Sports Massage

What is Sports Massage?

Sports massage focuses on the soft tissue manipulation for athletes. Its goals are to reduce the inflammation and soreness that comes from rigorous exercise and training. When you’re training for a specific event or type of game, you run the risk of repetitive motion injuries or dysfunction.

For example: if you’re a runner, you will have tight calves and quads and hamstrings as well as glutes. The obvious muscles. But you will also likely have tension in your lower back, since that’s what you’re mainly using for balance and stability.

Furthermore, common injuries for runners can include runner’s knee, which is a knee cap tendon inflammation (extremely oversimplified), shin splints, plantar fasciitis, or ankle sprains. While we can’t keep you from spraining your ankle, therapeutic massage can and does help alleviate tension and inflammation in shin splints or runner’s knee, and it can help with plantar fasciitis.

Knowing this, professional massage therapists can address these potential issues either through prevention by keeping your muscles and tendons looser, or rehabilitating an existing injury or issue.

How does Sports Massage differ from other modalities?

Sports Massage differs from other types of massage by focusing on the specific muscles used for training in that specific sport or activity. If you’re a pitcher for a baseball team, we aren’t going to massage you the same way we would treat a kicker for a football team.

We also focus on invigorating the muscles rather than just relaxing them. We don’t want to relax them too much, because we want you to keep those muscles more toned. Tonifying, invigorating, and relaxing, while working out any knots we find is the overall goal.

Depending upon what is going on in the muscles, we will use techniques from Deep Tissue Massage, Trigger Point Therapy, Neuromuscular Therapy, Acupressure, stretching, joint mobilization, or whatever else we think will help you be the best athlete you can be.

Can I get a Sports Massage when I’m not a professional athlete?

Absolutely! Sports Massage is not exclusively for professional athletes. It’s not even for amateur athletes. It’s really for anyone who suffers any sort of discomfort from living a more active lifestyle and want to prevent injury as much as possible.

If you don’t live a more active lifestyle, one of other types of massage will likely be more suited for your needs, but we also might want to use some Sports Massage techniques for your needs. Talking with your Licensed Massage Therapist about your lifestyle and issues will help you and your Massage Therapist determine what techniques are going to be best suited for you.

Call or text (970) 286-0033 to book your next session or go online.

For current pricing, check out our blog post.