A therapist is offering £90 massages using a steel bar which can be so painful that some clients have walked out. Rick Howarth, 40, says clients fly from as far away as the UAE for his hour long treatment which he claims ‘get deeper’ into knots and scare tissue
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00:00My name is Rick and I am the muscle scraper based in Manchester and also in Charlie which is Preston.
00:04I offer instrument assisted soft tissue mobilisation which is I use tools like the
00:09ones that are behind me now. I use these to get deeper into the muscle tissue,
00:14the soft tissue like fascia, your tendons, your ligaments and basically it's like a very very
00:18deep tissue massage where it will break down adhesion which most people know as knots.
00:23It'll start working on fibrosis which is like scar tissue in your muscle bellies.
00:28The bars are made from 304 surgical steel which is made over in Halifax so when people come in
00:33I make an assessment of them so I'm first off feeling with my hands to feel what the tissue
00:37feels like. Straight away I can feel if a muscle or soft tissue isn't feeling healthy and then I'll
00:42put the bar on. Obviously a lot of the redness which causes one or two raised eyebrows let's
00:47just say but the redness is a good indication of where areas of issues are. The darker the
00:52red the more issues there are. Some parts will be feel okay, some parts oh it's a little bit tender
00:56that's because it's unhealthy and it needs a little bit of treatment but the skin is never
01:00broken that is not the aim of the game. So basically the redness that comes up to the surface is called
01:04petechiae and it is basically the capillaries underneath the skin that have caused little
01:09micro traumas. The redness comes to the surface which is a really good indication of that is
01:14where the issue is so that is where a issue is. Pain you feel is not always where the issue comes
01:19from. The bruising lasts between five and seven days on average. Some people are less, some people
01:23are more depending on your hydration, your nutrition. I had five hours surgery on my shoulder
01:28eventually after 14 months I had my surgery which was five hours. I then had 11 months of rehab
01:33and nothing could fix me. The arm would not move past 90 degrees at all and then I managed to get
01:38hold of a guy called Stephen Heaton who has created these tools and I went to him and in
01:46one session my arm moved from the so 180 degrees I was back in the gym. Before I went to see him I
01:51did go to see my surgeon. My surgeon wrote me off I was 34 years old he said I had early onset
01:57arthritis I'd never get back into the gym. I wasn't fixed in one session but the results were
02:02absolutely amazing. I went back for maybe two or three sessions on this but after that I thought
02:06I need to learn this this is life-changing and it is it's completely life-changing it's the best
02:11thing I've probably ever done. This is the tool I use the most it's like my Harry Potter wand this
02:16one. So this is 304 surgical steel there's different edges on this bar that is a shear
02:21blade which most people cannot stand especially on a first visit so the one that I do use
02:26the most is that rounder edge there again if that is a little bit too much for you initially
02:30especially on places like your IT band which on the side you're like full of nerve endings I'll
02:35probably use that flat side just to introduce you to the to the tool we'll then kind of move
02:39on to that side and again that side doesn't tend to be used too much I have that I use that myself
02:43sometimes so I'm treating myself. This little one which I used is a bit like a knuckle duster
02:49kind of like a d-bar maybe only one or two edges on this it's a little bit sharper it's a little
02:55bit scratchier but it's great for places like working on necks, round knees, ankles, feet,
03:01hands. You can treat people's face as well when they've got kind of bruxism of the angina.
03:07The other one sorry that the ball shaped one is quite good for calves and shoulders
03:14the angle is obviously different on this one it just gets a little bit deeper but not as heavy
03:18as the previous one and then the other two are for kind of your really really big people kind of
03:22like your strongmen and your power lifters very very weighty very very heavy only really two
03:29edges on that which is the ball sides kind of like a bigger brother version of this but with
03:36less edges or less kind of edges we can use so yeah they're for really kind of your big power
03:41lifting athletes. Morning lad. How about you alright? Yeah not bad. Good to see you.
03:49I'm Craig Whittington and I'm at the muscle scraper in Worsley. I'm getting Rick to have a look at a
03:54few little niggling issues I've had in my shoulder and I keep waking up with pins and needles in my
03:59two most extreme fingers on my hand. It doesn't tickle, you can feel the work but at the end of
04:05the day you don't have to come back every three weeks to get it done and the relief is instant
04:09straight away. I've had this done three times now the redness does look extreme but it doesn't hurt
04:15it's not a bruise and within two or three days it's gone down anyway you're pretty much down to
04:21yellow bruising within a day.
04:39Renovating a house, it's obviously the stresses that renovating a house put onto your body it'll
05:01probably need kind of a full hour 45 minutes or so just depends what he's been doing.