Athletes constantly push their bodies to the limit, striving for peak performance. However, the physical demands can lead to muscle tension, fatigue, and injuries. Integrating massage therapy into a regular training and recovery routine can be a game-changer. Sports massage therapy is a specialized form of therapeutic bodywork designed to address the unique needs of athletes and physically active individuals. These techniques can be applied before, during, or after athletic events to prepare muscles for activity, maintain performance, or aid in recovery.
Types of Massage and Their Techniques
Several massage techniques can benefit athletes, each with unique approaches and benefits:
- Deep Tissue Massage: Targets deep muscle layers to relieve chronic tension and pain. With a deep tissue massage, the massage therapist goes much further beneath the surface to reach the deeper muscles and connective tissue layers. Athletes turn to deep tissue work when muscle tightness becomes more than just an occasional ache. Deep tissue massage techniques focus on slow and firm movements. Therapists use elbows, knuckles, and forearms to apply deep pressure, often following the grain of muscle fibers. Some of its main benefits include breaking down scar tissue, improving posture, and gradually realigning muscles to move freely again. This specific sports massage is ideal for weightlifters, swimmers, wrestlers, and endurance athletes.
- Sports Massage: Uses stretching and compression to prep muscles before events and reduce soreness after. Sports massage works by increasing blood flow through tight muscles, which helps deliver oxygen and nutrients to tissues. Expert massage therapists accomplish this feat by incorporating various movements to areas in need of a little extra TLC. A sports massage also reduces muscle tension and soreness, including delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
- Trigger Point Therapy: Focuses on tight spots that cause pain elsewhere. Trigger point massage is to find the source of the pain and release it. When therapists give such a massage, they apply direct and focused pressure-usually through their fingers, knuckles, or even elbows-until the trigger points or knots are released. There are instances when this type of massage is combined with gentle stretching. Among its many benefits, arguably, the most important one is that trigger point therapy relieves muscle pain and tension. Among the athletes that benefit most from this therapy are tennis players, golfers, swimmers, and cyclists.
- Myofascial Release: Loosens up connective tissue for better flexibility and pain relief. Myofascial release therapy focuses on the fascia-the connective tissue that wraps around muscles. Athletes often don’t realize that tight fascia can restrict movement just as much as tight muscles. This therapy uses slow, sustained pressure that, at times, is held for several minutes until the fascia can stretch and soften. Greater flexibility, less chronic pain, and smoother movement patterns are some of the key benefits. Myofascial release therapy is particularly suitable for endurance athletes like marathon runners and cyclists as they are the ones who most deal with repetitive motion stress.
- Swedish Massage: Helps relax muscles and reduce stress, perfect for pre- or post-competition. Clients receiving Swedish massage (effleurage and petrissage) experienced the greatest reduction in blood pressure.
- Active Release Technique (ART): Breaks up scar tissue and improves mobility. Active Release Therapy, often abbreviated to ART, is a bit of a hybrid. This type is hands-on, similar to deep tissue, but in addition to that, it also involves movement. The purpose of ART is to identify and treat soft tissue injuries or conditions that affect muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia. What sets this type of sports massage therapy apart is that the therapist applies precise manual manipulation and guides the athlete through specific movement patterns. While the therapist uses their hands to apply deep pressure to the affected soft tissue, the athlete actively moves the body part in specific directions. Active release therapy offers a range of benefits for athletes. It can help enhance performance as well as recovery, if needed, through alleviating muscle and joint pain. ART is especially helpful for athletes who engage in repetitive movements or high-intensity sports.
- Compression Massage: Stimulates blood flow for enhanced circulation and recovery. This massage helps athletes flush out waste as well as reduce swelling after intense training. The primary techniques for this type of massage include light, circular strokes and soft pumping movements. This is another sports massage therapy type that mainly suits endurance athletes.
Pre-Event Massage
Purpose and Techniques
A pre-event massage is a type of sports massage and should be utilized 3 to 5 days prior to the big event and should last no longer than one hour. If a massage therapist is available at the event, consider pre-event massages to be a part of the athlete’s warmup routine. This type of bodywork includes quick, superficial strokes (effleurage), kneading (petrissage), resistance stretching, and joint mobilizations. The main goal of this massage is quite simple: warm up the muscles and get the blood flowing. This type of sports massage is favored by athletes who seek a way to feel energized and alert. This type of massage uses fast-paced strokes, stretching, and rhythmic compression.
Benefits
- Improved Circulation and Muscle Flexibility: The benefits of a pre-event sports massage include improvements in circulation and muscle flexibility, which in turn help reduce the risk of injury. A major benefit is vasodilation! Massage therapists manually encourage venous blood flow back to the heart, which then delivers oxygen and nutrients to soft tissue.
- Muscle Activation and Readiness: This massage is ideal for all those athletes who need quick muscle activation and readiness before an intense performance.
- Mental Preparation: Familiar with that anxious, excited, or un-focused energy that comes right before your event? A short massage can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system just enough to promote relaxation without you feeling like you need a four hour nap. It's a quiet time for athletes to tame the flow of emotion. When an athlete is on the table-either before or mid-event-they often use that time to get their mental focus ready and visualize their competition.
Considerations
- Avoid Deep Tissue Work: It is not meant to make any major physiological changes to the body. We don’t want to focus on finding new issues or fixing old ones in this instance. That means no deep tissue work.
