A sports massage for neck and shoulders can have many benefits besides just feeling good. They help to relieve stress and tension, correct poor posture and reduce the severity of your headaches. They can even prevent them altogether.
What Is A Neck And Shoulder Sports Massage
Although everybody is different, a neck and shoulder massage usually involves treating the same muscles. These are the trapezius in your upper back, the deltoid muscles of your shoulders and the muscles in your neck. You might also require some massage work to the rhomboid muscles between your shoulders blades and your rotator cuff muscles. Or even the erector spinae which run along each side of your spine. Each massage is unique to you, however.
Why Have A Sports Massage
Whether we are sitting or standing, at home or at work, we are frequently looking down at a screen. This could be your laptop, your phone, your ipad or your TV. This puts an unnatural strain on the muscles of your neck and shoulders which can lead to stiffness and poor posture. Combining this with stress and heavy lifting or exercise can leave you in constant pain that goes on to cause other problems. These can include headaches, jaw pain or insomnia, or it could progress into lower back problems too.
Other common causes of pain or discomfort include poor posture, which often comes from sitting incorrectly or for long periods. Also stress or anxiety, which can cause prolonged shrugging of shoulders and jaw clenching. As well as this, untreated injuries, whether recent or long-term, can result in tightness and inflammation.
A massage can help these issues by loosening your muscles to relax tension and correct imbalances (1).
Fix Headaches With A Sports Massage For Neck And Shoulders
While there are many things that can trigger a headache, one of the most common is tension in the muscles of your upper back, shoulders and neck. In turn this causes tension across your scalp and forehead. The usual culprits for this are poor posture and stress. A neck and shoulder massage can relax tight muscles in your neck allowing the head to be held in the correct position. This has also been shown to help reduce the severity and intensity of tension headaches and migraines, or even prevent them altogether.
Sports Massage For Stress And Anxiety
Different people hold stress and anxiety in different parts of their body. However, muscles in the jaw, shoulders and neck are among the most affected. This is because it is a natural response when under pressure, such as in a stressful or anxious situation, to shrug your shoulders. If this happens a lot it results in tight, shortened muscles which never properly relax and can cause chronic pain. It also increases the risk of injury. A neck and shoulder massage can help by softening the muscles and removing stored tension, which gives an overall feeling of calmness and relaxation.
Neck And Shoulder Massage For Jaw Pain
Another response to stress, besides shrugging your shoulders, is to clench your jaw or even grind your teeth. You might not even be aware that you are doing it. But whether it’s caused by teeth grinding from stress, tightness in the neck or an imbalance in the muscles of the jaw, jaw pain is most often felt in the joint just in front of the ears. A neck and shoulder massage can help by reducing stress in the body and relaxing tension in your muscles. This can reduce the damage done by clenching your teeth and can even prevent you from doing it at all.
A Sports Massage For Neck And Shoulders Can Improve Your Posture
Poor posture in the upper body is usually the result of too much computer or phone use, prolonged sitting or standing, or pain resulting from injury. But whatever the original cause, an untreated poor posture can very often get worse and even cause issues elsewhere. If you are looking down at a phone or ipad a lot you are weakening the muscles at the back of your neck and shoulders. If you work with a desktop computer you are more likely to be shortening those muscles and causing tension. Either way, the result will be a change from the natural curvature of your neck and upper back. This can cause pain, such as in the neck, shoulders or jaw, headaches, or even issues with the lower back. A neck and shoulder massage can relax tight muscles and correct imbalances to improve posture, all while reducing stress and tension.
Book A Mobile Massage
If you would like to book a sports massage for neck and shoulders 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