Massage Therapist Robert Baum usually spends a lot of time with athletes.

"I do a lot of pain management focus, I do a lot of athletic recovery," he said. "Most of it is geared towards if someones having an issue in the gym or outside of the gym, if something is clicking, if something is catching, trying to find where that dysfunction is stemming from and loosening up all the soft tissue around it to get rid of that problem."

His business, Baum Therapy, is closed right now. So he's using the time to reach out online through a series of online classes focused on mobility.

"This is incredibly simple; you just grab a foam roller, grab a PVC pipe and lay down on your floor," Baum said. "If something is too intense, you are in control of the pressure, so it's not intimidating, it's not overwhelming, it's not intense. You can make it as intense as you want, but it can be very simple and you can use a soft roller. There's a ton of different options that give you control over the intensity."

The classes are for all ages and skill levels, using foam rollers and stretching techniques to help both those that are using this time to work out more, and those that are doing much less.

"This class is going to focus on opening up your hip flexors, your lower back, pulling your shoulders back, putting yourself in a strong neutral position so you can do anything you want to do after that," Baum said. Right now everyone is trapped at home so we're not moving as much. You're sitting on the couch, you're sitting in a lot of comfortable, compromising positions. You want to make sure you're able to use that muscular tissue so it does its job to support the skeletal system so you're not creating an issue where your body trying to compensate and push that work onto something else because it's easy."

Country Financial has sponsored a series of the free classes and they're open to everyone.

"The classes are about 25 minutes long and we talk to everyone after to see what they want to hit next time," Baum said. "It's nice because you don't have to do anything except copy what I'm doing. You don't need a huge range of motion; I'm not having you do the splits. We're not highlighting anything that you're not good at, and a lot of things I'm doing I'm not super flexible with, but it's just getting that kind of groundwork put in and then building from there."

Most of the sessions incorporate a technique called muscle scraping, using a tool that help loosen muscles and increase blood flow.

"It's going to help increase range of motion, muscle fatigue, you're going to flush waste out of the area faster, so it's just a better way to add recovery to what you do after exercise," Baum said. "This is a self-care tool that I use every day and I try to get people to get in the habit of incorporating this into what they do, especially after foam rolling."

He says the hope is give people the therapeutic tools they need to stay mobile until business can open back up.

"I see most people every week, every other week," Baum said. "And when they can bring what we do in my office home, and apply that on a daily basis, there's tons of benefits. You feel better, stronger. You understand your body better and how you should be moving, and where your limitations are.

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