Why is a Sports Massage Important for Performance?

Many people assume that a sports massage is only for professional sports people, it's not. The main aim of a sports massage is to help alleviate the stress and tension that builds up in your body's soft tissues during physical activity. Whether you're an athlete, a once-a-week jogger or just physically active, a sports massage helps drain away fatigue, reduce muscle tension, promote flexibility and overall prepare you for peak performance. It can also help prevent those trivial injuries that get in the way of your performance. What happens during a sports massage? During your first appointment, our massage therapist will have a brief consultation with you to discuss your current health, lifestyle and relevant medical history. Our therapist generally focuses in on your problem area, for example a frozen shoulder or pulled hamstrings, rather than give you a full-body massage. An effective sports massage incorporates a combination of basic and advanced deep tissue massage techniques, stimulating the circulation of blood and lymph fluids. Trigger point therapy is also used to break down adhesions or knots in the muscles, allowing an increased range of motion. Combining these techniques helps increase blood flow to the tired muscles, speeding up recovery. It also helps the flow of blood back to the heart and the interstitial and lymph fluids around the body, essential for maintaining a healthy body. When should you get a sports massage? Ideally, athletes should get a sports massage three days to a week before a race or a big event. This gives your body enough time to flush out the byproducts that massage has released and for any residual soreness to go away. Following your workout, it helps to schedule your next massage two or three days after. Ideally, you want your muscles to be relatively relaxed and not in a very fatigued state. If nothing is injured, this is the perfect time for a deep tissue massage and myofascial-release. Who can benefit from it? You don't have to be a sportsperson to reap the many benefits of a sports massage. Muscle tension, stress and fatigue can affect all of us, whether we are competitive or recreational athletes, busy housewives or stressed executives. Many of our clients report feeling those knots being "ironed out" post-massage.