Sports Massage

The purpose of sports massage, also known as performance massage, is to reduce or eliminate factors that interfere with human performance. What sets sports massage apart from other modalities is its emphasis on the prevention of injury.

Sports massage works by loosening and invigorating you both physically and mentally so that you have the best chance of reaching your performance potential. You don’t have to be a professional athlete to benefit from sports massage. Any healthy individual engaging in strenuous physical activity is a good candidate for sports massage. If optimum performance, prevention of injury, and restoring yourself when you have completed a strenuous event are among your goals, then sports massage has a place in your life. The sports massage you receive should be tailored to your physical condition and to the nature of your activity.

A Modality for Active People

You do not have to be a professional athlete, a great athlete, or even an athlete at all to benefit from sports massage. It can improve the performance of physically active, healthy individuals who exercise, engage in sports, or have lifestyles and jobs requiring physical strength, agility, and endurance.

Sports massage is intended to loosen and invigorate the individual who engages in any strenuous activity. Such activities may include sports like tennis, racquetball, skiing, soccer, softball, basketball, bicycling, or swimming; exercise in the form of jogging, speed walking, or weight lifting; a major event, like a marathon; or dancing and other performing arts. The activity could even take the form of strenuous physical tasks of daily living, like caring for active children, cooking, and cleaning the house, or a job that requires repeated physical exertion. All of these activities require motivation, the desire to succeed, good coordination and range of motion, physical strength, stamina, and your availability (which means prevention of and quick recovery from injury).

Maximize Your Performance

Sports massage is designed to help you maximize your performance and help you stay active by:

• Enhancing your endurance and stamina.
• Increasing your flexibility and range of motion.
• Preventing you from getting injured.
• Reducing your muscle tension and soreness.
• Increasing the circulation of blood and lymph.
• Enhancing the recovery of your muscles.
• Facilitating the repair of injured soft tissue.
• Relieving your muscle cramps and spasms.

The Strokes of Sports Massage

When muscle fibers are constricted, blood circulation becomes less efficient. Muscles that are prevented from receiving sufficient oxygen and nutrients carried by the blood through the circulatory system are more susceptible to tension, pain, stiffness, cramps, and spasms. If you enter a strenuous physical event with your muscles in an undernourished condition, you will perform below your potential and be more vulnerable to injury.

Sports massage is designed to spread constricted muscle fibers in order to increase circulation of blood to the muscle tissue. To free the muscle fiber and relieve tension, soreness, stiffness, and pain, the therapist uses a variety of strokes, including:

• Warming the muscles (with a towel, heating pad, or warm hands).
• Direct pressure to the muscles to release painful trigger points.
• Friction to relieve muscle tension and soreness and to stimulate circulation.
• Percussion to stimulate and invigorate.
• Compression (a pumping motion for circulation).
• Effleurage (gentle, sweeping Swedish strokes).
• Kneading to help remove waste and toxins.
• Mild stretching to relieve constriction of muscle fibers and increase range of motion.

These strokes, when applied in the appropriate depth and combination, help prevent injury and aid recuperation. The duration of the massage, depth of touch, and strokes will vary, depending on when the sports massage is given and the condition of the receiver.