Whether you enjoy recreational sport, or you are a professional athlete, Sports massage will loosen, warm and ready your muscles for activity, prevent sports related injury, improve performance and endurance. Almost everyone, who has followed an exercise regimen, played some sort of active game, or done swimming or even jogging or aerobics, is likely to have suffered from muscle spasm or strain.
Massage has become an integral part of the new athletic regimen from sports medicine clinics, to college training rooms, to professional locker rooms to Olympic training. Growing number of trainers believe that massage can provide an extra edge to the athletes, who participate in high performance sports. Massage has become a necessary ingredient for a complete workout.
It is a myth that sports massage can only be used for athletes, cricketers or those who play competitive games. Anyone and everyone, who is using muscles can use this massage therapy with great benefit.
More and more people are realizing that a complete workout routine includes not only the exercise itself, but also, caring for the wear-and-tear and minor injuries that naturally occur with strenuous movement.The physiological and psychological benefits of massage make it an ideal complement to a total conditioning program.
Anyone, who routinely stretches his physical limits through movement such as running, cycling, hiking, swimming, dancing, tennis and other racquet sports, strength training and aerobics can benefit from a massage. There are others, who do strenuous activities in a day that is not normally classified as exercise. Examples are mothers with small children, gardeners, and others, who use their bodies strenuously in their work.
Incorporating massage in your conditioning program has many benefits. It helps you get into good shape faster, and with less stiffness and soreness. It helps you recover faster from heavy workouts, and relieves conditions, which may cause injury.
What Happens When You Exercise?
Regular exercise increases vigour and promotes a general sense of well-being. If done in moderation, exercise can help relieve the effects of stress. Exercise has also been linked to decrease in psychological depression. Regular exercise produces positive physical results like increased muscular strength and endurance, more efficient heart and respiratory functioning, and greater flexibility.
These positive physical changes occur as the body gradually adapts to the greater demands put on it by regular exercise. The body improves its functioning to meet the challenges placed on it.
Conditioning Involve Three Phases
• Tearing Down Phase, when one pushes the physical limits of the body.
• Recovery Phase, important for the rebuilding phase and to obtain the full benefits of a conditioning program.
• Build-up Phase, when the body-system adapts to the new demands placed on it.
The ‘tearing down’ phase of the adaptation process often involves stiffness and soreness, especially, when the amount of movement is significantly increased from what the body has been used to in the past. Delayed muscle soreness (24-48 hours after exercise) may be caused by any of a number of different factors. Some possible causes are minor muscle, or connective tissue damage, local muscle spasms that reduce blood flow, or a build up of waste products (metabolites) from energy production.
Trigger points, or stress points may also cause muscle soreness and decreased flexibility. These points are specific spots in muscle and tendons, which cause pain when pressed, and which may radiate pain to a larger area. They are not bruises, but are thought by some to be small areas of spasm. Trigger points may be caused by sudden trauma (like falling or being hit), or may develop over time from the stress and strain of heavy physical exertion, or from repeated use of a particular muscle.
Heavily exercised muscles may also lose their capacity to relax, causing chronically tight (hypertonic) muscles, and loss of flexibility. Lack of flexibility is often linked to muscle soreness, and predisposes you to injuries, especially muscle pulls and tears. Blood flow through tight muscles is poor (Ischemia), which also causes pain.
Sports massage can help in each stage of conditioning by preventing muscle injuries, as well as healing the injured ones.
Sports Massage Techniques
Each sport and athletic event uses muscle groups in a different way. Sports massage therapists must be familiar with each muscle, the muscle groups and how they are affected by the specific movements and stresses of each sport. They also are trained in the appropriate uses of hydrotherapy and cryotherapy.
Traditional western (e.g. Swedish) massage is currently the most common approach used for conditioning programs. It is frequently supplemented by other massage therapy approaches including deep tissue, trigger point work, and acupressure. Some massage therapists have special training in sports massage and greater experience working with athletes. Sports massage therapy frequently includes the use of one, or more of the following techniques:
Deep Swedish Massage : In this massage the muscle-specific applications of the standard effleurage, petrissage, vibration, and tapotement techniques are used.
Compression Massage : Rhythmic compression into muscles is used to create a deep hyperaemia and softening effect in the tissues. It is generally used as a warm-up for deeper, more specific massage work.
Cross-fibre Massage : Friction techniques are applied in a general manner to create a stretching and broadening effect in large muscle groups, or on site-specific muscle and connective tissue.
Deep transverse friction is applied to reduce adhesions and to help create strong, flexible repair during the healing process.
Trigger Point/Tender Point Massage : Combined positioning and specific finger, or thumb pressure into trigger/tender points in muscle and connective tissue are used to reduce the hypersensitivity, muscle spasms and referred pain patterns that characterize the point.
Left untreated, such trigger/tender points often lead to restricted and painful movement of entire body regions.
Lymphatic Massage : During the lymphatic massage stimulation of specialized lymphatic-drainage pathways takes place. This improves the body’s removal of oedemas and effusion.
How Does Massage Help?
Recovery : Therapeutic massage helps the body recover from the stresses of strenuous exercise, and facilitates the rebuilding phase of conditioning. The physiological benefits of massage include improved blood and lymph circulation, muscle relaxation, and general relaxation.
