hitting a knot at the top of his calf. On the fourth stroke there was a very pronounced "POP" and Jerry shouted "OH MY GOD!" He started limping around in a circle, hopping up and down, and I thought I'd broken something.

He straighten out his walk, and got a big smile and the "sprained ankle" was fixed !! It's been a month since this happened and the problem has not returned. I hope I can get him on a monthly program to keep his calves stretched out and keep this from happening again.

Stan