What Does A Sports Massage Consist Of?

Even though you don’t have to be an athlete to benefit from sports massage, it was designed to help athletes improve their performance in their sports. When we sit at our workstations for long periods, our muscles can get sore depending on the desk and computer chair we use.

Sports massage can help people with injuries, stiff joints, limited range of motion, or ongoing musculoskeletal problems get their muscles and tendons to work again.

What does a sports massage involve?

During a sports massage, the therapist uses various techniques to improve lymphatic and blood flow, break up muscle adhesions and knots, and stretch the muscle causing the problem to make it longer when it is at rest. When you relax the muscles that cross a painful joint, the joint becomes less stiff and can move more freely.

Even though inflicting pain is not the objective of sports massage therapy, there may be some discomfort felt throughout the session if the therapist is working on a particularly sensitive or troublesome region. At the first appointment, the therapist looks at the client’s posture and can see if there are any changes as the treatment goes on.

Pre-event:

​Athletes often get a sports massage that includes compressions and passive ranges of motion to get them ready for competition. Most of the time, these sessions last between 5 and 15 minutes and occur at a table.

Mid-event:

The goal of sports massage, which includes different techniques before a game or match, is to keep the athlete warm and full of energy. Sports massage and pre-event massage are often the same things. Depending on the sport and how much time the athlete has before returning to competition, these sessions can sometimes last as little as 1 minute or as long as 10 minutes.

Post-event:

You can use techniques from the first two phases in the third phase after the event. Either passively or actively, stretching could still be part of the massage. Massage after an event aims to help the athlete get better faster. This is the phrase that most guests will hear most often at an event.

In a traditional massage therapy setting, sports massage:

Most sports massages are done in a conventional massage setting and last for a predetermined time, just like other types of massage. Professional and amateur athletes should both pay more attention to how they recover. Therapists often mix deep tissue, range-of-motion, compressions, warming up the muscles, and table Thai therapies. This sports massage can be done with or without clothes, depending on how comfortable the client is and how the therapist does it.

So what exactly does “sports massage” mean?

Most of the time, Massage Therapists use techniques for sports massage that are the same as those used on any other client who comes in. In sport Massage many technique are used : Myofascial Therapy or therapeutic stretching, which help your muscles deal with the stress that your sport puts on them. A sports massage differs from other massages because of how it is done, not because of the techniques used. Sports massage therapists must use these four areas of knowledge to help athletes:

  • Biomechanics of the sport our athlete plays so they can know where myofascial strains are likely to happen during practice and games.
  • Exercise physiology is crucial when considering what to do before, during, and after a game.
  • Understanding how the body heals and what methods can be used at different stages of an injury is important.

Here’s how these things seem to be used in real life:

Biomechanics of the Sport:

Let’s say one of my track and field athletes comes to me for a massage during the indoor track season . First, I have to think about what the athlete wants to do. Sprinters’ hamstrings are put through much more stress than distance runners, who often have problems with their IT bands because of the tight turns on an indoor track. Also, this stress is very different from what a long or high jumper would feel.

How far along is this athlete in their preparation for a competition?

Generally, athletes shouldn’t get a relaxing massage right before their event and shouldn’t get deep tissue work two days before their event. As with any basic rule, massage can affect different people in different ways, so they talk to each client about the timing and intensity of the massage to find out what they think works best for them.

Healing Process:

When an athlete gets hurt, therapists try to see them as soon as possible to help them feel better or get better faster. Again, what the client knows is very important, and transverse friction across a recently strained muscle would be a very bad idea. However other techniques, like lymphatic drainage and positional release techniques, that can help in the early stages of an injury.

Conclusion:

We could say that sports massage is a very important tool for everyone, especially athletes. You should give one a try if your goal is to loosen up and relax and make your joints less stiff. If you require any additional information about Sports Massage Hackney, please contact us.