Mark Rutherford is a sports massage therapist – he treats muscles, ligaments and tendons, and says it’s more than massage. Sports masseurs try to sort out soft-tissue problems as well as ease pain.

The 38-year-old Berwickshire bodyworker practices in Ednam, near Kelso, and Edinburgh.

He’s a qualified personal trainer, though no longer working as one. He played rugby for more than 20 years and helps keep Kelso’s rugby players on the pitch, going to club training to work on players and their injuries, and to games.

In between times he works on the rest of us.

“I want people to be aware of sports massage – a lot of people think it’s deep tissue and sore, but it doesn’t have to be. It depends on how you are treating the individual,” he said.

“But it’s not ‘just a massage’ – there’s more to it than that. We are always trying to find the cause of the injury and treat that, rather than just the injury itself.”

Mark has been working as a sports massage therapist for nearly five years. He trained with Premier in Glasgow – they have since pulled back into England – and topped that up with a six-month advanced course with the Scottish School of Professional Massage in Peebles.

He has lots of techniques to use to free up stubborn muscle knots, old injuries and fresh or long-term problems. You can take new injuries to him or go along with postural pain which he will assess and treat.

As well as sports massage, he also does therapeutic massage and advanced myo-facial treatments – gentle work where he seems to be doing nothing, but whatever it is it makes muscles and other connective tissue ease.

Mark started playing rugby when he was eight and retired at 30.

Asked what he liked about it, he said: “The team spirit was probably the main thing – and the number of people you met through it.”

He went to New Zealand by himself to play when he was 19 in 1991, returning in 1998 and going out again in 1999-2000.

He had treatment for an injury when over there during his last visit – it helped and that inspired the idea of body work. The following year back in Scotland, foot-and-mouth disease hit the farming industry, which prompted him to start training and change from milking cows to sports massage.

As to why he likes sports massage, he said: “I’m always learning and it’s great to help people.”

He gave me four treatments. Sports massage is for everyone, he says.

Really? Even if you’re a bit blasé about exercise? Yes, apparently. I’ve got dodgy knees, quads as tight as too many facelifts and I’ve fallen off horses – a lot.