What does Sports Massage do? Benefits, results & associated treatments

Does Sports Massage actually hurt? What are the benefits?

Sports massage is designed to break down scar tissue (adhesions) in affected soft tissue (eg muscle, ligament, tendons). When the scar tissue is broken down this improves the flow of blood and lymph fluid, which therefore lets the injured muscle to stretch and for flexibility to be enhanced.

Sports massage is most beneficial in realigning soft tissue fibres: injury tends to lead to lengthened and/or stiff fibres. By breaking them down, this allows the new fibres being produced to be at a optimal length, ie a natural length!

Having the muscles fibres treated will not only lengthen them but will give you more range of movement within that area.

There is some suggestions out there that sports massage is really painful, causes bruising and isn’t pleasant. But in reality, this really isn’t the case. In order to create this lengthening of the muscle fibres, yes, there may need to be a bit of pressure placed upon the muscles in order for this to happen, but its all about the techniques you use and the way it is performed. Using a slow tempo is the best way of performing sports massage with the most minimal pain as this makes the client feel at ease and there isn’t a sudden, sharp movement upon the muscle itself.

Within the breaking down of scar tissue, the pressure that is applied causes pain to be reduced and any inflammation to to usually decrease.

At least 75% of all the clients that I have seen since in the past, have heard some sort of story about sports massage being very painful or they know someone who has had a bad experience with sports massage. So educating people on the way that sports massage should be performed to improve either flexibility soreness pain or any injuries in a way which gives the least pain as possible, with a slow and deep tempo, more and more people will be choosing sports massage over anything else in order to get back to winning ways.