Benefits of Massage

• Massage reduces the aches and pains that are common to all types of athletic performance.
• Massage increases blood and lymphatic circulation in the muscles and joints allowing for faster recovery from work outs and injuries.
• Massage promotes and maintains proper muscle balance and function which increases performance and reduces the chances of injury.

Training/Maintenance - Massage incorporated into your training program can dramatically improve your athletic performance. Massage to an athlete is the same as maintenance to a race car. We all know that you don’t just put fuel in a race car and expect it to perform well. You have to change the oil, balance the tires, rebuild the transmisson etc. Our bodies are the same.

Massage 1-2 times per month provides that kind of care and maintenance for the athlete's body. This is where you make the small adjustments that have a cumulative benefit. Old chronic issues can be worked on while you also address current concerns that are common to your specific sport.

Pre-event massage -Massage before an event can be an integral component of the pre-event preparation for many athletes. Pre-event massage creates a state of readiness in the muscles and tissues so that the athlete’s performance can be optimized.  A pre-event massage is one given just before the time an athlete is scheduled to compete (ideally 15-45 minutes before the event). 

A question that is often posed is should the pre-event massage happen before or after the athlete warms up. To answer this one needs to understand the physiological effects of a warm-up: to increase heart rate, body temperature and respiratory rate; and to prepare the body’s nervous system. Hence a pre-event massage done after the warm-up would defeat it’s purpose and you would not want the athlete’s heart rate, body temperature and respiratory rate to drop during the massage.

In general a pre-event massage should assist in increasing the circulation of blood to the muscles to allow the muscles to be flushed and oxygenated. Tight muscles may be relaxed so that joints can be moved through their full range of motion. Emphasis should be placed on the muscles used during the activity to improve performance and also reduce the chance of injuries. The athlete can use the time to focus on their event, to relax or complete their mental preparation. At the end of the massage, the athlete should feel great!

Post-event Massage -The purpose of a massage after a major event is to aid the athletes  recovery from the activity. This is achieved by reducing post-exercise soreness, re-establishing full range of motion and enhancing blood flow to tight muscles. The length of recovery time from strenuous competition can be dramatically reduced with a good post-event massage. Studies have found that correctly applied massage in the first two hours after activity can be critical for reducing the effect of delayed onset muscle soreness.

The primary goal of post-event massage is very similar to that of pre-event massage, namely the promotion of circulation and to lengthen tight muscles. However, the difference is that the muscles are now in a state of congestion and fatigue following maximum effort and performance.  The objective is to increase the athlete's rate of recovery by decreasing soreness and fatigue, speeding up the removal of metabolic by-products and relieving the increased or imbalanced tone of the muscles.

An often overlooked and rarely mentioned benefit of post-event massage is the ability to reconnect the mind with the body. During competition there is the tendency to detach the mind from the body. This allows you to ignore pain and fatigue and to check out mentally and give your body the opportunity to freely function how it has been trained to. Following the event it is important to re-establish the mind body connection so that the mind is made aware of where the body needs attention for the healing process to begin. The tactile stimulation of massage makes that connection happen faster and more efficiently.