If you're an athlete of any kind that takes your sport (or sports) of choice seriously, I hiiiiighly recommend you get over to Bob and have him take care of your poor muscles.
Let's get one thing straight though...this is not your soothing, relaxing, candlelit massage with soft music playing in the background. No no my friends, it is much more awesome and terrifying than that. Let me lay it out for you.
Bob's office is located right next to Psycho Suzi's, so plenty of parking options via their lot or street. He met me outside the first time, otherwise you can buzz his office via the pad by the door and he'll unlock it for you.
Now, walk down that long scary concrete hallway to the bottom level and his office is straight ahead - don't worry though, it has a nice sliding glass door to the outside that overlooks the river. It's just one room with the massage table, an inversion table (is that what they call them?), his desk, and a small place to change if you need to. Ladies, I recommend you wear a tank and either the loose running style shorts or spandex shorts, and a back-clasping bra so that he doesn't have to work around/under a sports bra. You'll take your shirt off when he's working on your back/upper body but he is very professional about that, so don't worry!
On to the fun stuff! Bob has two rules: 1) swearing is OK, and 2) no hitting. That should give you a good idea about how these massages go ;)
Bob is a cool guy - he's close to my dad's age (I'm 32 at the time of this review) with a couple kids not much younger than me. He plays classic rock during the massage. He mixes his own oil, which if I recall is a blend of grape and maybe EVOO. He only uses enough so that there's no friction when he's working on you, so fortunately you won't leave a slippery mess, and it doesn't really have a scent either, which I appreciate. As I mentioned Bob is a cool guy so he'll have plenty of stories to tell you and help distract from the pain he's inflicting.
Remember the rules I mentioned above? No joking there. My first session I did 1.5 hours and spent most of it cursing and yelling and trying not to writhe off the table while Bob chuckled at me saying "Come onnnn it can't hurt that bad!". I kind of expected this going in because sports massages aren't meant to be relaxing, but lordy it's intense. Also the first one is always the worst, my las two sessions have been much more tolerable!
So you might have read that and wondered why anyone would possibly subject themselves to that kind of torture. Well, Bob knows his shit. He can feel things that are off in your muscles and where they connect and fix it. As he told me, muscles should feel smooth, not lumpy or "clickly" (as I describe it, you know when you move a body part and the muscle feels like it "clicks" over the bone). Even though I don't have any specific pains bothering me when I go in, that doesn't mean your body isn't compensating for something, somewhere. Sometimes I have an idea of when something isn't right, even if it doesn't hurt (trouble engaging my left lat during my lifts, my right leg sometimes takes more of the weight from my left when I squat which causes me to twist, etc). Sometimes he finds things I didn't even know about - last week he was working on my neck and correctly guessed that I spend a lot of time looking slightly to the right (at my 2nd monitor) because I had more muscle tightness on the left side vs the right side. It might hurt while he's fixing it but it doesn't linger and you'll leave feeling a million times better. Bob ends every session with some lighter pressure on your face and head and will have you do some breathing to help de-escalate from the intensity of the last 1-1.5 hours.
I wrote this long ass review basically to tell ya'll it might sound painful but IT'S SO WORTH IT - there is no doubt that I move better the days and weeks following my sessions with Bob. read more