Post-walk self care recommendations

A full day’s walk can be tough on the body, so below are a few tips & tricks, suggested stretches & self-massage techniques that might come in handy after a long day of perimeter-walk adventure. 

(Yes, I’m a Licensed Massage Therapist and also trained yoga teacher, and folks have joked regularly that I made up Walk Around Philadelphia to drum up more business for my massage practice, but the walk seasons are when I’m *least* likely to be taking on new clients. I’ll instead refer you to my colleague Kimberly – I’ve got a date on her table for every morning after the three days of walks and she’s great.) –

My all time favorite restorative post-walk one is the one with two lacrosse balls under your butt while lying on the ground with your calves up on a couch. See below & give it a go!

No, this is not professional advice, just informal tips. Proceed at your own risk, take care of your own body!

GENERAL / OVERALL RELAXATION:

• A hot shower or hot bath. If a shower, you can do a few quick pulses to cold water and then back to hot.
• Lying on the floor stretching intuitively and rolling over a foam roller and/or tennis/lacrosse balls.
• A yoga class at a place like Studio 34 is also a great way to work out the tension from a long day’s walk.
• Counterintuitive, but even more walking after a break (an evening stroll, or a short walk the next day) can be nice, particularly at an extra slow pace in different shoes & without the weight of a backpack. Movement is medicine!

For the feet:

• Soaking in a tub of hot water
• Self-massage with a tennis/lacrosse ball (just put it under your foot and roll around on it while sitting on a chair, or do from standing for more pressure)
• Self massage with a smaller rubber ball (the kind of 1-2 inch diameter “super-ball” bouncy ball that you might find in a grocery store toy-dispenser (they have them at supremo at 44th & Walnut) – OR, make your own using discarded rubber bands. A smaller ball will let you work into the nooks & crannies between the foot bones.
• Stretch into flexion & extension:
  • Get down on your knees (use a yoga mat or blanket for padding for comfort)
  • Have feet behind you a tiny bit wider than your hips
  • Starting with toes tucked, shift your weight back onto your feet towards sitting on them.
  • If sitting back is too intense on your knees, find some bonus support by either putting a folded blanket (or more!) between your thighs and calves, and/or a yoga block or other support under your butt. Find the point where you’re getting a good stretch but no sharp pain in your knees. This range of motion can increase over time with patience & repetition.
  • Sit this way for a good little while, then get up and roll out the ankles.
  • Repeat with tops of feet feet flat on the ground to stretch the front side of the foot too.

(As a general rule, and this applies to everything in this post, proceed slowly & with caution, listening to your body. If it’s an interesting sensation that feels good to stretch or push into (kind of an “Oooooooh” feeling that you can take a deep breath into) then breathe into it. But if there’s any sharp, burning or otherwise painful sensation (the kind of thing that makes you hold your breath or go “Ow!”) then ease off, back up, and find a less intense version that feels right for you. The body releases in layers, and you don’t want to over do it. Stretching & self-massage are all about incremental change.)

For the lower legs:

• Massage calves
  • Simply lying on the ground, you can roll them around on a tennis ball or foam roller
  • Sitting cross-legged, you can push into them with the heel of your hands
  • This one’s a bit trickier:
    • From kneeling upright, with knees a bit wide, cross legs so that one shin comes to rest on top of the other calf.
    • Slowly sit backwards so that one leg’s shin compresses the other leg’s calf
    • This can get quite intense quite fast, and it’s helpful to have a pair of yoga blocks or other supports nearby to hold yourself up and control how much weight you put down onto that lower calf.
    • Do a few pulsed compressions, then shift the angle of the legs so that the shin can work lower, mid & upper parts of the other calf.
    • Repeat on the other side.
• Stretch calves:
  • Roll up a small blanket to give an inch or two’s padding off of the ground, and place front ball of feet on it.
  • Fold forwards down towards the ground to stretch calves (and hamstrings too!)
  • You can bend your knees as much as you have to to get your hands down to the ground.
  • Once there, keeping hands on ground, push hips up towards straightening knees to deepen the stretch

• Massage Tibialis Anterior
  • This is that muscle that runs along the front of the shin, just on the outside of your shin bone. Most folks aren’t aware of it, but it’s a great place to massage.
  • From hands & knees, you can place the front of your shin on a tennis ball and gently shift your weight around to massage into this muscle.

For the upper legs:

• Massage quads:
  • Lie on the ground face down, placing a tennis ball under the thigh a bit above the level of the knee.
  • With the tennis ball in this position, bend your knee, bringing the foot up into the air, and then lower it back down.
  • Repeat this several times, ending with the knee bent and foot in the air.
  • With knee bent, foot in the air, and tennis ball under the lower thigh, then gently swing your foot left and right, rotating the thigh so that the pressure of the tennis ball rolls around across the thigh.
  • You can shift your thigh & weight around to roll the ball completely onto the inner and outer thigh a bit too.
  • Move the ball higher up your thigh towards the mid-thigh, and repeat the steps above.
  • Move the ball higher up towards the upper thigh, and repeat again!

