came across this article regarding massage therapist in professional cycling team in france
[url]inrng : regulating soigneurs[/url]
registered physios providing massage:eek: yet to come across a physio that delivers a top quality massage:rolleyes: typical french
ive trained quite a few people living in France, and the law is quite a bizarre one. From what I can gather most of the masseurs just flout the law, otherwise they lose their livelihood.
This sort of thing happened in the UK with HPC regs, but we have 'grandparenting', so lots of physios working today were actually masseurs or 'bucket and sponge men', with absolutely no physiotherapy training whatsoever (quite a few I know are teaching at unis :rolleyes:). The reason for grandparenting is the govt isnt allowed to take away your right to work (unless you are in prison etc), so they have to have a system in place. I thought this was EU rule, so if the French didnt have this system in place, then it is probably unenforceable anyway.
I worked for a pro rugby team for a couple of seasons and my understanding was that only physios were allowed to provide massage. Any spas etc that provided massage were technically in the wrong, but in a freely advertised, got all relevant business paperwork etc kind of way. Insurance was the only thing I never understood how they organised.
I was on the club books as a student which was technically true(for a couple of weeks of my time there).
An interesting article, Perhaps UCI regulations defining the role of a Soigneur would have been more adept. But sadly Soigneur has negative connotations now which is why team like Garmin and Sky call there's Helpers.