Are sports massages painful? There is a perception that a sports massage is a painful experience. Let’s examine if this is true.
First off, why is there a widely held perception that sports massages are painful? You will often hear athletes state that if it is not painful then it is not going to be doing anything. It is easy to understand this line of thinking. An effective sports massage should usually act as a stressor to the body. If it is not providing an element of stress, then it will not be challenging the body to make any changes. In this sense, we can think of massage in the same way we think of training sessions. A training session needs to be sufficiently challenging in order provide a stimulus for adaptation.
What Should a Sports Massage Do?
We have established a sports massage needs to act as a stressor in order to effect changes on the body. We now need to clarify exactly what changes we are looking for from a sports massage. A sports massage is able to achieve the following:
- Stretch the muscle fibres being worked upon – thereby improving muscle length and flexibility
- Improve the pliability of muscle tissue – thereby improving tissue quality
- Increase blood flow and circulation – thereby promoting improved recovery from training sessions.
Are Sports Massages Painful?
In order to provide sufficient pressure to stretch the muscle fibres being worked upon, the massage client should expect an element of pain. It does not need to be excruciating pain. But, it should certainly be rather uncomfortable. In order to work on tissue pliability, again, there probably needs to be some discomfort. For the purpose of increasing blood flow and circulation, pain and discomfort is probably not necessary.
York Sports Massage
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Tim Egerton, Foxwood Personal Training, York