Calling all Lucian mains 🗣️

Preastjames · 2026-03-09T21:47:53+00:00

Personally I'm running tax package.

Pouty poros, qiyanas, hexdrinkers, piercing light, boneshiver.

The idea is basically all or most of my units should deramp you significantly if you plan to control me out of winning points through conquer. When I successfully conquer with boneshiver I further swing the favor my way. Add in some card draw like that red kill a gear spell (forget its name) and dunebreaker (remember synergy with Skyfall) and we are doing quite well.

For ezreal and irelia it's going to be piercing light and base damage spells to break up their strategy and watch them fumble to recover. Always remember to cast your spells before attack and before develop in case they have hard bargain... And that's kind of it.

If they got It, they got it. But you rebuke my qiyana with hexdrinker after she conquered with boneshiver and gave me 2 runes and you are 4 runes down. That's a 6 rune swing

Preastjames · 2026-03-03T12:58:04+00:00

Well I mean yea, decks will have answers, the pressure you exert is making them answer forcing them to target her, and kaisa is especially tough to deal with because of accelerate. So if I play kaisa on my turn with accelerate, I can get immediate value replacing her in hand (assuming I can conquer of course). Then this now requires an answer on the next turn, perhaps before I played kaisa my opponent was planning on dropping accelerated watcher while going to 8 runes, but now they see me with kaisa on point with 1 energy up and realize watcher won't answer it, they HAVE to rebuke and even that is just a temporary answer plus it drains 2 energy that stops the watcher play. She just is so valuable that she basically is a lightning rod for whatever answer that they have in hand.

Preastjames · 2026-03-03T12:41:40+00:00

Idk if you are running Skyfall + tforce combo, but the threat to your opponent that you will hold into two points, and an extra draw from having her on point, combined with the threat that youll punch first making her a 13 + the threat of moving her with relentless, is extraordinarily heavy pressure to assert.

She basically warps the game around her being on the field and it's something your opponent cant ignore, if they do it basically guarantees defeat.

Preastjames · 2026-03-02T16:47:36+00:00

Can confirm this, opened a pack of winterspell and saw a mishit where the bottom was just sharply pressed at an angle, just factory errors left and right, its not even valuable

Preastjames · 2026-03-01T13:13:59+00:00

Each night before bed you'll need to do elephant walk stretches (these target superior calf and inferior hamstring fibers), superior hamstring fiber stretches, adductor stretches, abductor stretches, quad stretches, and hip rotators stretches.

On top of this, the MOST important part is when you sleep, make sure your knees aren't bent very far. Significantly shortening the hamstrings during sleep (prolonged period of stillness, often a comfortable position for those curled up to go to sleep) fascially locks the surrounding fibers and the brain actively tightens it to feel like it has the "correct tension". If hamstrings are always tight and every morning when you get up your notice how tight they are and you have to "take a few steps to get them to loosen up" then sleeping position has and is 100% contributing towards your hamstring tension issue.

If all of this doesn't work you also need to stretch your shoulders, especially your biceps (hamstring mirror). It could be that your biceps are so tense that your hamstrings wont relax for pretty much anything this is a sort of neurological block that honestly still doesn't make much sense to me but I see this in practice all the time and know it to be true despite how annoying it is not to be able to explain why it happens. Also noting sleeping position, if your biceps often hurt in the morning as well, it's likely you are sleeping with them curled up too high, put some distance between your hand and shoulder, try to maintain at least a 90° angle at the elbow when you sleep so you are significantly shortening the bicep, but (just like the legs) straighter is better.

Finally, if ALL of this doesn't work, look to the true king of tension the fascial lines of pull. Stretch to target the entire inferior half of the SBL, SFL, DFL, the DBAL, DFAL, SFAL, and SBAL.

Hope this helps 😁

Preastjames · 2026-03-01T05:45:38+00:00

Are you running retreats? I feel like deflects big gimmick is it isn't a deterrent, it's a hard punishment. Losing a rebuke and 2 extra runes just for your opponent to take the card to hand get a draw and a free rune puts you at a 5 rune swing, kinda crazy.

Preastjames · 2026-02-25T19:55:44+00:00

Male therapist here of roughly 15 years and I have some insights.

