The Full Monty

Before joining a cycling team in 2011, I had only ever had 1 massage in my life. It was from a female natural therapy student and cost $20 for an hour and a half. I never really knew what the procedure was for getting on the table. To get naked or not to get naked? There are no signs. There are no guidelines. How is a newcomer supposed to know what is kosher? TV shows always had that episode where someone has an awkward moment getting naked for a massage but what do you do when the person doing the massage is female??? At the time, I decided to keep the underwear on.

When I started on the cycling team, we had a male soigneur but I was still not 100% sure on the whole naked/underwear massage rules so I played it safe and kept them on. After laying on my stomach and getting a wedgie because they were getting in the way, I soon discovered that the standard was to get on the table nude.

The problem was, after a handful of massages with underwear on, how can I just suddenly start going in nude? I had set the standard, can I just suddenly go and switch it around? Needless to say, I spent the rest of the year getting massages with underwear on.

At the Team Novo Notdisk training camp, I knew that I had to set the standard and go the full Monty from the start. I was a bit worried that it would back fire and there was some sort of no-naked massages policy in the team. Luckily, there wasn't.

So to all the other massage places out there... put a sign up. Tell people what they are supposed to do so they don't have to guess. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that rely on Seinfield episodes for massage table etiquette.