Sports Massage is the management, manipulation and rehabilitation of soft tissues of the body including muscles, ligaments and tendons.
The techniques used by sports massage practitioners have been developed to ensure effective and efficient results are gained from each massage given. The reported benefits of Sports Massage include:
- Improve circulation & lymphatic flow
- Assist in the removal of metabolic waste
- Sedate or stimulate nerve endings
- Increase or decrease muscle tone
- Increase or decrease muscle length
- Remodel scar tissue when required
- Assist in mental preparation for sporting participation
To benefit from a sports massage you do not need to be a sports performer. There are many practitioners that work with a great range of clients. The benefits above can also help relieve many day to day problems that everyone experiences. I am an accredited practitioner with the I.C.N.M. ( Institute For Complementary Natural Medicine)and this will ensure that you will be receiving an individually tailored, high quality massage. Depending on the type and timing of activity, these benefits can be achieved for anyone.
If you are a sports performer, of any level, a sports specific massage can be beneficial at various stages of participation. For example:
- The conditioning / training phase
- Pre competition
- Inter competition
- Post competition
- Post travel
- Injury prevention
- Injury recovery
Regardless of your experiences in sport or exercise, whether you exercise socially or compete to an international level, sports massage may have something to offer you.
Applied to sporting injury and used to tone and prepare or detoxify and balance for any hard physical activity to reduce risk of injury.
As modern medicine puts effort into developing ways of increasingly serious conditions, minor everyday injuries are becoming less adequately dealt with, although they can still be extremely painful and may seriously affect a person’s occupation, sport or quality of life.
Furthermore, if not treated properly at an early stage, a minor injury can sometimes lead to a more serious condition in the long term. Massage can treat the majority of such minor problems quickly and effectively.
Injury prevention is another area where the importance of massage should not be underestimated. Massage is the only actual treatment that can be applied specifically to help prevent injury. This is not only true in a sports context, but also in terms of posture and other forms of stress.