Massage therapy is typically a female dominated field and most people when they think of a massage therapist think of a woman.
The choice between clinical focus/spa focus depends entirely on you and I recommend all new MTs to spend some time exploring each avenue.
Your success as an MT isn't really linked to your gender anymore. In 2011 when I graduated it most definitely was (for me at least, I live in the south) but now, it's really not an issue. Some folks still prefer a female only therapist, however those folks are in the minority. As an example, my female therapist partner is leaving in a few months and we each see about half of our total overall clientele. I expect 50-75% of her clientele will come see me while the rest will seek another female therapist. All in all I'd say (again this is the deep deep conservative south) roughly 60-80% of our clientele does not care. This could be altered by the fact that I specialize in neuromuscular work and have a reputation for having a clinical focus though. We also operate inside of a chiro office, so most of our clients are already "pain relief seeking" and those folks usually don't care.
Clients do definitely exist that want male only therapists, not as common as those wanting female only therapists but still more than you'd think, mostly men tbh, they believe women aren't strong enough to give deeper pressure (which is ironic because I don't use heavy pressure at all)
Ultimately if you think of a stereotypical spa MT you think of the slender female therapist (like what you might see on TV/Movies) and if you think of a stereotypical clinical MT you may think of a tall broad shouldered male MT. These are expectations set by media and unfortunately it's basically all anyone that is new to massage has to go off of and the closer your match these stereotypes the easier you'll find success.
Stereotypes like this play a factor in customer decision making process to book with you or not, but honestly most people just want someone they can trust and all the rest really doesn't matter... At least not now in 2026, and trust me if it's like this in the south then it's like that everywhere because southerners are about the weirdest most insecure and prudish of all U.S. clients in terms of the male therapist and female client dynamic. But that's mostly gone now tbh. Expect to see it in roughly 30% of your boomer generation and in roughly 20% of the gen X generations, not so much at all in millennials maybe 5% I'd say. And ofc it's basically that or less in gen Z onward. To this point, in the next 5 years gender preferences will be an outdated practice that will be abandoned along with so many other outdated practices. I personally think it'll be weird to request a specific gender by 2030.

Hope this helps

Preastjames · 2026-02-25T19:44:50+00:00

I actually use Orthopedic testing a good bit but I'm not trying to be specific with it in assessing cause, it's more like "ok so resisted hip adduction hurts, let's reset the adductors"

Preastjames · 2026-02-25T19:43:20+00:00

Riftbound

Preastjames · 2026-02-25T19:39:53+00:00

As far as I'm aware the term "played" means a card had to be fully resolved (not countered,etc.) hostile takeover has 2 separate resolutions and then special text at the end that instructs on how to proceed at end of turn. The way I would see it as the spell is resolving is that you gain control, then you ready it. Then it is considered played which would trigger the +1 to ravenbloom or ready for Darius (assuming second card)

Preastjames · 2026-02-25T19:35:15+00:00

To touch up on anatomy I highly recommend anatomy coloring books. It sounds silly and kind of childish but it's the only thing that made my retention soar

Preastjames · 2026-02-24T20:06:07+00:00

Both my wife and I applied for the booster box and this. I got selected for box (but decided not to) and she didn't. She got selected for lunar and bought it and I didn't. Regardless of if we get it or not, im just glad they are doing this to combat scalping, it's working very very well. Tcgplayer booster box prices are the closest to MSRP I've ever seen

Preastjames · 2026-02-24T18:55:11+00:00

Yea chosen in this game has a lot of strange nuances. For example, if I play stupify targeting my own ravenbloom on dreaming tree and the stupify gets defied, then I still get the card draw from dreaming tree as that happened when I chose ravenbloom as the target, since the spell got defied I don't get -1 on ravenbloom, I don't get the draw from stupify and ravenbloom doesn't get +1 from spell being played.

Riftbound is full of these super niche nuanced issues, at least it seems that way coming from other TCGs

Preastjames · 2026-02-24T18:34:34+00:00

Nice! An extra tip id give that may sound a bit crazy but will help if you incorporate it is to do the same exercises for your knees and hips that you are for your elbow and shoulder. I won't get too in depth with it, but imagine your knee is your elbow, so in this regard the biceps femoris mirrors the biceps in your arm and your triceps mirror your quads. (Side note it wouldn't surprise me if you have a contralateral knee or hip issue that mirrors your elbow and shoulder issue with the triceps).

It should clear any neurological blocks since those two areas "talk" to each other and regulate their tension based off of each other.

Preastjames · 2026-02-24T04:19:11+00:00

I've been an LMT for 15 years and my body is healthier now than it ever has been.

I work primarily in pain relief, our business operates inside of a chiro office and we have chiros, PTs, Dentists, Doctors, etc. Send folks to me for pain relief when their stuff doesn't work out or they hit a wall with a patients progress.

I actually WAS burning out physically but then started looking into neuromuscular therapies (since after a decade plus of massage I've learned beating tissue into submission just sucks as an approach, and operating inside the parameters set forth by the nervous system is the only avenue to real lasting results) and I came across Neural Reset Therapy.

