Sports Massage Therapy
Is your sport or activity leaving you with muscle soreness?
If you’ve got sore muscles, joint stiffness, or body aches – it’s very tempting to think that it’s nothing, that it will go away on its own. Or, you pass it off as having just “overworked it”, or that it’s just a “muscular fatigue” or a bit of joint stiffness that “everyone” your age suffers from?
You can probably remember a time not that long ago when you used to bounce right back from a hard training session, tournament, or competition.
There’s no obvious reason why your recovery is slower and taking longer “than usual”, but you just can’t seem to recover quite as fast as before.
This could also be slowing down how hard your inner champion really want to push yourself, with fear of prolonged recovery and possible risk of injuries.
If that’s happening to you, you’re not alone. We hear this type of thing all the time! In fact, slower recovery times and overuse injuries are some of the most common problems that we see at our Sports Massage clinic in Fairfax, VA. And when it comes to living with muscle soreness and overuse injuries, everyone we see wants to know:
"Why is this happening to me? "
"Why am I still suffering with slower recovery times and stiff joints?"
Most people assume that when they get muscle soreness and overuse injuries, they’ll just going to go away on its own.
That they’ll wake up one morning and like “magic”, it’ll be as if you never played in that last game or went all out in your competition…But then a few days later becomes a week or more you’re still living with stiff joints and soreness in your muscles you just don’t realize you’ve been living with this pain.
Does that sound like you?
Sports Massage could be your missing link in the chain for athletic sustainability & preventing injuries!
If you’re currently living with muscle soreness and joint stiffness, here’s 4 reasons why it could de lasting longer than it should:
1. You thought the pain and soreness would go away on it’s own, but it didn’t.
You went to your gym trying to get your body to move like before – but then noticed you just could not push yourself like you normally can and fear if you do push hard you could only end up hurting yourself more
2. A family member or friend told you that everybody gets muscle soreness and stiff joints when they get older, so you just accepted it.
You tried doing old school static stretches and ice but nothing seemed to help
3. You tried Youtube exercises but they either didn’t do a thing or made your move even worse.
You thought it would be a good idea to just rest and not move because your soreness and stiff joints were so bad, but all that did was make it feel even more stiff and tight
4. You decided to adjust how hard you want to really push yourself due to fear of not moving as you did.
But all that did was make you feel frustrated and thought maybe you should just quick altogether.
Do you feel that way too?
If you’re currently living with muscle soreness and joint stiffness, here’s 4 Reasons why it could be lasting longer than it should:
1. First off, you need to make a decision about becoming proactive with your recovery.
You’ve tried the sit and wait thing, only to find out you were just missing out on valuable time that you can NOT get back
2. Learn how and why you should be using a foam roller.
The foam roller is one of the best recovery tools available, inside our FREE Athletes’ Guide To Foam Rolling, you’ll learn some of the best techniques to get the most out of your foam roller. If you haven’t tried foam rolling before, you’re in for a “feels-so good-when-it’s-done” treat! While you’ll likely feel more flexible and “looser” after your very first session … You’ll notice even BETTER results by foam rolling on a regular basis.
3. Do the right type of stretches, flexibility drills and recovery based exercises.
One of the best things to help you flush out toxins created during hard training, games or competition is to do the right series of low intensity progressed exercises – the right exercises carefully selected and given to you by a specialist sports massage therapist (recovery expert). The right exercises will help you reduce muscular pains, loosen up stiff joints, and allow you to move more freely again quickly.
4. Get a Sports Massage Therapy Treatment.
Massage Therapy, more importantly, Sports Massage Therapy has is proven to help youth to professional athletes recover faster while avoiding overuse injuries for years. In fact, muscle soreness and joint stiffness are the most common symptoms we see at Stretch Moves. If your muscular pains and joint stiffness are affecting your job, your ability to go HARD at the gym, keep active, if it threatens your independence or gets in the way of spending quality doing what you LOVE – Sports Massage Therapy can help you get back to living the life you deserve as quickly as possible.
- Amatsu
- Cranioscaral
- Cupping
- Dry Needling
- Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM)
- Blood Flow Restriction Training (BFR)
- Neuromuscular Trigger Point Release
- Myofascial Release
- Neuromuscular Re-education
- Fascial Stretch Therapy (assisted stretching)
- Strain-Counter-Strain
- Muscle Energy Techniques
- Dolphin NeuroStim
- Rock Tape (kinesiology tape)
- SFMA & FMS Functional Movement Screens
- Stick Mobility
- Sports Medicine
The benefits of Sports Massage Therapy
How can a Sports Massage Therapy session help you?
Reduce muscle tension
Increase range of motion
Decrease delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)
Improve exercise performance
What can I expect from a Sports Massage Therapy Session?
After a Sports Massage Therapy, clients typically tell us their arm, legs, and body feel much lighter, not as heavy or sore and noticed of increased flexibility, improved range of motion with ease.
While feeling relaxed is typical during a traditional massage, sometime a Sports Massage can be sore especially with tight muscles and trigger points. We do our best to help keep you relaxed while addressing the restricted tissue to improve the healing process.
During your Sports Massage Therapy session, we ask our clients to come dressed as they would during a game or training session. Shorts and T-shirts are fine as we can work on areas over the clothes as well as use the Dolphin Neurostim™ OTC TENS device.
We love to combine all sorts of tricks and modalities to achieve the best outcomes for you, some of these include:
- Myofascial Release Massage
- Fascial Stretch Therapy
- IASTM (Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization) Often Call "Scraping"
- Cupping
- Neurokinetic Therapy
- Rock Tape Application If Needed
- Corrective Exercises
- Manual Muscle Testing
- Range Of Motion Assessments
What is fascia?
Fascia (connective tissue) is made up of fibrous connective tissue, that is packed connective fibers that forms a weblike structure. Think of Spider-man’s costume underneath your skin and over top of your muscles.
It is designed to be soft, supple and elastic. Because of the physical and emotional trauma, negative habit patterns both physical and mental, disease and the natural desiccation of tissue as we age, fascia becomes hard, rigid, less elastic and gummy.
What does fascia serve?
You don’t have to sacrifice the game you love over problems that can be fixed.
Sincerely,
Jose Chacon, LPTA, LMT
Owner and Founder of Omni Wellness & Performance
