You work out hard, you eat right, you get enough sleep and you’re consistent with keeping at your goals, is there anything else you can do? Well one thing that you can do to help speed recovery from hard workouts is massage. Not just for the pampered wealthy, massage is used more and more in the sports community by professional and Olympic athletes. They know its benefits in boosting recovery and overall enhancing performance.

High level athletes aren’t the only ones that might benefit from massage therapy. Anyone who routinely pushes their body through movement such as running, cycling, hiking, swimming, dancing, racquet sports, strength training and aerobics can benefit from a massage. Even mothers with small children, gardeners, and others who use their bodies strenuously in their work can benefit from massage. So what are the benefits?

• Deep tissue massage can reduce the chance of injury, through proper stretching and event preparation
• Improve range of motion and muscle flexibility, resulting in improved power and performance
• Shorten recovery time between workouts
• Maximize the supply of nutrients and oxygen through increased blood flow
• Enhance elimination of metabolic by-products of exercise

As you can see, there are some definite benefits to using massage therapy. During heavy or long workouts, lactic acid and other by products build up. This build up is what is usually attributed to delayed onset of muscle soreness or DOMS. Heavy exercise can also cause muscle tissue to lose their capacity to relax, causing them to become chronically tight. This tightness is also often linked to muscle soreness, and can predispose your muscles to injury, such as muscle pulls and tears.

Blood flow is also decreased causing ischemia, or lack of oxygen. This also contributes to muscle pain and soreness. To increase blood flow and eliminate metabolic by-products, massage therapy plays a major role in accomplishing this. For the body to recover from heavy exercise, massage helps in the rebuilding phase. With improved blood and lymph circulation, and muscle relaxation, massage therapy leads to removal of waste products and better cell nutrition, normalization and greater elasticity of tissues, deactivation of trigger points, and faster healing of injuries.

It all adds up to relief from soreness and stiffness, better flexibility, and less potential for injury. So it’s quite clear that massage therapy will make a large difference in the speed in which you can reach your fitness goals.

Granted high end hour long massages would be nice, but you can still gain some of the benefits of using self massage techniques such as cryotherapy (ice massage) and self-massagers. Post workout recovery involves not only tissue normalization and repair, but also general relaxation and mental calming. A recovery session can be as little as 15 minutes. So it’s not that much to contribute to improved recovery and better results. Incorporating massage in your strength and conditioning program will help you get into good shape faster, and with less stiffness and soreness. It will help you recover faster from heavy workouts, and relieve symptoms and conditions which may cause injury over time.

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