What is it?
Sports massage is a method of massage for athletic performance where we may employ a variety of techniques.
Sports massage is not one particular technique, but rather an approach to treatment that supports the body in recovery or fine-tunes it for performance. Let us know the sport in which you are most active ahead of treatment or at the time of booking.
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If you are navigating an injury that’s affecting your performance, please let us know ahead of time. Treatments provided pre-event may be more rigorous in nature so as to help increase circulation and vitality, and treatments provided post-event will have a restoration and recovery focus.
Availability: Dartmouth Location
Benefits
Reduces muscle soreness and tension
Helps with post-event soreness
Reduces scar tissue that may be impeding comfort during activity
Improves performance
Facilitates healing of repetitive strain injuries
Treatment of the following:
Iliotibial Band (ITB) friction syndrome (“runner’s knee”)
Plantar facitis
Medial epicondylitis (“golfer’s elbow”)
Lateral epicondylitis (“tennis elbow”)
Rotator cuff tears
Chronic compartment syndrome
Medial tibial stress syndrome (“shin splints”)
Muscle strains
Ligament sprains
History of Sports
Massage
According to Calvert’s ‘History of Massage’, during the time of the first Olympic games (776 B.C.E.), massage frictions were used on participating athletes. Later, in the Western tradition of massage, Peter Henry Ling was instrumental in promoting health via “medical gymnastics”, a type of movement therapy, in combination with the precursor to modern massage therapy.
By 1906, an Australian named H. Joseph Fay had literally written the book on sports massage with the publication of his “Scientific Massage for Athletes”. Fay believed that sports massage was beneficial for strengthening joints, improving digestion, and producing muscle growth, which he noted through anecdotal observation during his career as a sports “rubber”, which was the common term of the day.
In the 1970s and 1980s, North America began to lead innovation in the realm of sports massage, with the refinement of deep friction massage, the integration of orthopaedic assessment into sports massage, and the creation of a deeper understanding of how sports massage can aid athletes in honing their performance.
Do I need to be an athlete to receive sports massage?
If you have repetitive strain injuries from work or other activities of daily living, sports massage may still be the best option for you.
Since sports massage is a toolbox of techniques rather than one strict style of massage, we will often incorporate these methods within a stress-relief or therapeutic treatment in order to expedite the healing process.