Do your muscles feel sore after a physical activity? Are you seeking ways to expedite your recovery? Then sports massage might be the answer you're looking for.
Sports massage is a special massage designed to support the body before, during, and after physical activity. It targets muscles that experience repetitive stress and tension.
Unlike regular relaxation massage, sports massage uses a combination of stretching and firm pressure to improve muscle function, flexibility, and overall movement.
Since the term "sports" appears in the massage, it may seem like sports massage is only for athletes. However, that's not true.
Whether you’re a runner, a fitness enthusiast, or a gym-goer, anyone who's dealing with everyday muscle aches can benefit from sports massage. A professional massage therapist will use various hand movements on the target areas to improve blood circulation.
As the blood flows seamlessly throughout the body, it reduces muscle stiffness and accelerates recovery. Furthermore, massage therapy enhances range of motion, promotes relaxation, and corrects imbalances, allowing both body and mind to recover efficiently.
If you're seeking recovery from sports injuries or muscle soreness, you've come to the right place.
This blog explores the benefits of sports massage and who should get it. Additionally, you will learn the expectations for the sports massage, ensuring you’re making the right choice.
What is a Sports Massage?
Before diving into the benefits of sports massage, let’s understand what it entails.
A sports massage therapy is a holistic approach to enhance athletic performance and activity. It involves the manipulation of soft tissues that benefits athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and weekend joggers from muscle soreness and stress.
A professional masseuse or therapist will use stretching and gliding strokes on target muscle areas to ease muscle tension. Through these movements, they will improve blood circulation and deliver oxygen to the tissues.
With smooth blood flow, you will experience relief from muscle tension or soreness caused by repetitive movements. For instance, if you're a pickleball player, repetitive swings and rapid directional changes are common.
These swings and directional changes can put pressure on your arms, shoulders, and forearms. The massage therapist will focus on these areas and, using stretching, squeezing, and gliding strokes, will loosen the muscles and help ensure a speedy recovery.
Top 10 Benefits of Sports Massage Therapy
Knowing what sports massage therapy is will help you distinguish it from regular massages, whose sole purpose is relaxation.
A sports massage, however, goes beyond offering relaxation. The use of stretching, tapping, kneading, and squeezing techniques manipulates muscle groups. As a result, it loosens tight tissues, providing relief from pain and other discomfort.
Moreover, sports massage helps enhance your performance and makes you feel better, both physically and mentally. Here are 10 benefits of sports massage that you should know about to ensure speedy recovery from athletic injuries or muscle tension:
1. Sleep Improvement
As an athlete or fitness enthusiast, you may engage in many activities. These activities will engage different muscle groups, often leading to strain from repetitive movements.
For fast recovery, you will require a good night's sleep. But that seems complicated with the physical discomfort. Through gliding strokes and kneading movements, you can feel a sense of relaxation. That's the importance of sports massage.
The massage therapist will stimulate the target muscle areas you use most during physical activity. As they continue massaging the muscle groups, it promotes a dense sense of calm. That way, it helps improve sleep.
2. Improved Blood Flow
You may experience fatigue or inflammation due to improper blood circulation. To ease discomfort, a sports massage can be beneficial.
The massage therapist will use rhythmic movements to stimulate blood flow. As blood circulation improves, the delivery of oxygen and other nutrients to muscles and organs will be more efficient.
When your body increases oxygen production, it promotes overall health. Proper blood flow also helps remove metabolic waste and toxins, contributing to a healthier, more resilient body, which is necessary for athletes and gym-goers.
3. Enhanced Flexibility
Restrictions in muscle movement affect flexibility. Such a scenario increases the risk of injuries in athletes. One of the core benefits of sports massage for athletes is to improve muscle flexibility.
Targeting specific muscle groups, a masseuse or therapist releases tension and increases circulation. It thus helps the muscles to move freely. Being able to move your muscles will help optimize your overall performance.
Furthermore, it improves the range of motion, ensuring you use the specific muscle groups to perform the necessary physical activity. For instance, if you're a climber, sports massage will target your core, arms, wrists, and forearms, allowing you to tackle challenging routes.
4. Faster Recovery
A post-workout session or athletic activities can cause muscle stiffness. It leads to swelling and inflammation. To ensure you recover from these situations, it is essential to break the adhesions.
With a sports massage session, you can achieve that. It involves kneading, squeezing, and stretching specific muscle groups. As a therapist uses these techniques, the massage realigns muscle fibers and restores normal muscle function.
Moreover, a sports massage helps decrease cortisol levels (stress-inducing hormones) and increase serotonin levels (feel-good hormones), thereby promoting relaxation. As your body feels a sense of calm, it accelerates recovery, allowing you to return to your athletic activities.
5. Reduced Muscle Soreness (DOMS)
An intense workout causes lactic acid buildup in muscles, leading to delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS). With sports massage, your masseuse breaks down the buildup and helps eliminate DOMS.
To break down the lactic acid buildup, the masseuse will use deep friction on the affected muscles. As they use friction, the tight muscle will loosen, increasing the range of motion.
Furthermore, sports massage also boosts the supply of oxygen and other vital nutrients to the body, reducing the levels of toxins and metabolic waste that contribute to the buildup. By reducing buildup, you can reduce muscle soreness.
6. Improved Muscle Performance
Injuries from repetitive muscle movements can lead to fatigue among fitness enthusiasts and athletes. With more energy, you can bring your A game to sports or any other physical activity.
A sports massage can increase mitochondrial activity in muscles, providing more energy. The massage therapist will use a combination of squeezing, kneading, and gentle rubbing techniques to stimulate sensory receptors that are responsible for neuromuscular function.
