Sports Massage Therapy
is actually not like its name suggests. A sports massage treatment does not
necessarily mean you have to be a sports man or women. Sports massage is
more of an advanced treatment used to help prevent injury, as part of
rehabilitation programme to treat post-acute injury, as part of a warm
up for an event or as part of the wind down after the event.This treatment
manipulates and rehabilitates the soft tissues of the body such as the
tendons, muscles, ligaments and fascia.
As well as dealing directly with the potential problem massage indentifies
the possibility of a fault in training, which could be causing over-use
injuries.
Benefits of Sports Massage
Sports massage, like other forms of massage, helps improve the suppleness and flexibility of muscles and joints. It improves lymph and blood circulation and assists body systems in functioning at their optimum level.
Sports massage also has more specific effects and benefits:
- speeds up the healing of damaged or overworked tissue and muscles thus reduces recovery time
- increases fitness capabilities and performance potential
- prevents future injury by identifying and treating current muscle weakness, tiredness and problem areas
- post-event massage helps clear out waste and toxins, reducing stiffness and enabling faster recovery than post-event rest
- enables muscles and joints to heal faster after injury
- peak performance can be reached faster and sustained over longer periods
Advanced Techniques Used in Sports Massage:
- Lymphatic Drainage - encourages the removal of toxins and boosting the immune system. Is useful for treating fluid retention or odema.
- Neuromuscular Technique - is a technique in which the thumb or fingers are held in place over a sore point and pressure is gradually increased up to the limits to the client’s threshold this provokes a reflex in the nervous system which helps the muscle to relax.
- Muscle Energy Technique - variety of techniques that involve restricted or resistive movement to stretch muscles.
- Soft Tissue Release - combines pressure and movement. Pressure is applied to relaxed muscle which is afterwards taken to stretch causing the muscle fibers to lengthen and release adhesions ‘stickiness’
- Connective Tissue Massage - a form of stretching to release the fluids trapped within the connective tissue between the muscle fibers.