What Is Sports Massage Therapy?
What is sports massage therapy?
Sports massage therapy is the manipulation of the soft tissues in the body including muscles, tendons and ligaments for management and rehabilitation.
Here’s how sports massage can help you:
The treatment can help relieve musculoskeletal pain effecting ligaments, muscles and tendons, recover from sporting and non-sporting injuries, improve flexibility and strength in muscles to improve joint mobility and allows a greater load to be placed upon them and has a huge benefit of improving mental health, decrease stress and improves mood.
Some issues that sports massage can help with:
Back pain - Shoulder pain - Knee pain – Tennis elbow - Golfers elbow - Plantar fasciitis - Sprains & Strains - Sciatica - Piriformis syndrome – Headaches – Whiplash – Frozen shoulder - Tendinopathy - Increase blood circulation – Increase lymph flow - Increase flexibility – Increase joint mobility - Assist in mental preparation for sporting participation - Pre & post event massage – Improved performance – Aid recovery – Injury Prevention - Post-operation rehabilitation - Stimulate nerve endings - Postural issues that cause pain such as shoulder protraction, lordosis & scoliosis - Promoting proper muscle function - Improve sleep – Boost health & wellbeing - Restore movement - Reduce pain.
Techniques used in soft tissue treatments
Sports massage therapy use a wide range of techniques and modalities that help achieve the best possible outcome of the massage treatment. This includes stretching, trigger point therapy, soft tissue release, muscle energy technique.
Trigger Point Therapy
A trigger point may be an area of your body where you feel a muscle ‘knot’. This technique is not relaxing but can be very effective. Applying specific and direct pressure on the trigger point with a thumb or tool to relieve pain. Doing this can cause pain somewhere else which is called referred pain. A trigger point in your trapezius muscle, when pressed, can cause pain in the neck and into your head. This can cause tension headaches if left untreated.
Soft Tissue Release
By adding manual pressure to the muscle, ligament or tendon will temporally shorten the muscle before stretching it out, actively or passively to shift the muscle fibres and increase flexibility and release tension.
This is great for increasing the length of a muscle which has become short due to the lack of movement through a joint. For example, protraction of the shoulders can be caused by the chest muscles being short and allowing the scapula to forward. Applying pressure to the pectoralis major pinning it in position and stretching your arm above your head creates a stretch through the chest and lengthening the muscle.
Muscle Energy Technique
MET is a method of stretching or isometric contractions to help the muscle relax and lengthen. The muscle is taken to just pain or to the point of resistance. A submaximal contraction is applied to the muscle for a short period of time before the client is asked to relax and then a gentle stretch to increase the length of the targeted muscle.
Whether you are having trouble with your back or your shoulders or recovering from an injury, soft tissue therapy can have a huge positive effect on your mind and body! Taking some time, a week, even just an hour for yourself can do wonders!
Sports massage may sound brutal, but I believe sports massage or soft tissue therapy should not cause too much pain. There may be some sensitive areas during techniques such as trigger point therapy but a mixture of these techniques above and relaxing massage strokes can reap maximum benefit from your treatment.