The move you don’t make

By David Neddam

In twelve years running spas in Florida, I have conducted hundreds of job interviews and trained dozens of therapists. Every time, I asked them to show me how they massage.

I met talented, precise, passionate practitioners. And year after year, I saw the same moves come back, the ones that made me stop.

Stretches that looked more like chiropractic adjustments than massage. Elbows pressed hard into areas we learn to protect. Pressure exactly where you do not press. Neck stretches, head pulled, neck rotated.

When I asked where a move came from, the answer was often the same: “That’s what so-and-so does, he’s the state champion.” Or: “I saw a video of a champion from that city, he does this stretch, he says it’s for this.”

The move had been learned by watching a performance. Not by watching a person.

I trained as a physiotherapist, with training in osteopathy. For eighteen years I had patients in my hands before I moved to Florida. I know what a neck can take. I also know what it can hide.

So I want to say clearly what I think, even if it goes against part of our industry.

A performance is not a treatment

A competition rewards a performance. It is judged on what can be seen: technique, flow, creativity, the coherence of a protocol. These criteria are legitimate. They honor real skill, and our profession needs recognition.

But a massage is not choreography.

A treatment begins before the first move. It begins with a question: who is the person lying in front of me? A hip replacement, a herniated disc, arthritis in the neck, recent surgery, poorly controlled blood pressure… None of this shows on a table. All of it changes what you can do, and above all what you must not do.

The format of a competition naturally pushes toward the most visible moves. They are rarely the most useful. And they are almost never the ones that require the most judgment.

Knowing what to do, and what not to do

A good practitioner is not recognized only by what they can do.

They are recognized by what they decide not to do.

In our trainings, we would sometimes stop a massage in the middle of a sequence to ask the therapist one question: “What made you choose that move?” Not to catch them out. To shift their attention. So they would watch the person’s breathing rather than the beauty of their sequence.

A move is only worth something if it answers someone. The same stretch can relieve one person and injure the next.

A title does not widen your scope of practice

There is also a boundary we easily forget.

Some joint mobilizations, some moves on the spine and the neck belong to other professions, with other training and other responsibilities. A massage license, an extra certification or a champion’s title does not move that boundary.

In Florida, where I work, the law defines massage therapy as the manipulation of soft tissue. It provides for sanctions against a practitioner who goes beyond what the law allows, or who fails to provide the level of care a reasonably prudent massage therapist would find acceptable. I am not a lawyer, and every country has its own rules. But the idea is universal: recognition does not replace prudence.

And when the award-winning massage lands on the spa menu?

This is where the question becomes very concrete for spa owners and directors.

Imagine a practitioner who wins a title with a signature massage. The spa puts it on the menu at a high price, with a simple promise: receive the massage that won.

A guest books. She has a hip replacement. Or a fragile neck. Or she has just had surgery.

What do you do? If you remove the stretches, the deep pressure and the spectacular mobilizations, you no longer give her what you sold her. If you keep them, you take a risk no title can justify.

The only professional answer is the first one. But then you have to be honest about what you sell: the skill of a practitioner who adapts, not a copy of a performance designed for a jury.

The intake form protects no one if no one reads it

In many spas, guests fill out a form before their treatment. That is useful. But I learned, when I took over my first spas, that forgetting a single health question is enough to discover the problem a few minutes before the appointment, when everything is already set.

The form does not protect the guest. The decisions it allows do: asking the right question, listening to the answer, adapting, and sometimes saying no.

What I call excellence

I have nothing against competitions. They push creativity forward, they give visibility to a profession that lacks it, they bring passionate professionals together.

I simply think we should be careful about what we put on a podium.

To me, the best practitioner is not the one who performs the most impressive moves. It is the one who listens, assesses, adapts and protects. The one who knows a guest does not come back for a demonstration, but because they felt understood and safe.

Perhaps tomorrow’s juries will score that too: the quality of the questions asked before the first move, the accuracy of an adaptation, the courage to give up a technique.

Because the finest proof of mastery is not always the move you make.

It is often the one you don’t.