Most people view massage as an injury prevention tool. Sometimes it is also a useful modality in treating an injury. But does sports massage improve performance?
The simple answer is yes, it does improve performance. So, the real question becomes HOW does sports massage improve performance?
How does Sports Massage Improve Performance?
Sports massage can enhance recovery from intense training sessions. It primarily achieves his by increasing blood flow and circulation during the recovery period. There are other ways in which this can be achieved. Hot and cold contrast therapy is a good alternative. Very light exercise is another means of achieving this. However, there is no doubting the effectiveness of sports massage for this purpose. The additional benefit of massage, over and above the other methods, is that it can arguably be applied in a more targeted manner. We can focus on specific tissues, and focus on increasing blood flow to those particular areas.
The use of massage to improve recovery from hard sessions can be an important piece in the puzzle of performance improvement. Enhanced recovery results in an acute performance improvement, whereby there is an increased readiness to perform by the time of the next hard session. When these acute improvements to performance are stacked on top of each-other, they also lead to long term increases in performance. So yes, sports massage can absolutely increase performance.
Sports Massage can elicit changes in Muscle Tone
Muscle Tone is the continuous and passive partial contraction of the muscle, or the muscle’s resistance to passive stretch during a resting state. We can use Sports Massage to manipulate muscle tone. In fact, we can elicit very quick changes in muscle tone, through massage treatment, in order to augment sporting performance.
A certain amount of muscle tone is good for sporting performance. However, if muscle tone becomes too high, it will impair sporting performance. Intense sporting activity, such as sprinting, can acutely increase muscle tone. The famous sprint coach Charlie Francis was vocal about his use of massage therapy to manipulate muscle tone in world class sprinters.
Specifically, he found that four rounds of the 100m in a major championship was enough to increase muscle tone too much for the final. Massage could be used to reduce muscle tone, and maximise performance in the final. However, massage treatment in between the semi-final and the final would decrease muscle tone too much for the final. Instead he would use massage in between the quarter-final and the semi-final. This would bring muscle down down too much initially. But the semi-final performance would then increase muscle tone to just the right level in order to optimise performance in the final.
The work of Charlie Francis is a very specific example. He had clearly fine tuned this process for a very particular circumstance. But this does not take away from the fact that sports massage can be used to manipulate muscle tone, in order to improve performance.
Does Sports Massage Improve Performance?
Sports Massage is a useful injury prevention tool. Sports Massage can also be used to treat certain injuries. However, it is also an important performance enhancement tool. Sports Massage can be used to enhance recovery. Superior recovery from training, in the long run, will improve performance. Sports Massage can also be used to manipulate muscle tone. However, a long term working relationship is needed between the therapist and the athlete to do this successfully.
Sports Massage at Foxwood Personal Training
Sports Massage is available at Foxwood Personal Training, York. You can find out more about our Sports Massage service, by clicking on the following link:
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