An Introduction to Sports Massage

As participation in sport becomes more popular, at all levels from recreational to professional, greater physical demands are placed on the body. As performances improve and athletes push themselves to ever-increasing limits, physically, mentally and emotionally, sports massage has become a way of optimising performance, decreasing injury potential and supporting soft tissue healing.

Sports massage can be used to maintain healthy muscles and connective tissues, improve the range of motion in the joints, stimulate mental calmness, alertness and concentration, all of which contribute to an athletes' well being.

Massage can facilitate the healing of soft tissue and identify areas of tissue dysfunction that can cause potential future injury.

The purpose of massage is to help restore normal function back into damaged tissues, following injury or trauma.

Having said all that, the term athlete does not only apply to those who take part in sports professionally. If you do distance running, or play for a local football team, or netball team, in fact any sport, you will all encounter problems with muscle fatigue and injury at some point. To that end, you are all athletes and sports massage can help all of you.