An hour on the muscles your training or your desk has loaded hardest, with a sports therapist who works out where the problem sits before she starts on it. Three minutes from Holborn station, 8am to 10pm, seven days a week.
Every massage is a full hour with Joy, £90.
Add dry needling inside a session already booked: 15 minutes, £30.
Sports massage follows your sport. A runner in a marathon block gets calves, hamstrings and hips. A lifter gets the chain that is tight from the last heavy session. Book it in the week after your longest run or your hardest training day, when the tightness is at its worst.
Deep tissue massage follows one region. Sustained pressure on a neck that locks by 4pm at a Kingsway desk, or a lower back that stiffens on the Central line home. Expect it to be firm, and expect to feel it the next day.
Every session starts with a few questions about what you do and where it hurts, so the hour goes on the tissue that is actually causing the problem.
Massage is for tight, overloaded muscle. If the pain is sharp, came on with a specific movement, is getting worse week on week, or stops you training, book the Initial Assessment & Treatment (75 minutes, £90) instead. Joy assesses the injury, treats it in the same session and gives you the exercises to hold the change.
These guides cover the injuries that most often stop runners and players:
Inside Saachii Wellness Rooms, three minutes' walk from Holborn station on the Central and Piccadilly lines. One private room, one therapist, open 8am to 10pm every day of the week. Joy works in English and Mandarin.
Rated 5.0 across 28 reviews on Fresha. Booking and payment run through Fresha, so you can pick a time and pay in one go.
Yan Liu (Joy) holds an MSc in Sport Rehabilitation and Soft Tissue Therapy from Middlesex University. Alongside massage she works with IASTM, cupping, dry needling and acupuncture, so a session can use whichever of those your tissue needs.