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What Is Sports Massage?
Sports massage is a form of massage that utilizes specific strokes to help athletes obtain maximum performance and physical conditioning by increasing power, endurance, and mobility—both before and after an event or exercise.

Who Can Benefit?
Sports massage is particularly beneficial when an athlete is in training for an event. It’s also helpful for anyone who routinely stretches physical limits through movement. Swimmers, weight lifters, runners, golfers, ball players, skaters, dancers, tennis players, musicians, and gardeners, s well as weekend warriors and those who practice strength training or aerobics, have benefited from sports massage.

When Should I Have Sports Massage
Sports massage should be a regular part of every athlete’s training program. Athletes have different massage needs at different times. There are three basic categories:

PRE-EVENT or PRE-WORKOUT:  A quick treatment is a supplement to warm-up. It boosts circulation and increases flexibility and range of motion, thereby reducing muscle pain and soreness, leaving muscles relaxed and ready for action. Pre-event massage can help prevent muscle and tendon injuries and reduce the strain and discomfort of training.
POST-EVENT or POST-WORKOUT:  Recovery after a competition involves not only the normalization and repair of tissue, but also general relaxation and mental calming. Post-event sports massage increases circulation to quicken the removal of tigue toxins, relieve muscle spasms, and prevent soreness. It is used to assist athletes in recovery and in regaining their pre-event condition by relaxing tight, fatigued muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
TRAINING:  Throughout training and rigorous regular athletic activity, massage helps prevent injuries. Areas of muscular stress can result from repetitive or stressful motion and are typically precursors to injury. Sports massage assists in relieving muscular stress and preventing injuries, enabling harder and more consistent training. Adequate recovery is also a major factor in avoiding nagging minor injuries that inhibit maximum performance.

What Causes Sports Injuries
Injuries are commonly experienced when an individual has overtrained, fails to sufficiently warm up, receives trauma, or has muscular imbalances, poor flexibility, mineral deficiencies, inadequate endurance, or simply does too much too soon. Insufficient muscle strength and poor muscle tone may also lead to injury or a muscle tear.

Massage Can Help
Sports massage can speed healing, increase range of motion and reduce swelling, pain and adhesions. And massage will help your whole body, even areas stressed by compensating for an injury. Also, if you are coming back to your sport after time away, massage will help you ease back in. Sports massage is more than just a reward. It is a vital tool for keeping athletes primed for top performance. Recognized as an important part of a regular maintenance program, sports massage is widely used by individuals, teams, and Olympic and professional athletes.