Just because a muscle is located "deep" or under other muscles DOES NOT make it more important!! This is truly a folly of linear thinking. One reason it feels so good because those muscles are not touched by stimulus that the superficial muscles experience on a day to day basis. However, the "deep" muscles are not more important than others. They may be fatigued and doing specific, repetitive movements/contractions which make them tender. All the muscles are important and individual muscles do not exist in a vacuum.
So taking the hierarchy out of muscle location, it is very important that superficial muscles are properly warmed up and addressed first. These superficial muscles truly are the gatekeepers to the muscles located under them. You must negotiate and satisfy them first before going deep. If not, then they will go on lockdown and that's when we start to get unpleasant pain and at that point the massage therapist has lost the battle. It is an art form to knock gently and ask those muscles to relax enough so that they may work WITH the therapist to access the muscles down to the bone.
If you ask me, ironing out a body, stepping on it and forcing it to release is a lazy way to massage and can create more negative memories in the muscles. Just because you think you can take it, your body may not be able to and a therapist has to be able to listen with their hands to how the body talks. And let me tell you the body talks incessantly!!
This is what I do not believe in (photo above). Very few people can take this kind of pressure and remain relaxed enough for muscles to release. SOME therapists can do this, but they'd have to be very experienced, work slowly and are sensitive to pressure for me to be convinced to try it. Therapists have different beliefs on technique and some will disagree with me. I would argue that the therapist and often the client may not know if they have an undiagnosed anomaly in the spine or the body. Work using the feet can be used in certain areas and at certain times. However, I'd employ other non-evasive techniques that are much lower risk. Personally I don't want someone stepping on me--with exception of the hamstrings. It might look like it's doing something significant, but I think it's for effect and people don't know any better.
Do not discount what long sweeping strokes can do. I wasn't a believer in the lighter techniques until I massaged for a couple years and saw that I could use significantly less pressure and still go down to the bone with the client relaxed. I myself have been injured by very deep work which was very expensive and I needed a Swedish massage the next day just to smooth over all the jarring it caused. It was an expensive learning experience and within a few days after the massage I felt like my body recoiled like a rubber band and returned to an even more defensive tightened state than it was before the massage. This is TRAUMA and yes your body remembers it and goes into defensive mode when triggered.
Think about when you do a belly flop on the water (the body being a therapists hands and the water being the client)--the body absorbs the sudden burst and the water is only disturbed on the surface. It might look like it's a hard hit, but more so on the person, not the body of water. I'd much rather dip slowly into the pool and make my way to the bottom.
