Having a massage has been shown to increase exercise performance, speed up recovery and improve your results. This is the case whether you’re a professional athlete or training for health and fitness. Just one massage a week can keep your muscles loose, preventing them restricting the flow of blood around your body.
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Increase Blood Flow During Exercise
A massage therapist will generally work towards your heart as this is the direction your blood flows. If done before exercise it helps prepare the circulatory system for the upcoming exertion, flooding muscles with fresh, oxygenated blood and enhancing performance levels. If done after exercise massage helps to remove toxins, such as lactic acid, and assists the process of recovery.
Increase Exercise Flexibility
Whether the exercise you do is jogging, sports or lifting weights, your muscles are damaged on a microscopic level. In turn this makes them shortened and tight, reducing your flexibility. Tight muscles restrict the flow of blood in and out of that muscle, causing a reduction in performance during exercise. It also causes less efficient removal of toxins and a diminished recovery during rest periods. In turn this reduces your performance further. Also, reduced flexibility means reduced range of movement, which prevents anyone lifting weights to get the most from each repetition. Massage stretches muscle fibres and frees them up from scar tissue and damage to muscle fascia.
Massage Helps Reduce Pain
Muscle pain, whether caused by, overwork, tension or injury, will inevitably affect performance. Just the thought of pain coming from an exercise can inhibit technique to a point that it actually causes injury. For example, tightness on one side of the lower back may cause the body to use the other side of the lower back more to compensate. This can cause a permanent imbalance in the muscles which is likely to lead to further injuries in the future.
Having a massage straight after training can also prevent muscle soreness from exercise(1). It removes toxins, relaxes muscles and brings in a fresh supply of oxygen-rich blood.
Book A Mobile Massage
If you would like to book a mobile massage in York please contact me on 07713 250352 or email david@massageinyork.co.uk. Includes sports massage, deep tissue massage and Swedish massage. For more information on booking click here