Did you know that a Sports Massage can enhance your performance as an athlete?

Did you know that you could reduce your chance of an injury during an event just by receiving massages regularly?

Massage has become an integral part of the new athletic regimen from sports medicine clinics, to college training rooms, to professional locker rooms to Olympic training. Growing number of trainers believe that massage can provide an extra edge to the athletes who participate in high performance sports. Massage has become a necessary ingredient for a complete workout. More and more people are realizing that a complete workout routine includes not only the exercise itself, but also caring for the wear-and-tear and minor injuries that naturally occur with strenuous movement. The physiological and psychological benefits of massage make it an ideal complement to a total conditioning program.

Anyone who routinely stretches their physical limits through movement such as running, cycling, hiking, swimming, dancing, tennis and other racquet sports, strength training and aerobics can benefit from a massage. There are others who does strenuous activities in a day that is not normally classified as exercise. Examples are mothers with small children, gardeners, and others who use their bodies strenuously in their work.

Incorporating massage in your conditioning program has many benefits. It helps you get into good shape faster, and with less stiffness and soreness. It helps you recover faster from heavy workouts, and relieves conditions which may cause injury.

Sports Massage Techniques

Each sport and athletic event uses muscle groups in a different way. Sports massage therapists must be familiar with each muscle, the muscle groups and how they are affected by the specific movements and stresses of each sport. They also are trained in the appropriate uses of hydrotherapy and cryotherapy.

Traditional western (e.g. Swedish) massage is currently the most common approach used for conditioning programs. It is frequently supplemented by other massage therapy approaches including deep tissue, trigger point work, and acupressure. Some massage therapists have special training in sports massage and greater experience working with athletes.

Sports massage therapy frequently includes the use of one or more of the following techniques:

• Deep Swedish Massage

  Muscle-specific applications of the standard effleurage, petrissage, vibration, and tapotement techniques.

• Compression Massage

  Rhythmic compression into muscles used to create a deep hypremia and softening effect in the tissues. It is generally used as a warm-up for deeper, more specific massage work.

• Cross-Fiber Massage

  Friction techniques applied in a general manner to create a stretching and broadening effect in large muscle groups; or on site-specific muscle and connective tissue, deep transverse friction applied to reduce adhesions and to help create strong, flexible repair during the healing process.

• Trigger Point/Tender Point Massage

  Combined positioning and specific finger or thumb pressure into trigger/tender points in muscle and connective tissue, to reduce the hypersensitivity, muscle spasms and referred pain patterns that characterize the point. Left untreated, such trigger/tender points often lead to restricted and painful movement of entire body regions.

• Lymphatic Massage

  Stimulation of specialized lymphatic-drainage pathways, which improves the body¹s removal of edemas and effusion.

The Benefits of Sports Massage

Sports Massage has many significant benefits and has become a part of the athletic regimen for not only professional athletes and Olympic training athletes but for the "every day" athlete as well.

Muscles that are heavily exercised can loose their ability to relax causing a lack of flexibility and muscle tightness. Lack of flexibility and tightness is often related to muscle soreness and predisposes you to injuries.

Benefits of Sports Massage include:

• Improved flexibility and range of motion
• Reduction in the chance of injury
• Speeds up recovery time
• Increases the flow of blood and nutrients
• Reduces tightness and/or muscle spasms
• Enhances power and performance

Sports Massage is all about prevention, maintenance, and recovery for you and your athletic goals and performance!

How Does Massage Help?

Recovery. Therapeutic massage helps the body recover from the stresses of strenuous exercise, and facilitates the rebuilding phase of conditioning. The physiological benefits of massage include improved blood and lymph circulation, muscle relaxation, and general relaxation. These, in turn, lead to removal of waste products and better cell nutrition, normalization and greater elasticity of tissues, deactivation of trigger points, and faster healing of injuries. It all adds up to relief from soreness and stiffness, better flexibility, and less potential for future injury.

Over-training. Adequate recovery is also a major factor in avoiding the over-training syndrome. Over-training is characterized by irritability, apathy, altered appetite, increased frequency of injury, increased resting heart rate, and/or insomnia. It occurs when the body is not allowed to recover adequately between bouts of heavy exercise. Therapeutic massage helps you avoid over-training by facilitating recovery through general relaxation, and its other physiological effects.