How Sports Massage Improves Your Training and Recovery
You’re taking your training seriously—you’re sticking to the program, eating right, and getting adequate sleep. But what if we told you that you’re leaving gains on the table?
Incorporating sports massage into your training routine can be a great way to speed up your recovery time, increase your range of motion, and even prevent future injury. When used regularly, it can drastically benefit your programming, helping you reach your strength goals faster. Here’s how:
Enhanced Circulation and Faster Recovery
If we haven’t drilled it into your head by now, let’s say it again: rest and recovery are just as important as training. Lifting weights creates micro-tears throughout your muscles, and as those tears heal, your body adapts and grows stronger. Without adequate rest, you’re left with nothing but soreness and an inevitable plateau in your strength training.
Sports massage is a great way to speed up muscle recovery. Massage stimulates blood flow and circulation, carrying oxygen and nutrients to the muscles while flushing out waste products like lactic acid. This aids in reducing inflammation and soreness, facilitating the body’s natural healing processes and accelerating tissue repair so that you can get back to the weight room stronger and as quickly as possible.
Increased Flexibility and Reduced Muscle Tension
Strength training puts a serious load on your body. Over time, this load leads to muscle tightness, knots, and limited range of motion. Massage relieves tightness and increases your flexibility, helping you hit those ass-to-grass squats with ease.
Sports massage also helps break down scar tissue and adhesions, further boosting muscle elasticity and mobility, enabling athletes to reach their full training potential.
Injury Prevention and Rehab
By identifying muscular imbalances, a skilled massage therapist can address potential issues before they develop into more severe injuries. Using targeted techniques, sports massage helps correct these imbalances, promoting optimal alignment and posture. Furthermore, by reducing muscle tension and improving flexibility, massage can prevent overuse injuries caused by repetitive movements in your lifting routine. In the case of existing injuries, it helps speed up rehabilitation by accelerating healing while helping you regain strength and range of motion, ensuring a safe return to weightlifting.
Relaxation and Mental Health
We’re including this section because, let’s be honest, there’s nothing quite like walking into a massage appointment feeling stiff as a rock and leaving just an hour later loose and ready to recover. It just makes you feel good. And it’s not all in your head—the science shows that getting a massage actually increases oxytocin (aka the “love hormone”) in your brain while actively decreasing adrenocorticotropin (aka the “stress hormone” that triggers your adrenal glands to release cortisol). Long story short, massage isn’t just good for your body—it’s good for your brain.
The best news? Boston Barbell offers in-house massage sessions to aid your recovery and help reduce your stress and musculoskeletal pain. Our licensed massage therapist uses a combination of different modalities to help you reach your fitness goals, faster.
Interested in learning more about weightlifting, programming, and the science of strength training? Check out all of our articles here.
