5 Ways Massage Can Streamline Your Training

Whether you’re training for flexibility or strength, for function or performance, or just to feel good, sometimes you’ll hit plateaus or feel hindered by various factors. Those can be an injury, restrictions inherited from old habits, or just a feeling that your body doesn’t let you progress. Soft Tissue Therapy (the enriched modality of massage you can find here) can help you deal with, or even prevent, many of these mishaps. Here is how:

Recuperating faster

Getting massage after training helps your body recuperate faster, by bringing fresh blood to the tissue after a period of intense activity. This is particularly important if outside of your training, you lead a relatively sedentary life (e.g. desk job), as you might not get optimal circulation to your muscles and other soft tissue from your movement alone.

pistol squat

Preventing injury

The assessment happening at the beginning of each treatment for movement enthusiasts aims to detect points of vulnerability in the body. This allows these points to get the attention they need, and can help guide your training to make sure that your mobility is balanced enough that no part of your body will get overloaded, and that every part is strong enough to do their job. Some of the techniques we use help rebalance tone in the muscles to avoid overload, and to give your central nervous system more options to deal with potentially risky situations. Read this article on how to prevent knee pain if this paragraph resonated with you.

Unlocking soft tissue restrictions

Some of the techniques we use allow for very targeted work on a specific restriction to your mobility (or strength). In my experience, this has allowed folks to start implementing bits of their training for movement much quicker and with much better results than with the training alone. These unlocks are generally very long-lasting as well: I had clients report to me months after a treatment to tell me that they still feel the effects of that treatment on their mobility. Read this article on flexibility training if this paragraph talked to you.

Unlocking restrictions from the nervous system

Other techniques help your body allow your muscles to stay relaxed for more of their range of motion. This means that they will no longer hinder your mobility, or the strength of their antagonists. This feels quite magical to most movement enthusiasts I’ve treated, and can liberate a lot of potential!

streamline your training stretch park

Self-assessing your own body

On the treatment table, it’s not rare that some bits feel a bit more sore than expected, or that you discover restrictions of movement or gaps in strength that you hadn’t suspected. This is a great occasion to tweak your training to cover the most lacking areas first, allowing for quicker, safer results, and a streamlined training! Read this article about foot anatomy if you like getting to know your body.

And that’s it for this year of blogging! I’ll be taking a break over the holidays, and come back with new content on the 10th of January. If you’re impatient, head over to my Facebook page, where I’ll be reposting the best blogs of the year during the 12 days of Christmas, and to my Instagram account, where I regularly post various content to inspire you to move and to feel good.

Continue reading: Self-Massage For The Feet, A Key To Flexibility Training, 5 Daily Opportunities To Perfect Your Posture.

Want more like this?

Check out the following blogs from massage therapists I know from around London: You might also like these more commercial and global sites:
  • MovNat on natural movement and finding health through re-learning the basics.
  • GMB presents a lot of interesting insight on movement and exercise, from a more gymnastic-y and physio-y approach.

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