Sports Massage

Whether you are an elite athlete or a weekend warrior, strenuous physical activity can result in soreness, cramping, spasm or bruising. Repetitive use, overuse, trauma, or unusual movement cause muscular pain, reduced range of motion and inflammation.

Amy has worked with athletes for most of her career. She knows first-hand the benefits of Sports Massage Therapy  Click here for an appointment with Amy or Christine.

Sports Massage therapy is similar to Swedish massage but it’s geared towards athletes to help prevent injuries and soreness. Sports massage brings circulation to the muscle or area of discomfort, supports cellular repair, helps decrease spasms, relieves menstrual cramps, and soothes bruising. Sports massage can be incorporated into a training regimen by weekly massages or used two days before or even post-event.

Massage cuts down on recovery time by 50% by activating molecules that reduce inflammation and promoting mitochondrial growth.  (Click here for full study).Another study, involving both men and women performing similar arm exercises, resting, and then having one arm receive massage and no treatment for the other showed that the treated arm had reduced swelling of 30%. The correlation between reduced swelling and sport massage was nearly 100% and statistically significant.

Sports massage is often deployed in a rehabilitative role – and can be incorporated to work alongside athletic trainers and physical therapists.

Stroking, kneading, tapping, and rubbing sore sites provide relief and may also help reduce pain signals going to the brain. The “gate control theory of pain” postulates that non-painful input closes the “gates” to painful input effectively blunting pain sensation from traveling to the central nervous system.

It is often helpful to understand why a thing works. But ultimately, experientially, intuitively and now clinically, there’s strong support demonstrating that sports massage reduces pain, lowers inflammation and hastens recovery time. As a result, our customers greatly value this important element of our practice.