What is Sports Massage?

Not only does a Sports Therapist like myself have the skills to assess, diagnose and treat a wide range of injuries, but also qualified in sports massage. I treat a lot of people who just require regular maintenance through a monthly sports massage. I often get asked questions about what sports massage is, how it differs to other forms of massage, the benefits and who would benefit from regular sports massage. I am going to run through all of these in this blog.

For starters, sports massage is most well known for being more of a deep tissue massage in comparison to other varieties of massage. You may have heard people describe a sports massage as being painful but this is purely to provide much more physiological benefits to your body. It varies with that of a spa massage as there isn’t too much relaxing involved!
There are many benefits of receiving regular sports massage. Physiologically, it increases range of movement and flexibility, increases circulation and a reduction of pain and tightness in muscles. Another benefit is a breakdown of scar tissue. Scar tissue develops after a tear or strain in a muscle occurs. This would be perfect for anyone who was recovering from an injury to break that scar tissue down, elongate the injured muscle fibres and significantly reduce the chances of the injury coming back again. For the active person, sports massage is also perfect as it helps to improve sporting performance and reduce the effect of muscle fatigue. As well as providing the listed physical benefits, it has also been proven that sports massage has psychological benefits such as a reduction in stress and anxiety.

Sports massage is perfect for the active sportsman or woman due to the benefits that you receive, during a training programme it is vitally important to include a massage as part of your recovery and to help your muscles repair quicker and be at the optimum level for a competition. Despite the name sports massage isn’t just for sporty people. Due to the benefits it can also be of great use to someone who sits at a desk all day with poor posture or spends long hours in the day driving. Sports massage works by reducing the tightness and pain felt in the shoulders and lower back and works on those muscles that collect all the stress of a job in the shoulders. It can also be of benefit to someone who is required to be on their feet all day.

If after reading this you think that you would like to make a booking then please do get in contact. If you are looking for more than one massage appointment then block booking deals are also available that make it cheaper in the long term. If you are unsure about whether sports massage is for you or you want to discuss anything else in detail then do feel free to get in touch for any further information.