Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Tuning Up with Sports Massage

Athletes are often confused about the best time to get body work. Athletes should get a tough, sports massage three days before any activity. However, this one should be focused on stretching and isometric approaches, which concentrate on breathing and relaxing. After the game, you must make sure it’s not vigorous. It should be more of a relaxing massage to calm your tight muscles. If you are in pain, a few days of rest and stretching before a sports massage is best.



Sports massage takes place in between training sessions and the aim is to work on specific elements and tissues which have become shortened, tight, and painful. The idea is to loosen off tightness within soft tissues so as to improve performance and prevent injury. A variety of techniques in sports massage can be used. This would range from deep tissue, trigger point, to mobilization of joints for stretching and strengthening. Heavily exercised muscles may also lose their capacity to relax. This causes chronically tight muscles, and flexibility loss. Lack of flexibility is often linked to muscle soreness, and predisposes athletes to injuries especially muscle pulls and tears. Blood flow through tight muscles is poor, which also causes pain. A regular sports massage therapy is very effective in combating these effects of heavy exercised muscles.

On your first visit expect to give a full medical history as well as provide an account of how you have injured yourself and/or what you hope to gain from the visit. This should be followed by an examination, usually involving a basic postural analysis as well as active a passive examination. This will help the therapist get to the bottom of the culprit tissues as well as any predisposing factors to problems you encounter. The overall picture will help formulate a specific sports massage treatment plan and based on this soft tissue techniques will be used to achieve the desired goal.

Summing up, sports massage should be applied before and after athletic events, with many “maintenance” sessions in between meets or competitions. Integrated into a weekly training regimen, athletes may avoid pain, will be able to relax, and revitalize muscles, and feel calmer and more focused before and after events.

Massage Envy Lakeland
3615 South Florida Ave. Unit 56, Lakeland, FL 33803
863-646-3689

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