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Knowing the Sport
 The approach of a good sports massage
therapist is a combination of
knowledge of the sport itself and
massage. To be good at what she
does, Linden has studied more than
classical massage. At one point,
while working with an athlete, she
realized some of the injuries were
caused by too much training. She
wanted to understand the implications
of that, so she attended seminars
from the International Sports
Science Association.
“There’s a difference between
training for a sport and training
for the gym,” she says. “You need
to know that difference. And you
need to know the sport—if you’re
working with weight lifters and you
don’t know the difference between
a snatch and a clean and jerk, then
your knowledge reveals itself as
somewhat limited.”
Knowing a sport may not mean
studying a book—some women feel
the wear and tear of their chosen
sports in their own muscles. Athletes
themselves, they’ve spent plenty of
time on the massage table rather
than beside it, and they add their
own muscle memory, and history of
pain, to their classroom training.
Deidre Vandenbos started out
working on track and field athletes
and now shares a practice geared
toward athletes with four other fulltime
therapists in Atlanta. She was
a track and field athlete herself, a
former shotputter and 100-meter
runner. Ney competed for more than
20 years in amateur sports, playing
on Atlanta’s first Ultimate Frisbee
team.
Since 2003 Elke Brutsaert has
served as the massage therapist for
the Giant Bicycle Mountain Bike
Team, a co-ed professional team. A
former professional mountain bike
athlete, she competed on the national
and international racing circuits
for eight years, and was USA
Cycling World’s 2004 team manager
for the downhill team.
She’d looked at massage school
as a way to unwind from years of
sports, but an opening came up on
the professional mountain bike circuit,
and her friends wanted to get
her back in the game. She went from
competing in the downhill race on
the last day of the Mountain Bike
World Championship in 2001 to her
first day of massage school.
That background not only gives
her knowledge—it gives her credibility.
If an athlete comes to her
with pain and explains how it happens,
chances are she’ll know just
how it feels.
“Unfortunately, I experienced it
myself; I know what hurts,” Brutsaert
says. “Athletes know me and
respect me as a former athlete.”
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American Massage Therapy Association®
