Queuing early, standing for hours, dancing in front of the stage all evening and then walking a fair distance back to your bike or the station. A festival day is one of the few times you are on your feet for hours on end without it feeling like exercise.
Why you only feel it the next day
At a festival you are often standing on uneven ground, with a bag over one shoulder and your head tilted up towards the stage. Those are not movements your body is used to sustaining for hours. Your lower back and neck work all day to keep you upright, while you barely notice it between the music and the crowd.
It is usually the morning after, once the adrenaline has worn off, that you feel where it sat: a stiff neck, a back that will not cooperate when you bend down, calves that feel like you ran a half marathon.
Where a massage helps
A relaxation massage works well for this kind of build-up of minor overload: no injury as such, but clearly noticeable tension in your back, neck and shoulders. If you are on your feet at festivals most weekends over summer, it is worth not letting that tension turn into a recurring niggle.
If the tension sits mainly in your neck and shoulders from carrying a bag and looking up, a targeted neck pain treatment is often quicker to resolve than a general massage.
At Masseur Joost in Hoofddorp there is also room on Sunday evenings and midweek evenings, right when you are recovering from a festival weekend.
Masseur Joost, Hoofddorp
Just back from a festival?
Relaxation massage in Hoofddorp. 55 minutes, tailored to you, €60.