What does an average treatment plan look like and how long till I get better?

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Wednesday, 04 May 2022

We understand that one of the things you would like to know is how long will it take for you to get better and what is the plan to get you there. Usually after the first session both you and the therapist should have an indication whether the techniques used during the massage session are working or not. In this post, we can tell you what works on average for most clients receiving remedial care.

The progress and the pace of healing will vary from person to person and will depend on many factors such as duration of pain or tension present in the body, type of injury, lifestyle, age, medical background and more.

How long till you get better will also depend on which course of action you decide to take. There are usually 2 ways to have a pain or injury resolved. Option 1 is the cheapest and the easiest and the least effective long term, but it will get you out of pain. If you would like pain or tension relief, have 2 or 3 sessions and you will feel a lot better.

If you decide that you would prefer to have this problem solved so that it limits the likelihood of it coming back soon, so that you have the best possible shot of remaining active and independent, that will take around 6 or 7 sessions.

Option 1 – “Patch it” - involves on average 2-3 sessions and is purely about bringing relief – pain, tension, stress, tightness relief, etc. It temporarily patches the issue but does not solve it.

Option 2 – “Fix it” – normally involves around 6-7 sessions (over 3 phases of remedial care) to solve the problem.

And what is the plan? We use 4 Phases of Care to explain the remedial treatment care:  

 During Phase 1 – “Reactive” or Relief, we recommend you see your therapist once a week with an idea to complete 3 sessions within 2 weeks (for example 3 consecutive Tuesdays). This phase focuses on reducing the pain or tension - making the area less achy, creating a healthy muscle memory, and teaching your muscles how to switch on and off as needed.

Phase 2 – Correction involves a lot more complex approach, and your therapist will investigate what caused your pain, tension, or injury. Why is it that your shoulder started to hurt now? Why muscles in your back got strained? Why your Achilles snapped? This doesn’t happen to everyone, especially if they are healthy or active, so why did it happen to you now? In most cases, the answer leads to finding areas of muscle overuse, postural problems, and imbalance. This could be your pelvis tilted forward, your shoulders rounded forward, or your ankle joint not hinging as it should. Finding and rectifying these issues will take another 2-3 sessions but they often can be spread apart so that you see your therapist every 2 or 3 weeks.

Phase 3, the Supportive phase is about testing all these changes that you and your therapist achieved in the initial phases of care. This means letting you go back to work at the desk or playing tennis or running in the park with kids and testing if your body can maintain this “new muscle look”. At this stage you will likely need 1-2 treatments to cement the new muscle behaviour, but this can now be done once a month.

These 3 phases are what Option 2 explains as a “Fix”. Completing these 3 phases will significantly increase your chances of remedying the problem and also giving you the best value for money. This is also how massage works.

Most of our clients then naturally move to Phase 4 which is Pro-active or Wellness. During Wellness care they discover the best benefits of regular massage that often goes beyond relieving physical pains. Regular Wellness massage might be your form of general monthly body MOT or perhaps a way to improve quality of sleep, maintain flexibility, prevent injuries and arthritis, keeping the stress level low, improving focus, creativity, and work productivity, becoming a better partner or parent with more patience, support and compassion to offer. The frequency of Wellness massage sessions will highly depend on the intensity of your lifestyle and for many of our clients it varies from every 2 to 6 weeks.

If you would like to arrange a conversation with a clinic director to better explain how massage works and what your options are by choosing to take your massage care further, then please call our reception team on 02037949760 or send us an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

Thank you for your trust in using our service.

Agata and team.

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