These, in turn, lead to removal of waste products and better cell nutrition, normalization and greater elasticity of tissues, deactivation of trigger points, and faster healing of injuries. It all adds up to relief from soreness and stiffness, better flexibility, and less potential for future injury.
In addition to general recovery, massage may also focus on specific muscles used in a sport, or fitness activity. For example, areas of greater stress for runners and dancers are in the legs, for swimmers in the upper body, for tennis players in the arms. These areas are more likely to be tight, lose flexibility, and develop trigger points.
Over-training : Adequate recovery is also a major factor in avoiding the over-training syndrome. Over-training is characterized by irritability, apathy, altered appetite, increased frequency of injury, increased resting heart rate, and/or insomnia. It occurs when the body is not allowed to recover adequately between bouts of heavy exercise. Therapeutic massage helps you avoid over-training by facilitating recovery through general relaxation, and its other physiological effects.
Trouble Spots : You may also have your own unique trouble spots, perhaps from past injuries. A massage therapist can pay special attention to these areas, monitor them for developing problems, and help keep them in good condition. An experienced massage therapist can also compliment treatment received from other health care professionals for various injuries.
Target Areas of Sports Massage
Sports massage may involve prevention and maintenance programs, on-site treatment before and after an athletic event, and rehabilitation programs for those who are injured during the program.
Maintenance Massage
An effective maintenance program is based on the massage therapist’s understanding of anatomy and kinesiology, combined with an expert knowledge, of which muscles are used in a given sport, and which are likely candidates for trouble.
By zeroing in on particular muscle groups and working specific tissues, the sports massage therapist can help the athlete maintain, or improve range of motion and muscle flexibility. The overall objective of a maintenance program is to help the athlete reach optimal performance through injury-free training.
Event Massage
1. Pre-event : Pre-event sports massage is given within the four hours preceding an event to improve performance and help decrease injuries. It is used as a supplement to an athlete’s warm-up to enhance circulation and reduce excess muscle and mental tension prior to competition.
It is normally shorter (10-15 minutes) than a regular conditioning massage, and focuses on warming-up the major muscles to be used, and getting the athlete in a good mental state for competition. It also improves tissue pliability, readying the athlete for top performance. Certain massage techniques can help calm a nervous athlete, and others can be stimulating.
2. Inter/Intra-event : Inter- and intra-event massage is given between events, or in time-outs to help athletes recover from the preceding activity, and prepare for the activity coming up. It is also short, and focuses on the major muscles stressed in the activity.
3. Post-event : Post-event sports massage is given after a competition and is mainly concerned with recovery. It is geared toward reducing the muscle spasms and metabolic build-up that occur with vigorous exercise. Recovery after competition involves not only tissue normalization and repair, but also general relaxation and mental calming.
A recovery session might be 15 minutes to Wi hours in length.
Rehabilitation Massage
Even with preventive maintenance, muscles cramp, tear, bruise, and ache can occur in most athletes. Sports massage can speed healing and reduce discomfort during the rehabilitation process.
Soft tissue techniques employed by sports massage therapists are effective in the management of both acute and chronic injuries. For example, adding lymphatic massage to the “standard care” procedure in the acute stage of injury will improve control of secondary, hypoxic injury and enhance oedemous fluid removal throughout the healing cycle.
Trigger point techniques reduce the spasms and pain that occur both in the injured and “compensation” muscles. Cross-fibre friction techniques applied during the sub-acute and maturation phases of healing improve the formation of strong and flexible repair tissue, which is vital in maintaining full pain-free range of motion during rehabilitation.
In all cases, such massage techniques are employed in collaboration with other appropriate medical care. For example, encouraging circulation around a bruise, but not directly on it, through the use of compression, cross-fibre techniques, or even long, deep strokes is only used after appropriate medical referral and diagnostics indicate that there are no clots formed in the area, which may embolise (blockage of a vein or artery caused by a clot).
Whether you enjoy recreational sport, or you are a professional athlete, Sports massage will loosen, warm and ready your muscles for activity, prevent sports related injury, improve performance and endurance. Almost everyone, who has followed an exercise regimen, played some sort of active game, or done swimming or even jogging or aerobics, is likely to have suffered from muscle spasm or strain.
Massage has become an integral part of the new athletic regimen from sports medicine clinics, to college training rooms, to professional locker rooms to Olympic training. Growing number of trainers believe that massage can provide an extra edge to the athletes, who participate in high performance sports. Massage has become a necessary ingredient for a complete workout.
It is a myth that sports massage can only be used for athletes, cricketers or those who play competitive games. Anyone and everyone, who is using muscles can use this massage therapy with great benefit.
More and more people are realizing that a complete workout routine includes not only the exercise itself, but also, caring for the wear-and-tear and minor injuries that naturally occur with strenuous movement.The physiological and psychological benefits of massage make it an ideal complement to a total conditioning program.
Anyone, who routinely stretches his physical limits through movement such as running, cycling, hiking, swimming, dancing, tennis and other racquet sports, strength training and aerobics can benefit from a massage. There are others, who do strenuous activities in a day that is not normally classified as exercise. Examples are mothers with small children, gardeners, and others, who use their bodies strenuously in their work.
Incorporating massage in your conditioning program has many benefits. It helps you get into good shape faster, and with less stiffness and soreness. It helps you recover faster from heavy workouts, and relieves conditions, which may cause injury.