- Athlete's Preference: Ask the athlete how loose they want their muscles to be. While pre- and mid-event sports massage aim to loosen muscles, some athletes prefer performing with a little tightness.
- Communication: For that reason, follow an athlete’s lead in terms of chitchat. And if an athlete gives you the “silent treatment,” don’t take it personally. It’s how they prepare for an event.
Post-Event Massage
Purpose and Techniques
While the pre-event massage is like a wake-up call for athletes before an event, then the post-one is the much-needed cooldown that follows it. A post-event massage follows the same general-principle of 3 to 5 days after the big event and should adhere to an hour-long timeframe. If a massage therapist is available at the event, consider post-event massages to be a part of the athlete’s cool down routine. This type of bodywork is also a bit lighter, and superficial albeit slightly deeper and slower. The focus shifts from that previous state of activation to one of relaxation. Post-event techniques are much slower, steady, and, most importantly, soothing than the ones of the pre-event massage.
Benefits
- Recovery: The primary advantage of this massage is recovery. As its name suggests, post-event massages are great for all athletes who have just completed some sort of event, game, or competition.
- Reducing Soreness and Stiffness: The massage achieves this through various small benefits like reducing cramps and soreness, speeding up muscle repair, and helping prevent next-day stiffness.
- Improved Circulation: In much the same way pre-event massage promotes circulation, post-event also assists in the body’s ability to bounce back quickly by increasing venous return to the heart. This is done by the means of the aforementioned techniques.
General Benefits of Sports Massage
Sports massage offers significant physical benefits for athletes, particularly in muscle recovery.
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- Reduced DOMS: One of the key advantages is the decrease in DOMS, which often plagues athletes after intense workouts or competitions.
- Faster Healing: Receiving a therapeutic sports massage promotes faster healing.
- Improved Flexibility and Range of Motion: Regular sports massage plays a crucial role in improving an athlete’s flexibility and range of motion. This increased pliability of muscles and connective tissues translates to better overall flexibility, allowing athletes to move more freely and efficiently in their chosen sport. Enhanced range of motion not only improves performance but also contributes to more effective training sessions.
- Injury Prevention: One of the most valuable aspects of sports massage is its role in injury prevention. By working on these problem areas, sports massage helps to restore balance to the musculoskeletal system, reducing the risk of overuse injuries that often plague athletes.
- Enhanced Circulation: Sports massage significantly enhances circulation throughout the body, which is crucial for athletic performance and recovery. This improved circulation not only aids in faster recovery but also helps to warm up muscles more effectively before exercise.
- Performance Enhancement: The cumulative effects of regular sports massage contribute significantly to overall performance enhancement for athletes. One of the key benefits is reduced fatigue, as massage helps in quicker recovery between training sessions. Moreover, the stress-reducing effects of massage can contribute to better mental focus and preparation for competitions. Therefore, maintaining a regular massage schedule plays a vital role in enhancing athletic longevity.
Frequency and Integration
If you're an athlete or active individual, aim for at least one massage per week, based on your training intensity and recovery needs. Athletes with demanding training routines, for example, or those recovering from injuries may find it helpful to get a massage at least once or twice a week. If you’re preparing for a marathon or a big game, you may want to increase your frequency to one to three sessions per week, depending on the intensity of your training. However, in all cases, it’s best to listen to your body. Integrating massage therapy into your regular training and recovery routine is a game-changer.
Important Considerations for Massage Therapists
- Work Without Lotions or Oils: Be prepared to work without lotions or oils. Athletes don’t want anything slippery or scented on them when competing. Plus, these massages are often done over clothing-like sweat suits or tights.
- Avoid Offering Beverages or Snacks: Never offer an athlete a beverage or snack unless authorized to do so. For safety reasons, elite athletes are often restricted from accepting anything ingestible from someone they don’t know.
- Know When to Call the Doctor: If an athlete experiences anything new on the field, court, track or rink-from an unfamiliar tightness to serious pain-call the doctor.
- Choose Your Words Carefully: You want to stay cool, calm and collected. Such a dramatic statement could throw off the athlete’s competitive mindset. So instead, say nothing at all to the athlete about finding an adhesion or tight area, and make a note to myself to address it after the competition.
- Master Anatomy: There’s barely time to think on game day. You have to get right to work. If you’re doing pre- or mid-golf tournament sports massages, you have to know which muscles golfers use and how they use them before you even start the day.
- Underage Athletes: If you are going to work with underage athletes, make sure their coach or parent is present.
Research and Evidence
While pre- and mid-event sports massage is commonly supported among athletes, trainers, physical therapists and, of course, sports massage therapists, research demonstrating its efficacy is scarce. A systematic review was undertaken by one author (KM) with seven electronic databases (CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, Ichushi, MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus and Web of Science) to find relevant studies. A search in Google Scholar was also undertaken to strengthen the comprehensiveness of the search strategy.
The systematic search found nine crossover RCTs examining the effects of various types of massage techniques with varied dosages. Following the descriptive analysis using within‐group effect sizes of interventions used in included studies, no evidence was found to support the positive effects of any kinds of massage interventions to enhance maximal strength, vertical jump, sprint, agility and balance performance of young healthy participants. In fact, there appears to be limited evidence which indicates the negative effects of passive manual massage.
The findings of this review indicate that longer duration (>9 minutes) passive manual massage techniques should not be used for the purposes of immediately enhancing young athletes’ lower‐limb maximal strength, vertical jump or sprint performance. A great variability in the dosage of massage techniques has been identified.
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