How Therapeutic Sports Massage Will Benefit Your Exercise Program
Sports massage is used by many athletes, both professional and amateur, to improve their athletic performance, reduce their recovery time between workouts and help reduce or control their pain. Most people know that a massage can be soothing and relaxing but are unaware of the therapeutic benefits of massage for improving workouts. When you are exercising you can cause metabolic waste build up, micro tears in the muscle fibers, and possible edema (swelling). These can be natural results from any athletic activity. However, there are ways to keep these issues to a minimum. The severity of these conditions will depend on the intensity and frequency of your training. Sports massage techniques will help to alleviate these training symptoms. Here are some of the major benefits you can receive from a sports massage.
1. Massages increases the circulation of blood to your muscles which not only brings needed nutrients for repair but also removes metabolic waste (lactic acid) thus improving your muscle strength.
2. Sports massage uses combinations of both stretching and deep tissue massage to release adhesions in both muscles and connective tissue. These adhesions can interfere with your range of motion which will limit your flexibility during training.
3. Strenuous training sessions can develop painful trigger points in muscles that can cause both pain and weakness. Acupressure techniques will deactivate these trigger points keeping your muscles strong.
4. Once you start following a regular massage maintenance program, your therapist can then become proactive in identifying and alleviating symptoms before they can cause potential problems or injuries.
How often you schedule a massage depends on two key factors: 1) the intensity and frequency of your training, and 2) whether or not you are injury free. For the “gung ho” fitness buff training every day, the best maintenance program is getting a massage once a week or once every 2 weeks. This frequency will reduce your muscle recovery time between training, keep your muscles at peak performance and help to keep you injury free. For the average fitness buff training a couple of times a week, a good maintenance program is a massage once every 2 weeks or once a month for peak muscle performance. For anyone with injuries the massage frequency is based upon your individual healing needs and the severity of the injury.
If you are truly serious about your fitness training, then massage therapy is an important asset to keep you at your peak potential not only for everyday workouts and to keep you enjoying workouts. Anyone is more likely to continue exercising if the workout is enjoyable and relatively pain free.
September 9, 2012 Written by;
Denise Gregory, Licensed Massage Therapist, MA53792