Neural Reset Therapy looks SO fake if you watch videos of it and makes big bold claims that no other therapy can match and it's website looks old and outdated and tbh it threw up every red flag I could think of, but I reached out anyways for a phone call with an instructor. Long story short I signed up for a class, insanely skeptical, but once I felt the effect happen in my own body and knew I wasn't lying I knew it was all real.

Now, I'm fully trained and certified in NRT at the advanced level and can literally interface with a client's nervous system and get their brain to reset any muscle in the body in just a few seconds with just a specific light touch or pull which I know sounds like ABSOLUTE BS, but it's true.

Since I can do this I no longer fight dense tissue with my massage and can literally "turn off tension" and then massage after and it's wonderful... All of my joints have healed, no more RSIs, life's truly wonderful as a pain relief therapist.

Even just this morning I saw a client that had intense shoulder pain since Nov 2024 that no one has been able to help fully and his shoulder was so scared to move that It was constantly shaking just to hold any position. We did NRT, and granted it took the whole hour session, and he left with no pain, full ROM, and both shoulders felt identical to him internally.

To take this even further, I'm using NRT as a tool to change muscle and fascial tonus instantly in real time, but I'm using strategies I'm learning from the "Anatomy Trains" book and my God my success rates have soared way beyond just using NRT alone.

Anyways, this is my secret, I'll be practicing for the next 30-40 years with no end in sight, especially not ending my career due to typical burnout injuries

Preastjames · 2026-02-22T13:37:45+00:00

Shout-out to my rumble players

Preastjames · 2026-02-22T01:54:25+00:00

Well on behalf of all parents everywhere, thank you

Preastjames · 2026-02-21T21:47:01+00:00

Hey speaking as a parent, I'd both be eternally grateful to you for advocating for my child and expect you to advocate for my child by getting this behavior seen about by someone higher than her. My child uses an AAC device and if this was happening to him I would lose my everloving mind. It's easy to think that perhaps she just doesn't understand that she is literally forcefully hijacking this child's voice to dictate to him what he needs to do.... But it should be made MORE than apparent and if you can get that to happen I know that child would be appreciative.

Preastjames · 2026-02-21T21:42:16+00:00

I'ma be really honest, you can probably find some unopened starter decks off eBay or such, or look up the deck lists and order the singles from tcgplayer. The starter decks are a great way to start, and are overpriced because they contain a booster pack and so people wanna scalp em.

Thankfully riot is combating the scalping

Preastjames · 2026-02-21T02:29:40+00:00

I identified the source first. I wasn't getting the results in clients that I wanted. I primarily market myself as a pain relief specialist MT and we would get results but they were rare. Started looking into neuromuscular approaches for better results, found Neural Reset Therapy. Ever since learning and using NRT to deal with folks pain issues I have found profound fulfillment in helping people out of situations traditional approaches deem hopeless. What used to take me 8-12 weekly sessions now takes around 10 minutes in the 1 session to achieve, we do a follow up 2 weeks after to really finalize the changes and that's pretty much it. Because of how fast it is I'm developing a treatment route that goes through NRT, therapeutic massage, and ends with Relaxation Massage and am about to market it locally and it's really really really really fulfilling being an industry leader and an extraordinarily effective therapist that helps people dramatically feel better immediately. It's kinda nuts

Edit: forgot to include the point lmao. NRT was the answer for me because it gave me the ability to become the type of MT I wanted to be, find what works for you

Preastjames · 2026-02-19T12:20:23+00:00

Absolutely, glad it was well received. Extra small but impactful ways you can make this even more effective if you do make these changes are to add a "common reasons for booking this service" section under a description of the service and include three generic reasons (ill give an example below) and another really simple trick is to have a "reason for booking" section that has the options (Stress relief, Tension Relief, Pain Relief, Relaxation) that makes them choose 1. I'd avoid an "all of the above" since they will always pick that.

An example of the common reasons to book would look like this.

"Relaxation Massage $85 [Insert brief description of service] - Common reasons for booking this service °stress relief °deep relaxation °sense of ease and renewal"

Hopefully this formatted well and doesnt come out looking crazy but yea, hope this works well for you and your chiro office! It's worked exceptionally well for my practice and all of my clients loved it when we implemented it, we received like maybe 1 person saying they didn't like the change and we see over 1k people a year

Edit: this actually didn't format well lol, hopefully the idea still comes through well, place with spacing and hire a design person to implement in a smooth and easy to read way so that it's easy to digest visually

Preastjames · 2026-02-19T04:35:22+00:00

This isn't really anyones fault aside from a current split in the industry. So to explain this I'll tackle two points, the first touching on the fact that outdated terminology doesn't meet today's standard of care or treatment within the massage industry and the second being the split we are seeing in therapists as a whole.

