Chair massage professionals often like using predetermined chair massage routines when doing seated massage.

Why?

One reason is that chair massage was developed by David Palmer who was a strong proponent and educator of a ancient Japanese style of massage called Amma. Like many of the Eastern styles of massage, the techniques of Amma massage are applied in a systematic and sequential fashion. So as Palmer developed chair massage he carried that approach with him, referring to this approach as a "massage kata" rather than a massage routine.

This history aside, there are some good reasons to use a chair massage routine.

Chair massage routines…

1. Provide for a level of quality control. This is especially when chair massage practitioners are working together as a group which they often do.

2. Become automatic. When you are massaging dozens of people in a public space there are distractions. Having a chair massage routine ensures that you don’t become distracted and leave out important parts of your massage.

3. It provides a framework on which you can build a longer massage. It’s a solid foundation so to speak.

Students of Relax to the Max, the only specialized chair massage school in North America, learn a researched and highly effective chair massage routine as part of their chair massage training. This routine was first developed in 1994 and has been developed and refined since then on tens of thousands of customers. The massage routine focuses on the back, neck, shoulders, arms and hands.

The routine was also designed to accelerate a student’s learning process, allowing them to do a safe, effective, and deeply relaxing massage in a matter of days. In less than a week of training, students are able to do massage that feels so good, that many customers think that they have trained for years.

But unlike most chair massage training that’s available, Relax to the Max training goes well beyond a predetermined chair massage routine. Students learn a large range of techniques that cover every part of the body – from scalp to toes. They learn how to customize a massage of any length and are able to do anything from a three minute shoulder rub at the ninth on a golf course, to a full body massage with the person sitting right in the chair.