• Massage hamstrings:
  • Sitting on a firm hard chair, place a tennis ball under one of your thighs.
  • Practice some intuitive rolling around, exploring pressure of your own bodyweight compressing the ball against the chair to massage the hamstring.
  • Shift around on the chair to access different parts of the hamstrings, and repeat on the other side.
  • Alternately, throwing a leg over a rounded horizontal bar (handrail, bike rack, etc) and shifting your weight around on it can be another great way to get into the hamstrings.

• Stretch hamstrings:
  • Lie on the ground with a yoga strap (aka long belt, rope, towel, pair of jeans, anything) strapped around one foot and gently raise the foot up towards your face while extending it out away from the hip.
  • Notice if the hip of the raised leg wants to hike up towards your shoulder – keep the hips level.
  • If the hips are pretty tight, you can bend your opposite knee & have the other foot flat on the floor w/ the knee towards the sky while you pull on the targeted leg.
  • Another passive way to do this stretch is in a doorframe, with one leg going up the edge of the wall / doorframe and the other leg going through the doorframe.

• Stretch quads (& hip flexors):
  • From standing, bend a knee to send a foot back behind you, grab your ankle, and pull foot in towards butt.
  • Notice here if pelvis has a tendency to tuck back & arch lower back. Resist this & curl it towards the front to deepen the stretch.
  • A great passive way to do this one is lying down on the side of a couch or bench:
    • While lying along a low couch or bench, scootch yourself all the way to the edge of the couch so that you’re *almost* falling off of it.
    • Let your outside leg come off of the couch & down towards the ground.
      • Just this can be enough – from here, play with tilting the pelvis up to bring some stretch into the quads & hip flexors
    • Bend the knee of the leg that’s extended to the ground to bring your foot back below you, and tuck the ball of the foot against the ground.
    • Notice if your knee is wanting to splay out to the side, and instead draw it towards the mid-line, and keep extending it away from the hip.
    • Curl the tailbone up in order to bring extra stretch to the front of the hip / leg.
    • With your other leg that’s still on the couch, bend the knee to bring your foot flat on the couch, and then keeping the foot there, let the knee fall out to the far side (away from the edge of the couch) to bring more opening to the front of the hip.

• Stretch hips: 
  • Do the passive stretch above to stretch the front of the hip.
  • To stretch the butt muscles (glutes & hip rotators), a figure-4 stretch can be great:
    • Lie on your back with knees bent & feet flat on the floor
    • Lift left leg to bring that foot across the right knee. This may be enough
    • Lift the right leg to bring the left shin closer to your face. You might want to curl up to grab behind the right thigh.
    • Here’s the trick with this one: Most folks doing a figure-4 stretch will focus so much on bringing the shin to their face that they curl up into a little ball, bringing their spine into a C-shape. This avoids the deepest stretch potential. Instead, try keeping your tailbone curled back, maintaining some space under your lower back.
    • With the this hip engagement, you might not be able to grab behind the opposite thigh – instead use a towel, or (my personal favorite), find support by placing your foot against a wall.
    • With your foot supported on the wall, you can focus on using your back muscles to curl your tailbone back, bringing the deepest stretch into your butt.
    • Repeat the whole thing on the other side, of course. If one side feels tighter, spend extra time on that side.
  • Several of the pigeon pose variations are also great, as this asymmetric pose simultaneously stretches the back of the hip on one side and front of the hip on the other.

THIS IS THE BEST ONE EVER:

• Massage hips:
  • Lie on the ground, with your calves up on a couch and butt up against it.
  • Your hips & knees should be at roughly 90 degrees, as if you were sitting in a chair, but your back is on the ground.
  • Place a pair of tennis or lacrosse balls under your butt – one on each side.
  • Experiment with the placement of the balls, and you can reposition them along the way to explore the many nooks and crannies of the hips around where the thigh bone plugs into the hips.
  • By pushing down on your calves, you can shift your weight around to explore into the hips using your own bodyweight to massage them.
  • Experiment with bringing your knees together, then out to both sides, then rolling both knees to one side, then to the other.
  • Try tucking & curling your tailbone to explore into those interesting corners of the hips.
  • You can do double-duty with this one by laying a foam roller across the couch under your calves, so that as you massage the hips you’ll also be getting the calves.

Check back later, I’ll update this post with some more favorite stretches & self-massage techniques…

• This topic was modified 1 week, 3 days ago by JJ.