What Is Remedial Massage?

The short answer

Remedial massage is massage used to treat a specific problem, decided by an assessment rather than by a menu. You arrive with something that hurts or will not move properly, the therapist works out which structures are responsible, and the session is built around that. The pressure might be deep or it might not. Depth is a tool here, not the point.

What the word remedial is doing

It means the massage has a remedy in mind. That sounds obvious until you compare it with how most massage is sold, which is by duration and body area. Sixty minutes, full body, oil, music.

A remedial session is sold by problem. Lower back that has stopped rotating. Shoulder that catches at a certain height. Calf that tightens at kilometre six every single run. The therapist is trying to change something measurable, and you should be able to tell at the end of the hour whether it changed.

Remedial massage vs deep tissue massage

This is the comparison people search for most, and the honest version is that the two words describe different things, which is why the question is confusing.

Deep tissue describes pressure. It says the work goes below the superficial layers into muscle and fascia. It describes how the massage feels, not what it is for.

Remedial describes intent. It says the session is aimed at fixing a specific dysfunction. It describes the purpose, not the pressure.

So a remedial session often uses deep tissue work, and a deep tissue massage is sometimes remedial and sometimes just a firm massage. The useful question to ask a therapist is not how deep they go. It is what they assessed before they started. There is more on the pressure side on the deep tissue massage page.

Remedial massage vs sports massage

Large overlap, different starting point. Sports massage is organised around an activity and its demands, so the questions are about your sport, your training load and when you next compete. Remedial massage is organised around a dysfunction, and the activity is just context.

In practice a golfer with a stiff hip gets a very similar hour either way. The difference shows up in timing and in the aftercare, because a sports session has to account for the round you are playing on Thursday. The sports massage page covers that side, and I wrote about the gap between targeted work and a relaxation massage in golf massage vs a regular massage.

Remedial massage vs relaxation massage

Different jobs entirely, and neither is better. A relaxation massage settles your nervous system and feels good, and plenty of people want exactly that. It is not trying to change how far your hip rotates and it is not assessed beforehand, because there is nothing specific to find.

What a remedial session actually looks like

• Questions first. Where, when it started, what makes it worse, what you have already tried, what you need to be able to do. Ten minutes of this saves half the hour.
• Movement testing. I watch you move the joint. In a back this means hip and thoracic rotation, because the lumbar spine is usually the victim rather than the cause.
• Treatment of the structures the testing pointed at. Which is frequently not where the pain is. A sore inner elbow gets treated at the forearm. A sore lower back often gets treated at the hip.
• A retest. Move it again. Either it moves better or it does not, and that tells both of us whether the session worked.
• Something to do before next time. Usually one or two things, not a programme you will abandon.

What remedial massage is good for

The problems it handles well are mechanical ones: tissue that is restricted, shortened, adhered or holding a trigger point, and joints that have lost range because of it.

• Lower back pain and stiffness
• Sciatica where the compression is in the hip rather than the spine
• Neck and upper back tension, including the desk and flight variety
• Shoulder pain and impingement
• Tennis elbow, golfer's elbow and padel elbow
• Calf, Achilles and hamstring problems in runners
• Plantar fasciitis
• Headaches that start in the neck

It is less useful when the driver is not mechanical. Inflammatory joint disease, a disc pressing on a nerve root, and anything with the red flags of something systemic need a doctor. A good remedial therapist will say so and send you on.

Is remedial massage worth it?

If you have a specific problem, it is the version of massage most likely to change it, because something is being measured. If you want an hour of calm, you are paying extra for an assessment you do not need, and a relaxation massage is the better buy.

The thing that makes it worth it is the retest. You should not have to guess whether it helped.

What qualifies someone to do it

Titles vary by country and are not much use as a filter. What is worth asking: what they assess, what techniques they are trained in, and whether they will tell you when massage is the wrong answer.

For what it is worth on my side: a Sports Science degree from Universidade da Beira Interior, a Diploma of Remedial Massage from the NSW School of Massage in Sydney where I finished top of my class, and full-body ART® certification completed in stages between 2015 and 2017. I trained alongside physiotherapists, which is where the assessment habit came from. More on the remedial massage page and on Active Release Technique, which is the technique I reach for most.

How many sessions

Two to four for most mechanical problems, with something changing in the first. Longstanding problems take longer. If three sessions have produced nothing, the diagnosis is wrong and continuing would be taking your money. There is a fuller answer in how many massage sessions you need, and on intervals in how often you should get a massage.

Booking

Clinic sessions in Almancil are €37 for 30 minutes, €52 for 45 and €60 for the hour. For a first remedial appointment book the hour, because assessing properly and then treating what it shows does not fit into thirty minutes. Mobile across the Algarve is €140 per hour. WhatsApp 925 382 490 and tell me what is not working.