Massage is key for professional and amateur athletes

Professional Massage
Picture credit: Wikipedia

Many guys will think of massage and think of the spa days their wives and girlfriends love or which they give as Mother’s Day presents. Most males don’t realize that massage is about a lot more than relaxation and male massage is a great way to deal with a variety of problems including sports injuries.

Sports massage is a different area of massage that most professional massage therapists will have studied if they have taken a well-regarded course. Whether you are a pro footballer or just like to keep fit,  it could be that male massage for injuries and other muscle problems can help.

If you do just enjoy sports in order to keep, an injury can really set you back.  You are probably used to eating about the right amount of calories for the exercise regime you have: an injury could mean that you suddenly start pilling on the pounds as well as losing core fitness. What male massage can do for guys suffering from injuries is firstly to take away swelling and pain and then work to aid a quick recovery.

Unfortunately with damage to a muscle, if you have done it once then the muscle even once healed may be weaker and may be more prone to future injury. Male massage can help guys who are injury prone or have one muscle set that they have particular trouble with avoid future injury.  For a muscle to heal, it requires  good blood flow and therefore massage helps to rebuild the muscle to its former strength quickly. So you should continue massage to aid blood flow.

Professional sports men and women certainly use sports massage; Miami University’s Hurricanes American Football team had been suffering a serious knock back with the loss of Malcolm Bunche to a back injury. Bunche had been having severe spasms in his lower back making not only matches, but also training and fitness difficult for the player who was tipped to go on to great things. Bunche’s problems seem to have been solved by massage and by a regime of pre and post game stretches as prescribed by the team’s massage therapist.

Using massage is the idea of University of Miami Hurricanes coach, Al Golden, and now the whole team uses massage and stretches. Since introducing massage for players, injury rates have gone down massively. Massaging muscles means they lose tightness and allow lactic acid to be released that can otherwise lead to painful cramps. Tight muscles are also more prone to rip or tear, especially in a hard tackle and so a massage before the game can make injury during the game less likely and even help players keep going for longer, without muscles getting tired.