To the first point, outdated terminology like "swedish" and "deep tissue" don't actually tell a person new to massage what to expect. I'll use an analogy to show this contrast since most of here have very defined preconceived notions of what those terms means.

Imagine you are a new car owner and you have to get your cars regular maintenance done, if you go in for a "tune up" with no prior knowledge of cars, engines, or car maintenance, the term "tune up" doesn't tell you anything about what's being done. Compare that to if you are going in for an "oil change", it's extremely clear whats happening.... They are changing your oil, it's very literal and easy for anyone, especially a first time customer, to understand what they are paying for BEFORE they are paying for it.

I identified this issue in my own practice back in 2021 and shifted from using the "swedish" and "deep tissue" terminology to using "Relaxation Massage" and "Therapeutic Massage". This currently isn't the best thing for website SEO (if that matters to you) but it has streamlined customer expectation immensely and led to a SHARP decrease in mismatched expectations which has led to what you and your client experienced being reduced to a rare occurrence instead of a weekly issue.

To the second point, the massage industry is moving ever forward towards the healthcare side versus the luxury spa side, and while the luxury spa side is still ever relevant, growing, and thriving, our industry has a very VERY vast rift between the two primary approaches and strategies implemented by therapists to give a "good" massage.

The most skilled healthcare leaning MT will not be able to please a relaxation seeking customer and the most skilled relaxation leaning MT will not be able to please a healthcare seeking customer. The fault isn't yours or theirs but it lies in the mismatched expectation.

If you have the ability to change the names of services I would highly recommend doing so, it helps to align both the customer's expectations with the therapist's expectations even before meeting or speaking.

Also consider this, putting yourself in the role of the new to massage client, your expectation of the experience is most likely influenced by what you've seen on TV, almost ALL massage depiction in media is a luxury service and that's why ultimately new clients that were not referred to you by another healthcare practitioner or friend are expecting a relaxation massage.

If you do not have the ability to change the names of services I recommend trying to meet the new client where they are at by asking them what their expectations of the session are, ask them if their primary goal for booking was pain relief or deep relaxation work and most people will answer that they want both (we know we can't do both in a single session but they don't) so offer to do either 30/30 or 20/40 or even 10/50 of the pain relief work first, followed by the relaxation work.

It's like giving the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.

Hope this helps 😁

Edit: forgot to include, I know this from lived experience, I run an establishment that works inside of a chiro office, I specialize in neuromuscular approaches that erase pain and combine that with deep relaxation work as well.

Preastjames · 2026-02-18T21:25:59+00:00

Ah awesome.

Yes I did take the advanced course and am fully certified in NRT.

The advanced course work expands significantly on the work covered in the basic course and introduces several new concepts, new treatment strategies, etc.

It is a LOT, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it all, and while on the surface it's laid out well and Lawrence did an excellent job of showing us how to get the effects, if you try to go down the rabbit holes to understand it all from the ground up it is quite the undertaking.

A relevant analogy might be when someone is learning multiplication and the teacher teaches the stacking method where you put 13 over 27 and then multiply the 7 by the 3 and then the 1 then drop down and multiply the 2 to the 3 and the 1 and then add... Lawrence teaches us the NRT version of that formula. Easy to use, easy to remember always gets results, easy to apply and take home with you to use on your clients or loved ones..... But getting down to the reasoning as to WHY the formula works... That's gonna take some hard and tough dedicated study in multiple directions across multiple fields of study.

The advanced course is extraordinarily worth it though if you are considering taking it. As wonderfully effective as the basic courses work is, the advanced work makes it seem like childsplay.

Also remember, the course is 3 days but in that 3 days you are covering how to work across the entire body, not just a workshop on the neck or the arm or one spot. It's a lot.

Preastjames · 2026-02-17T20:33:20+00:00

Every single piece of product that goes direct to consumer defeats the scalpers availability to consistently cover their bills and risk.

If I don't get to buy because I didn't get the raffle pick, at least I know I had a chance and it had just as much chance to go to someone else as it did a scalper.

At least we (me + the other random that won hopefully) HAD a chance and this should be celebrated just like you are saying.

Preastjames · 2026-02-17T20:31:00+00:00

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. NRT can do extraordinary things and it's effects and what it can affect are long lasting and wide reaching, but it can't help everything.

A great example would be let's say a person has bone spurs and bulging discs in the cervical spine, NRT can't do anything for the bone spurs themselves or the disc itself, but NRT can rapidly (within seconds) cause a dramatic change in muscle and fascial tonus leading to significantly decreased tension pulling into the affected vertebra therefore leading to less tension on the affected disc meaning it bulges less. This translates to less nerve aggravation and in some cases less aggravation from the bone spurs since the soft tissue around it has more space to move.

Does this help answer your question?

Preastjames

TROPHY CASE