Potential Benefits of Sports Massage Therapy

A variation on traditional massage therapy, sports massage is a sports medicine technique. A sports massage therapist or physical therapist applies more pressure to the muscle areas affected by a specific sport and increases the overall intensity.

Sports massage is similar to deep tissue massage, therapeutic massage, Swedish massage, or other types of massage that target specific trigger points. But with sports bodywork, there are goals related to an athlete’s specific situation. Sports massage therapy aims to reduce the chance of injury, encourage the healing of existing sports injuries, and increase athletic performance. It can be a part of a training program for an everyday athlete, such as one who performs a physical activity recreationally, or for a serious athlete, such as one training for the Olympics.

People use sports massage with a number of outcomes as their goals, which can include but are not limited to:

• Better range of motion: Sports massage works your muscle groups, loosening your muscle fibers to potentially improve your flexibility and increase your range of motion.
• Improved circulation: Sports massage techniques can temporarily increase blood flow throughout and around the connective tissues of your muscles, leading to overall better blood circulation in your body.
• Less muscle soreness: Reports show that sports massage can decrease muscle tension and reduce the effects of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). The result of a buildup of lactic acid in your muscle tissues, soreness such as DOMS becomes apparent a day or two after you work out, rather than immediately after exercise.

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