Sports Massage Vs Physiotherapy

AS and A Level Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

What is your role as a sports massage therapist?

Because massage is useful for many general and specific purposes, experts in massage are valuable members of the athlete's support team. Their specific role is to apply massage and related techniques in order to ensure the health and safety of athletes and to enhance their performance.

What can you hope to achieve through sports massage?

Optimises positive-performance factors

i) Healthy muscle and connective tissues

ii) Normal range of motion

iii) High energy

iv) Fluid and pain-free movement

v) Mental calm, alertness and concentration

while minimizing negative ones,

i) dysfunctional muscle and connective tissue

ii) restricted range of motion

iii) low energy

iv) staleness

v) pain

vi) high anxiety

decreases injury potential, and

i) prevent acute injuries resulting form abnormal tissue conditions

ii) and chronic injuries caused by wear and tear

supports soft tissue healing.

The massage therapist can monitor subtle changes in the condition of tissues and locate potential trouble spots during massage before the athlete becomes consciously aware of them. Especially

in the case of chronic injury, an athlete will feel pain with the pressure applied during massage before the injury is far enough along to elicit pain in the absence of pressure. Thus massage can

uncover injuries at the sub-clinical level that can be dealt with before they get to the clinical stage.

Massage can facilitate soft tissue healing in a number of ways. It helps reduce both primary oedema and the possibility of secondary injury caused by the pressure of increased fluid in the area of trauma. Increased circulation resulting from massage can move healing nutrients to the injury site. Massage can also promote the creation of strong and mobile scar tissue and prevent and break adhesions in the injured area and surrounding tissue.

Sports massage enhances athletic performance through the effects of specific massage techniques performed alone and in combination, both at the time of application and accumulated over a period of time.