As you can experience a boost in the neuromuscular function, it will help improve your ability to perform. Additionally, a sports massage session promotes muscle movements, allowing individuals to perform any activity.
7. Stress Reduction
Physical discomfort can cause stress for athletes and fitness enthusiasts. An increase in cortisol levels in your body leads to muscle stiffness and physical pain.
To reduce cortisol levels, your body needs a boost of feel-good hormones. The massage techniques your therapist uses during sports massage increase serotonin and endorphin levels. These are feel-good hormones that improve mood.
As you experience an improvement in your mood, your stress levels automatically decrease. Also, it provides mental clarity even for non-athletes.
8. Enhanced Endurance
Enduring rigorous activities is the primary goal of athletes and individuals who engage in a solid fitness regimen. Often, the repetitive muscle movements cause pain. To reduce the pain and boost your endurance, sports massage can be beneficial.
The massage therapist can address the muscle areas where you're experiencing pain.
They will gently stretch or use gliding strokes to break scar tissue and improve elasticity.
When that happens, your muscles will move freely. As a result, you can work harder and perform better in workout sessions or competitions.
9. Decreased Inflammation
Inflammation is common with intense workouts and strenuous activities. When muscle groups experience inflammation, it triggers pain and soreness. To ease the condition, you can get a sports massage.
Usually, stagnant fluids in the deeper layers of muscles restrict physical activity, leading to inflammation. To move stagnant fluids within tissues, it is essential to improve blood circulation. And that's what sports massage does.
With different hand movements, the masseuse focuses on specific muscle groups. It results in proper blood flow, which carries oxygen and other nutrients to muscles and tissues. The boost in oxygen production helps decrease inflammation.
10. Injury Prevention
Stagnant fluids in deeper muscle layers restrict their movement, leading to injury. To ensure fluids flow effectively, consider a sports massage before or after an activity.
The masseuse performing sports massage will use a wide range of tapping, kneading, and stretching movements. It will loosen tight muscle knots and allow fluids to flow through the body, eliminating toxins and metabolic waste products.
As toxins and metabolic wastes are released from the body, muscle flexibility improves. Once you're able to move your muscles properly, it reduces the risk of injury during competitions or intense workouts.
Who Should Get a Sports Massage?
Promoting faster recovery, reducing DOMS, and improving flexibility are the core benefits of massage after sports. Such benefits may make you wonder whether sports massage is suitable for you.
Indeed, athletes benefit most from sports massage, but it is also effective for individuals seeking pain relief. These include professional, semi-professional, and fitness enthusiasts.
Let’s see how sports massage can help these people:
- Professional athletes: These individuals engage in daily sports activities, which can lead to injuries. With sports massage, you can tackle pre-tempt challenges before they become career-ending.
- Semi-professional athletes: Unlike professional athletes, your hours to engage in sports activities will be fewer. However, repetitive muscle movements can increase your risk of injury. To maintain the overall health and enhance endurance, sports massage will be helpful.
- Fitness enthusiasts: People who follow a fitness routine or play sports for fun can seek a sports massage. The stretching and kneading of muscle groups will prepare your body for both intense and mild physical activities, minimizing the risk of injury or discomfort.
What Should You Expect During a Sports Massage?
As you know, sports massage benefits go beyond athletes; you may now wonder what to expect from a session. If you’re new to getting a sports massage, here are the things that you need to know:
- A massage therapist will take a detailed history of your athletic activities, including the injuries or goals that you may have. For instance, you may seek a sports massage to improve your flexibility. Discuss your goals with the masseuse, and they will engage various techniques to achieve optimum results.
- The massage therapist will use various techniques on specific muscle groups to relieve pain, inflammation, or other discomfort. These techniques include passive muscle stretching, long gliding strokes (effleurage), kneading and squeezing (petrissage), rhythmic tapping (taoptement), and deep circular movements (friction).
- You can further expect the masseuse to use intense pressure on particular muscle groups to loosen them. It thus improves blood flow and oxygen delivery to the muscles, thereby reducing soreness and inflammation.
- Depending on your needs, you can expect a short or a long sports massage therapy session. For instance, if you're recovering from a sports-related injury, you may need a longer massage.
Can you get a sports massage if you’re not an athlete?
As the term “sports” is present in massage therapy, many people think only athletes can benefit from it. However, that’s not true.
Sports massage is known to alleviate muscle soreness, stress, and inflammation. Even individuals who don't play sports can have these issues.
Through a series of circular, rhythmic kneading and squeezing movements, the massage therapist will focus on pain points and ease knots. That way, it will help you relax and reduce stiffness and other difficulties that come with regular physical activities.
Easing muscle and tissue knots can also boost circulation. As a result, you can experience free muscle movements, allowing you to perform better.
Avoid Injuries with Sports Massage from On the Side Day Spa
Hopefully, now you know the benefits of sports massage and don't view it as a recovery tool only for athletes. The holistic massage addresses muscle imbalances to maintain peak performance and avoid injuries.
Whether you're an athlete looking to improve flexibility or a fitness enthusiast seeking endurance, sports massage can help you achieve your goals. All you have to do is find a reliable masseuse who can offer you the massage.
At On The Side Day Spa, we offer sports massage therapy to support your recovery from sports or other injuries. Not to mention, our professional therapists will use a series of massage techniques to improve flexion and enhance performance.
By discussing your goals with our massage professionals, you can decrease muscle soreness and gain endurance. Depending on your needs, we customize the duration of the massage therapy.
Explore our sports massage therapy and enhance your performance and overall health.
