Sports massage is a form of massage that specifically works to manipulate the muscles, reducing tension and helping those who find themselves feeling tension from the demands of life, and/or sports. By reducing muscle tension with sports massage it can have a great impact on your whole musculoskeletal system, including bones, joints, ligaments and tendons. This can not only help existing issues, but help prevent other injuries.
Benefits of Sport Massage:
There are many different forms of massage around but we want to highlight all the many benefits specifically to sports massage.
Benefit 1: Reduce Muscle Tension
When you massage the muscles, it increases blood flow to the area, which brings oxygen and nutrients to the muscles. This relieves tension by getting rid of toxins and waste products left in the muscles after exercise, use and/or overload. As we massage with certain techniques it also works to stretch the muscles and reduce tension throughout the muscle and all the muscle fibers that are carrying tension.
Benefit 2: Reduces Injury Risk
Mainly due to two factors. 1. With the increase in blood flow to the muscles, sports massage can aid healing and recovery of muscles and therefore reducing the risk of muscle injury. And 2. With reduced muscle tension, sports massage can affect biomechanical function of joints, load and stress points in the body, reducing risk of injury.
Benefit 3: Recovery
As previously mentioned sports massage can benefit the recovery of the body after exercise, stress or overload but increasing blood flow. Specifically though sports massage can also be used for recovery to recover quicker and therefore improve physical performance.
Benefit 4: Better Sleep
Proven to facilitate and deepen sleep. This is thought to be due to relief from discomfort that can follow from a good sports massage. But also due to the production of melatonin from serotonin secretion during massage. This hormone helps regulate sleep. So massage can create and maintain healthy sleep patterns.
Benefit 5: Aid Injury Management
Often with injury there are muscles that are working overtime to support an underperforming injured muscle, tendon, ligament, joint etc. Compensating for weakness causes tightness and overload in muscles which can lead to further injury but also reduced healing of the original injury. Sports massage can reduce these compensatory tightnesses and or aid the recovery of the injury itself, for example breakdown the scar tissue which has built up around an injury.
So Who Is Sports Massage Good For?
Anyone. It’s that simple. As you have read, a sports massage can be beneficial to anyone regardless of athletic ability, or the amount of exercise that you do. You could be training for an event and want better recovery, and to reduce your risk of injury. Or you could have simply done a bit too much gardening at the weekend and feel some tension in your shoulders. It can help a full range of people, and it has so many wonderful benefits, keeping your body feeling good
while also reducing the risk of an injury too.
Final Thoughts..
Sports massage offers many benefits and can be very beneficial to the human body. It can improve your sleep as well as help relax your mind, and body, which can reduce risk of injury, or aid recovery from injury and/or exercise which fundamentally leads to enhanced performance of the body in exercise and life. If you would like to get booked in for a sports massage, please contact us via our contact form below.