Whether you’re a beginner, a seasoned lifter or an elite athlete we’re all looking for ways to better our performance. In order to succeed we must find balance between our training, our nutrition and our recovery. Sports massage is fast becoming an essential part of a well rounded training regime due to its ability to boost performance, speed up recovery and reduce injury. Let’s look at what’s involved in a sports massage and how it can improve your training performance.
What Is Sports Massage?
Sports massage is typically performed by remedial massage therapists or other health care professionals such as physiotherapist. Whilst best suited to active individuals or athletes anyone can reap the benefits of a sports massage. Sports massage incorporates an array of different massage techniques and is tailored to each individuals needs. Effleurage is light stroking generally performed with the palms and thumbs with varying speed and pressure, this promotes blood flow to the muscles. Petrissage is a form of two handed kneading where both hands pick up the muscles and compress it, this loosens tight bunches of muscle. Percussive strokes are blows or strikes on the muscle normally performed with the little fingers, this tones the muscle. Cupping involves percussing or striking the muscle with cupped hands, this stimulates the skin in order to create muscle contractions which also help improve muscle tone. Sports massages can last anywhere from 30-60 minutes and will include a combination of these techniques.
The Benefits
Sports massage can do wonders for all aspects of our health. On the physical side; the stroking nature of a massage helps to improve the flow of blood and oxygen to our muscles, stimulates lymph flow, reduces the build up of waste products like lactic acid and allows fluid and nutrients to pass more easily through our body’s tissues. This improves our recovery rate meaning our body is primed for peak performance. Massage also makes our muscles more pliable, aids in the breakdown of scar tissue and helps our body form new healthy tissue. This lowers our injury risk which means we stay on track towards our fitness goals. Massage is also great for our mental and emotion health. Getting a sports massage can increase our serotonin and dopamine levels whilst keeping cortisol levels low. This helps to boost our mood and helps us ward off feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. This leaves us feeling relaxed and refreshed which can help us sleep better and improve our overall health and well-being. This improves training and game day performance but also makes it easier to get through our day to day routine.
When to Get a Massage
We all respond differently to massage just as we would different training techniques so it’s important to find what works for you. For some people a weekly massage might almost be essential but for others once a month could be adequate. I prefer to get a massage on a non-training day or at the end of my training week, you might prefer to do it on your hardest training day or after you’ve trained a particular muscle group. Athletes tend to do them pre and post competition so that they can perform at their peak and recover quickly. There is no wrong way to go about it, just find what suits you the best.
Sports massage combined with stretching and the use of foam rollers and trigger point equipment makes for a good self care routine. This will help you feel reinvigorated plus keep you injury free and focused on your health and fitness goals.
xx Tara
Have you ever tried sports massage? Let me know in the comments section below.
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