Got Knots Massage Therapy Edmonton

There is a season in Edmonton when your shoulders move up toward your ears and simply stay there until spring.

It started this week. You walked out to the car, the air had teeth in it, and your whole upper body did the thing it does: brace and lift.

Nobody decides to do this. It happens somewhere below the level of choosing, and by the time you notice, your trapezius has been holding a position it was never meant to hold all day.

The tell is the jawline. If your shoulders have been sitting near yours since Tuesday, you are not imagining that.

Drop them once, right now, while you are reading this sentence.

Better? It will not last, and that is roughly the point of the whole post.

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.

Sherri B. has won a free 60-minute massage in our August giveaway.

Congratulations, Sherri. Your massage is waiting for you, and there is a message from us sitting in your inbox with the details of how to book it.

To everybody else who played along this month, thank you.

You told us which knot you are, how you take your pressure, which statement was the myth, and which green flag matters most in a massage clinic, and the comment threads turned out to be the best part of August around here. We read every single one of them. A few made the whole front desk laugh.

The prize is gone. The therapists are not.

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.

Grinding your jaw at your desk again? September stress has a way of finding its way into your face.

Here's the corrected number, because the "1 in 5" stat gets thrown around a lot and it's not quite right. TMD, jaw joint pain, affects an estimated 5% to 12% of adults, with some measures reaching up to 15%. It's roughly twice as common in women, especially between ages 35 and 44. Common, yes. One in five, no.

What actually causes it? Clenching and grinding, often worse under stress, tighten the muscles around your jaw, temples, and neck. Those muscles refer pain upward, which is why a jaw problem so often shows up as a tension headache instead.

Massage can't stop you from clenching in your sleep. What it can do is release the muscles that are already overworked, easing the referred headache pain and giving your jaw somewhere to actually rest.

If your jaw is tight, your temples ache by 3pm, and back-to-routine stress is creeping back in, that's worth mentioning at your next visit.

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.

Most extended health plans reset in December, and most people never spend the massage line before that happens.

Alberta Health Care does not cover massage therapy. It never has.

Coverage comes from somewhere else entirely, an extended or employer health plan, most often, the kind that sits quietly in your benefits package while you assume it works like your dental coverage. It does not carry over. Whatever is unused when the plan year turns over is simply gone.

Here is the part most people miss. That balance is not a bonus you have to justify using. It is compensation you already have.

For it to count toward reimbursement, the visit generally needs to be with an insurer-recognized Registered Massage Therapist, which every therapist at Got Knots is.

Check your plan's remaining balance before the year turns over. Then use it on your actual shoulders, not just in theory.

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.

You crossed the finish line four days ago and your legs still feel like someone else's.

That heaviness has a name and a window. Delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) peaks in the 24 to 72 hours after a hard effort, and it is the same mechanism whether the effort was a workout or 42.2 kilometers.

Massage in that window does real work: research on post-exercise massage shows it measurably reduces that soreness and lowers the markers your body produces under strain.

This is not the taper-week caution again. Post-race, your legs can take real pressure, and real pressure is what actually clears the heaviness instead of just masking it for an hour.

Congratulations on Sunday. Now let's get you walking normally again.

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.

Watch our hands for ten seconds and you can already tell we are not just rubbing a sore spot.

Every new client gets the same first question:

👉 where does it hurt?

What we are actually doing after that answer is different work entirely.

We are feeling for the muscle that is compensating, the one nobody mentioned because it does not hurt, it is just quietly doing someone else's job.

Nadine built this clinic on that distinction back in 2009, and every RMT here still works the same way.

The knot you point to is rarely the whole story. Finding the rest of it is the job.

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.

Some people have been looking for the right massage therapist longer than they have owned their car.

One of our clients spent seven years trying different therapists after a car accident first sent them looking for relief, moving from one clinic to the next and hoping each new appointment would finally be the one that worked. Seven years of booking an hour and leaving without quite getting there. Then they came to us.

Here is what they told us after their first visit.

"I've been seeing multiple massage therapists for 7 years now since my car accident. It's always hard to find someone who can get the right spots. I truly loved every moment of my massage."

Read that again. Seven years, and the search ended on the first try.

Finding the right spots is not luck. It takes RMTs who slow down, ask questions, and actually listen to what your body is telling them, visit after visit.

If your search is still going, we would like to be where it ends. ❤️

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.

Taper week is when runners start second-guessing everything, including whether a massage before race day actually helps.

Here is what the research says. Massage will not fix a training gap in the final week. What it does do is measurable: studies on post-exercise massage show it meaningfully reduces delayed-onset muscle soreness, the deep ache that shows up one to three days after hard effort, and lowers the markers your body produces under strain.

Timing matters more than most runners think. Save the deep, aggressive work for after you cross the finish line. Pre-race massage should stay lighter, aimed at easing tightness without leaving you sore on the start line.

Your training gets you to the start line. Recovery is what gets you across the finish line still moving well.

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.

A massage clinic tells you what it is in about ten minutes.

Not through the decor. Through whether anybody asks what you actually came in for, and whether your answer changes what happens on the table.

Four of the tells, right here.

👉 The same RMT every visit
👉 No upsells
👉 No pressure to tip
👉 Registered therapists only

None of it is a perk.

It is what a clinic looks like once it decides its job is treatment rather than turnover, and it is the reason people stay for years instead of starting over somewhere new every few months.

Comment the one that matters most to you. That's your entry for a free 60-minute massage. 🎁

Full rules in the first comment. 👇

Five opportunities to enter run between Aug 3 and Aug 23. Each one counts separately on Facebook and Instagram, so there are 10 in total.

No purchase necessary · open to AB residents 18+ · full rules in comments · not sponsored by or affiliated with Meta.

National Relaxation Day is this Saturday, August 15. Rest apparently needed its own holiday before we would take it seriously.

We will book a dentist appointment six months out, and put the oil change in the calendar the day it is due. One hour of rest, though, we still treat like something we have to earn. So here is your permission slip.

Here is what the holiday gets wrong: it treats rest like a prize you win at the end of a hard week. A nervous system that has been running warm since spring does not settle because the calendar tells it to, and the muscle holding that signal usually needs real pressure before it lets go.

You are not lazy. You are overdue.

📞 Call 780-455-7160 or schedule online on our website.