The Benefits of a Sports Massage for Athletes

As a Personal Trainer and competitive athlete in 2 sports, Martial Arts and Obstacle Racing, my life is all about movement, fitness, performance and pushing my boundaries.

When you strive to be the best your body has to collaborate and be on the same wave length with your dreams. However, because of the world we have created for ourselves such as the chairs we sit on, the shoes we wear, the desk we work at, our bodies suffer and lose the capacity to go beyond their limits. And if we do attempt to push them, we break them, sometimes literally. Then it's GAME OVER.

There are, however, ways we can aid our bodies to be and stay strong, comfortable and ready to push the boundaries of human potential.

I've been training and competing  since the age of 8 (now I'm 28), and before last year I never had a massage (do my mother massages count?). Last year I finally understood why in the past 5 years my performance slowly went down, I kept getting injured more often and last for longer, my body was becoming difficult to manage at a high level of performance.

Based on my experience training hard and pushing boundaries can only be achieved if all elements of your body flawlessly connect and work together as a whole. 

    How Massage Helps Athletes

These are some of the benefits of sports massage therapy I experienced:

1. Better and more fluid movement

In almost any sport how fluid your body moves is critical. If it's stiff and tight then movement will be slow, difficult, painful and unnatural. Performance will be low.

Sports massage gives the body more freedom of movement with less risk of injuries. Sounds good right? It improves balance, flexibility, mobility, speed and strength all by releasing those tensions placed on your body every day and every training session. This is freedom of movement.

Read more about the benefit of sports massage therapy