Sports Massage
Whether you're a professional athlete or the star of your home gym, Bodymedics is here to keep you performing at your best.
The primary goal of sports massage is to enhance athletic performance, speed up recovery from intense training, prevent sports injuries, and aid in the rehabilitation of common sports injuries.
Sports massage aims to eliminate dysfunctions that can diminish performance, increase fluid exchange (blood and lymph flow) in muscle tissues, and restore normal muscle resting length to short muscle groups. It is also intended to stimulate, tone, and strengthen weak or inhibited muscle groups and restore proper posture and function throughout the body.
Why sports massage?
Athletes usually request this technique to ease the soreness or pain from tight muscle groups that result from training. They also use sports massage to enhance performance and eliminate common sports injuries.
Although NMT addresses the deeper tissues of the body, the usage of the term ‘deep tissue massage’ would be inappropriate as both the superficial and intermediate muscular layers must also be assessed in order to determine the precise location of pain. Sufficient preparatory work should be undertaken before deeper layers of muscle are treated. Neuromuscular Therapy has diverse practice settings, while the main focus lies in the medically orientated spectrum of massage techniques.
Sports massage allows muscles to function at their optimal level. In pre-event massage, blood flow is increased to areas that will be needed in the athlete’s performance, range of motion and ease of movement are enhanced, and biomechanics are addressed.
In post-event massage, recovery is enhanced by relaxing tight muscle groups from overuse and flushing the tissues. In maintenance massage, muscle imbalances and tissue restrictions are addressed to prevent common sports injuries. In rehabilitation therapy, advanced clinical techniques are use to address common musculoskeletal injuries.
The goal is to bring all opposing muscle groups back to normal resting lengths to optimize performance and prevent injuries. Advanced skills in disciplines such as myofascial release, neuromuscular therapy, structural integration, orthopedic massage, myoskeletal alignment, and posturology, can easily be integrated by the elite sports massage therapist and are also techniques that would serve the athlete well.
