What is sports massage? What can it do for me?
Sports massage is talked about everywhere now, and it’s generally taken for granted that everyone knows what that means. But do you? It seemed like the right place to start this blog by looking at what we mean by sports massage and also answering the question “what can it do for me?” and how it can achieve those benefits.
What is sports massage?
Sports massage can best be described as the manipulation and assessment of soft tissues. By soft tissues, we mean skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia (a term I will return to in future blogs because it’s gaining increasing importance in our understanding of how the body works).
Most people would probably consider sports massage to be a deeper massage, working into the tissues and, in general, that would be correct. A properly qualified sports massage practitioner will have a thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology and will be working into specific muscles to identify potential knots, restrictions and imbalances, all of which may affect performance adversely.
A typical sports massage session will go further that this though and, as well as “hands on massage”, will also look at postural assessment, may involve some assisted stretching and will also provide post-massage advice in respect of stretching, strengthening and injury recovery. All of these will help to provide an overall picture and allow the practitioner to assist the client in achieving optimum performance and avoiding injury.
So how does it work?
There are a number of different ways in which sports massage works on a person’s body. They can be best split into the different systems they affect;
Muscular system:
When we use our muscles, they suffer micro trauma. This can lead to scar tissue and adhesions within the muscle fibres. If these go undetected, an injury will result at some stage because there is a weakness in the muscle. At the very least, the performance of that particular muscle will be impaired meaning you will have less than “full power”.
Massage can alleviate this by releasing restrictions, realigning muscle fibres and stopping the build-up of scar tissue.
Cardiovascular system:
The cardiovascular system moves blood around the body, delivering oxygen and nutrients. Sports massage helps to increase blood flow and will therefore assist in delivering these nutrients, which in turn promote healthy recovery and first-class performance from our muscles.
Sports massage can also help to stimulate lymph flow and this will help to flush out toxins and waste products from our system.
Nervous system:
The nervous system allows signals from the brain to reach muscles and tell them how to move and also allows “feedback” from muscles, tendons, ligaments etc to the brain to enable balance and movement. If those signals are interrupted, this won’t work so well.
A typical example of this is when you have what is known as a “trigger point” within a muscle. The muscle can become tight and constricted and the muscle will not function properly. In fact, recent research has suggested that even trigger points which are not causing pain (and about which you may therefore be unaware) can cause a significant decrease in muscle performance.
Thus sports massage can help by identifying and eradicating these trigger points. In addition, the manipulation of the soft tissues within sports massage can have a stimulating effect on the sensory receptors in the nervous system.
Skeletal system:
Although sports massage is focussed on soft tissues, joints will function better and be put under less stress if the soft tissues are less restricted and function well and thus sports massage can be beneficial towards the skeletal system.
So what benefits will I feel?
There are a number of ways in which you may directly feel the benefits, including the following;
- Injury prevention: regular massage will identify small problems before they become big ones so you should notice a reduction in the amount of injuries you suffer
- Faster recovery times: as we have seen, massage has many good effects on the body and these, cumulatively, should lead to quicker recovery from hard training sessions and races, allowing you to train and race harder in the future
- Faster injury recovery: the treatment of injuries and the advice given in respect of rehabilitation from injuries should ensure that injuries heal quicker and heal better than they would otherwise
- Better flexibility: relaxed, functioning muscles should be more flexible and work done on stretching during sessions will help to increase this flexibility, together with the post-session advice given on stretching yourself
- Better posture: again, all of the above effects of sports massage sessions should help to ensure a better overall posture
- Pain relief: tension in muscles can cause pain, as can the build up of waste products in the muscles. Sports massage addresses both of these.
- Enhanced immune system: by stimulating the flow of the lymphatic system, sports massage can potentially help to enhance the immune system, which may be noticeable
- Relaxation: through the relaxation of muscles during sports massage, you may well experience an overall feeling of relaxation and reduction in stress
Remember that the whole point is to make sure that you, as an athlete, are in the best possible condition, both mentally and physically, to enable you to achieve the highest level of performance that you can and to reach your goals.
Any advantage that you can get, whether physiological or psychological, can make that difference between achieving what you want to achieve and just missing out. Bearing in mind all of the potential benefits of sports massage, it’s hopefully clear that it can play a major part.
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